GenSan News Online Mag

The first time Bariles visited Driggs Pension House, a GenSan Hotel in the suburbs of the Tuna Capital, he could not believe what he saw.  As its name itself suggests, a Pension House is basically a teeny-weeny  nondescript version of a hotel and so that was what he was looking forward to see when he accepted an invitation to grace its grand opening!

Lo and behold!  He was amazed at the sight of what greeted him when he drove over to Driggs Pension House‘s suburbs address at Eve’s Street, Paradise Subdivision, Aparente Avenue, City Heights… right at the center of one of GenSan’s residential areas.

Driggs Pension House basically is a villa type of hotel and its name is actually a misnomer! It has 19 well-appointed rooms distributed in its two floors!  Its location is good for those who want some peace and quiet since it is located inside a subdivision and therefore, guests could hardly hear the sound of traffic along the main road of City Heights.

The exteriors of Driggs Pension House is impressive but Bariles was more excited about how the rooms look.  Here is what he found out in this new GenSan hotel…

Below is their nicely-decorated Family Room painted in relaxing earth colors.   This one costs only P1,750 inclusive of two breakfasts!  Hey! That’s very affordable, don’t you think? And the room is quite large and has an extra sofa for hotel occupants and their guests.

Bariles checked their DeLuxe room which has two beds and costs only P950!   So cheap considering that it comes with a free breakfast too!

Lastly, Bariles took a look at their Standard Rooms, equipped with a Queen-sized bed each,  and costing only P750 a night inclusive of one free breakfast!!!  Here is how it looks below…

And what’s more – all these air-conditioned rooms have hot & cold showers,  PABX Telephone system, LCD Flat screen-wall mounted Televisions with cable programming and FREE WIFI, which is a must among GenSan hotels these days!

It is also safe and secured since Driggs Pension House has its own CCTV Security System  extending to its ample parking lot and a couple of security men on guard.  One thing more is its neighborhood which is basically very quiet but very near the main road where one can just flag a tricycle or jeepney to take him downtown.

It may be in the suburbs but it’s easily reachable by tricycle or jeepney (look for those with PUROK MALAKAS signages).

For room reservations, you may contact Driggs Pension House at +63 (83) 553-0088 or 0917-3089731.  You may also email  this new GenSan hotel at driggspensionhouse@yahoo.com. By the way, it is owned by the very young and goodlooking Dr. Rudy Salangasang Jr. so you know you’re in good hands when checking in.

If Oriental food is your cup of tea, and eat-all-you-can offerings is your idea of nirvana, then you can just celebrate at what East Asia Royale Hotel‘s The Royal Lounge has concocted for you!

For all Fridays in June, they have come up with”Asian Cuisine Eat-All-You-Can” Buffet!

For only P350, guests can eat as much as they want of a “five -course dnner and other tasteful entrees” – Chicken Asparagus with Quail Egg Soup, Sushi & Maki, Fish Potato Salad, Crispy Fried Chicken with Mango Cream Dip, Korean Pork Ribs, Beef with Sweet Red Pepper & Chili, Thai Noodles with Beansprouts & Peanuts, Fish Fillet with Corn Sauce & Fish Roe, Dolean Fried Rice and Mango Gulaman Delight.

There will be an acoustic band serenading the diners.  Everything starts at 6pm.

This highly succesful Buffet Series of East Asia Royale Hotel started with May’s Piyestang Pinoy, and before that, April’s Spanish Treats, March’s Chinese Buffet, and February 14′s Japanese Valentine’s Buffet.

To find out why this is so, reserve your tables for this Friday at The Royale Lounge and call East Asia Royale Hotel at (083) 553-4119 and 553-4124.

The Tinalak Festival 2011 is just a month away and one of the many events which caught our eye is the Dayon sa South Cotabato – A Balikbayan Evening with the Governor.

Here is the poster below.

According to the poster, this is gonna be “A Dinner and Fashion Gala featuring the Province’s Rising & Recognized Fashion Designers in One Glamorous Evening with the Special Participation of the South Cotabato Performing Arts Ensemble”.

This by-invitation only extravaganza is scheduled on July 17, 2011 at 7:00pm at the South Cotabato Gymnasium and Cultural Center.  Guests are required to be dressed in Smart Casual.

We have to commend whoever thought of this since it is a good project to entice South Cotabatenos who are residing abroad or elsewhere in the country to come home and rediscover their home province and marvel at the progress it has undergone.  And as the event name suggests, they could personally meet South Cotabato Governor Dodo Pingoy himself!

