Attended the ATIFTAP E-Trade Bridge Program workshop at Oakwood, Makati last Friday for my subjects MARKNAL and MARKPRO. I had originally intended to stay just for an hour when sleepy old me arrived in business attire at 9:30 am.

I got so interested that I ended up skipping one of my classes.

When I came along, the workshop was in the middle of some sort of integrative activity about everything that had been discussed in the previous day. Because I had been absent and uninformed, I was sitting there uncomfortably trying to grasp the subject matter for a good hour.

My mates at the table were all nice men and women though. Most of them were working for financial institutions, the government or small-enterprise businessmen. We were eventually made into a group to discuss the importance of e-trade in the Philippines and if it was enough to convince the government to get involved.

Met Roberto Castañeda there, too. His name might not ring a bell, but he's the proprietor of the only winery in the world that makes mango and coffee wine. I was impressed at how passionate he was about the whole discussion yet was jovial enough to crack jokes. He felt that e-trade was indeed necessary in these times because it can empower SMEs (small and medium enterprises) to become "Smarter, Mightier Enterprises."

Before we parted ways we had a little chat and he seemed to have taken a liking to me. He left me a calling card and invited me to a free tour of his winery in Imus, Cavite.

I was certainly rather unfortunate that I didn't get to taste his wines there at the venue, when the bottles were right in the middle of the meeting room. Also it's somewhat depressing to hear that local spirits stores would not carry his product, just offering the foreign wines instead. Sigh.
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Finally got to watch "The Incredibles" and it was good. Very good. Pixar seems to make pretty good animated movies targeted to kids that are appealing even to adults. That's a feat.
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Also finally managed to watch the first fansubbed episodes of "Gundam SEED Destiny."

Right off the bat I can clearly say that if SEED was a retelling of the original "Mobile Suit Gundam," SEED-D is "Z Gundam" retold for the 21st century. So many events and elements in this latest series have their parallels to that 1985 anime. Hmmmm. This will get interesting, I'm sure.