How’s that as an incentive to coming home and celebrate Tinalak Festival 2011?

To register your balikbayan families and friends to this and other events of the Tinalak Festival 2011, please contact the Arts, Culture, Tourism, and Sports Promotion Unit at (63) 83-2283447 or email them at acts_ppdo@southcotabato.gov.ph.

Some 80 students from two public elementary schools in General Santos City will soon benefit from an agreement recently signed by community stakeholders led by the City Government on the implementation of CommuniTeach.

Initiated by Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart), CommuniTeach is a program that aims to improve learning of academically-challenged public elementary school students all over the country by getting the communities involved in the mentoring of their children.

On hand to sign the agreement were General Santos City Mayor Darlene Antonino-Custodio, Smart Public Affairs Community Partnerships Senior Manager Darwin Flores, Mindanao State University (MSU)-General Santos City Chancellor Atty. Abdurrahman Canacan, Department of Education (DepEd) Assistant Schools Division Superintendent Diosdado Ablanido and Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) Senior Program Officer Riza Horcasitas-Verano.

COMMUNITEACH MOA SIGNING. General Santos City Mayor Darlene Magnolia R. Antonino-Custodio signs the memorandum of agreement for the implementation of CommuniTeach, with Smart Public Affairs Community Partnerships Senior Manager Darwin Flores, Mindanao State University-General Santos (MSU-GSC) Chancellor Atty. Abdurrahman Canacan, Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) Executive Director Rafael Lopa, and representatives of the Department of Education (DepEd) and beneficiary schools. CommuniTeach is a program that aims to improve the learning of academically-challenged public elementary school students through mobilization of stakeholders within the community in the mentoring of their children. Teaming up for the initial implementation of the program in NASA Elementary School and Lozano Elementary School are the City Government of General Santos, Smart Communications, Inc., PBSP, MSU-GSC and DepEd. (General Santos City Mayor’s Office/Alexis Chua)

Lozano Elementary School and NASA Elementary School, whose students will benefit from CommuniTeach, were also represented by their respective principals Teresita Cebreros and Rizalinda Valdez as well as parents-teachers association presidents Anne Maata and Sonia Vistal.

Under the agreement, Saturday classes will be held within the schoolyear among Grades one to three students who have been identified as among the lowest-performing in their respective classes.  Forty students each from Lozano Elementary School and NASA Elementary School will be attending the tutorial sessions and will be closely monitored in terms of academic performance.

CommuniTeach is a community-based program with Smart providing overall program direction and oversight, as well as funding for the first year of implementation. The General Santos City Government will shoulder program expenses thereafter and will help mobilize local businesses by giving incentives to those who participate in CommuniTeach.

Identified as the program’s operations hub, MSU-General Santos will deploy students to serve as volunteer-teachers to the children from the two beneficiary public elementary schools.  Lozano ES and NASA ES will identify the student-beneficiaries, monitor their progress, provide logistical support and involve their respective Parent-Teacher-Community Associations in preparing the students’ meals during the weekly tutorial and feeding session.

The DepEd district of General Santos  will keep a firm eye on the students’ progress as well and help ensure that the beneficiary schools comply with the program obligations.

Smart has tapped the PBSP to ensure smooth program implementation and to seek additional funds from member companies.   PBSP has an ongoing partnership with Motolite to raise funds through the Motolite – PBSP Balik Baterya Program Project LEAP (Learning Enhancement Assistance Package), an intervention using funds from the recovered used lead-acid batteries to improve access to quality education for public elementary schools, particularly through provision of books, teachers training, supplementary feeding and reading camps.

CommuniTeach uses the learning technology developed by Silid Aralan, Inc. which has successfully implemented the community-based mentoring model in Montalban, Rizal using a multiple intelligences approach in the development of academically-challenged children.

Smart’s efforts to get communities involved in the mentoring of their public school children via CommuniTeach are part of its education initiatives under its corporate social responsibility program Kabalikat.

As testament to the high standards of quality that they continue to espouse, the Notre Dame of Dadiangas University was recently granted re-accreditation to nine of its major academic programs by the PAASCU or Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges & Universities.

These NDDU programs are Arts & Sciences, Education and Business Programs, Accountancy (Re-accreditation for 5 years: Level III), Nursing, Computer Science, Civil Engineering & Industrial Engineering (Re-accreditation for 5 years: Level II), Information Technology, Graduate School (Re-accreditation for 3 years: Level II), High School ((Re-accreditation for 5 years: Level II) and Elementary (Re-accreditation for 3 years: Level III).

Congratulations to the new administration of Notre Dame of Dadiangas University for this mean feat!!!

Thanks to Bariles’ friend, Teacher Lyle, he was able to discover a latest YouTube sensation – that of a clip of Manny Pacquiao’s new TV Commercial, this time endorsing a phone brand.

The phone?  HP Veer!

Here is a description of HP Veer from the HP site:

For anyone who wants a smartphone that packs the features they crave without the extra size they don’t, HP today introduced the powerfully small HP Veer smartphone running HP webOS.

Veer is one of the products HP announced today to introduce a unique experience for customers around connected mobility. It’s one of the building blocks in HP’s vision to seamlessly connect all your worlds through the power of HP webOS.

Veer is the smallest webOS phone to date – the size of a credit card and no thicker than a deck of cards – yet it offers the higher-end features of a smartphone, such as easy messaging and access to apps, social networks and the web, including support for Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 beta in the browser for access to rich, Flash-based web content.⁽¹⁾

It has a full slide-out keyboard, vivid touchscreen and access to thousands of webOS apps⁽²⁾ in a surprisingly small, modern package that fits easily into a pocket or purse. It’s everything a smartphone should be, but in a smarter size.

So without skipping a beat, here is 8-Division World Boxing Champion Manny Pacquiao in his new TVC touting the wonders of the HP Veer Phone. Closely, closely listen to him.

This is the first time that Manny Pacquiao spoke in straight english in a commercial and we must say, he did just fine!

And besides, his million-wattage smile was used to the hilt here with HP banking on his reputation as one of the nicest and most well-liked sports heroes alive today!

Starting today, June 2, 2011, one of the most awaited giant movies to come out of Hollywood opens worldwide!  This is the X-Men and X-Men 2 prequel - the X-Men First Class 3D!

To give the moviegoing public in GenSan a special treat, most notably those who are die-hard fans of the series, Robinsons Place GenSan Movieworld is conducting a FACE-PAINTING Session for FREE on June 5th, Sunday!!

So if you want to be X-Men Branded, hie off to Robinsons Place GenSan Movieworld on Sunday and be have your ordinary mortal faces painted just like them anytime between 2pm and 6pm!  Be one of them!

Robinsons Movieworld Dumaguete will have their own FacePainting on June 3 (tomorrow) while Robinsons Movieworld Tacloban, on June 4, Saturday!

Meanwhile, see you @ Robinsons GenSan Movieworld on Sunday if you want to join the X-men and see Bariles with a blue scaly face!!!

Each time Bariles traverses through Aparente Avenue on his way downtown, he never fails to notice an ongoing construction at the corner of Block Zero at Dadiangas Heights Subdivision.  Although the area is covered by a high wall, one could manage to still see the buildings being built inside.

Just yesterday, while passing through the same route again, he noticed a billboard at the property wall with an artists’ rendition of the project once it’s finished.

He stopped his car, got out and read what’s on the billboard!

Gosh!  It’s another Jinkee and Manny Pacquiao multi-use building project!  But this time, it’s bigger!

The mixed-use development project of the Pacquiao couple consists of a COMMERCIAL BUILDING facing Aparente Street, a separate building at the back for OFFICE SPACES and adjacent to it is an APARTMENT BUILDING.  This is now Manny Pacquiao’s biggest property development project so far in GenSan.  The lot used to be occupied by the GSCIT and belonged to the Morales family way back.

For Jinkee and Manny Pacquiao’s latest investment in General Santos City, they have gotten the services of the team of Civil Engineer Ferdinand Trasmil,  Architect Constancio Pongase and Project Supervisor Jose Angelito Rodriguez.  This team was also involved in the construction of the Pacquiao Gymnasium at Barangay Tambler where just recently Mommy Dionisia Pacquiao celebrated her fabulous 62nd Birthday Party.

Take note that other than this building project, Jinkee and Manny Pacquiao own two more – the much maligned JMP 1 Building along Osmena Street in downtown GenSan where their first BluGre Coffee Shop franchise is located and a few meters down Aparente Avenue, the JMP 2 Building.  Both were designed by Architect Rex Acdal.

Up next for Jinkee and Manny Pacquiao?  Hopefully, their proposed hotel along the Lagao-Bula Road at the former lot occupied by Conlu EcoPark across the SAFI Arcade where Little Dubai is.

We have to hand it over to the couple for putting much of their money in property development in General Santos City.  Aside from helping put GenSan on the map, Manny’s investment projects in the city are likewise very commendable.