Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”

Share This Post: listening once more to the Mary Schmich-Baz Luhrmann collaboration, with Renzie Baluyut.

About ten years ago, I remembered pushing for this song to get more airplay at the radio station I was working for then.

The song was “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann.  It came out in one of those international samplers the station subscribed to, and I loved it the first time I heard it.

It was inspirational, it was different, it had a positive message to it, and it made for great listening. At the time, the prevailing rumor was that it was taken word-for-word from a Kurt Vonnegut commencement speech he gave for the graduating class of MIT.

Much later, it turns out that Kurt Vonnegut had nothing to do with the song.  The original piece of work was by Mary Schmich, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

From Wikipedia:

Luhrmann explains that Anton Monsted, Josh Abrahams and he were working on the remix when Monsted received an email with the supposed Vonnegut speech. They decided to use it but were doubtful of getting through to Vonnegut for permission before their deadline, which was only one or two days away. While searching the internet for contact information they came upon the “Sunscreen Controversy” and discovered that Schmich was the actual author. They emailed her and, with her permission, recorded the song the next day.

However, “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” wasn’t radio-friendly- the single ran for more than 7 minutes (you can play 2 songs in 7 minutes), and it wasn’t backed up by any significant marketing effort from the local recording companies.

I managed to sneak the song in several times within some of my special programs, but Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” unfortunately, never saw the heavy radio rotation I felt it deserved.

Nevertheless, the song remains very inspiring even to this day.  So here it is, along with the spoken-word lyrics to it.  I hope it inspires you too.

Traveling On a Budget: Get Airfare For Less

notes on cost-friendly travel, with Renzie Baluyut.

Traveling is great.  In fact, almost everyone wants to go around the world, do some sightseeing, and soak up on some culture just by doing so.

Jetting all over the world, however, is a rather costly endeavor.  Most of us do have to worry about staying within a budget, or think about the upcoming credit card statement.

Here are a few tips on how to get your airfare for less:

- Timing is everything.  As a rule of thumb, try to get your tickets as early as you can- at least 22 days in advance.  Airline ticket prices typically go up 21 days, 14 days, 7 days and 3 days just before flying.

- The best fares are usually available on Wednesday between 12MN and 1AM.  Next to this, you can still find some pretty good deals on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

-  Try to play around with your arrival and departure dates.  Shifting your itinerary around can make a significant difference in fares.

- Do some online research.  There are a number of websites you might want to visit just to do some shopping and to compare rates.  Fare differences might amount to the hundreds, so you may want to visit two or three sites just to be sure.

• Travelocity.com
• Cheapflights.com
• Expedia.com
• Hotwire.com
• Bestfares.com

- Before you finally make that purchase, head on over to the airlines’ official website.  There are usually deals and promotional rates not advertised on other sites.

Also check out this video on How To Get Cheap Airfare.

This video courtesy of HowCast.  Check out my Howcast profile and network with me, and learn a few new things while you’re at it.

You may also want to check out my other articles on Travel and Leisure.

Cheers, everyone!

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

10 Things I’ve Missed About The Philippines

appreciating Metro Manila and the Philippines, with Renzie Baluyut.

It’s been more than a month since I flew in from Los Angeles, and if anything, my being away for an extended period of time has made me appreciate a lot things in the Philippines even more.

Sure I wrote about this last year, so I thought this time I’d be a lot more specific.  Without any further ado, here’s a list of ten things I’ve really missed about the Philippines.

1. Home Delivery. Being a work-at-home advocate, home delivery services are truly invaluable.

Sure you have Thai food and pizza places delivering at home in Los Angeles. But if you ask me, nothing beats Manila in terms of the variety of food you can readily summon with just an easy phone call.

One thing I really missed was KFC's hot n' krispy chicken, delivered right at home. You don't have hot n' krispy in L.A. No idea why that is so.

Whether it’s a bucket of KFC hot n’ krispy, a quarter pounder at 2:30am, or an entire tray of pasta, dimsum or beef stew, you can pretty much have anything you want delivered to your doorstep as long as you know who to call.

2. The Weather.  Maybe my tropical ass just isn’t suited to LA weather just yet. What I like about Philippine weather is that, all year round, the temperature only varies by a relatively few degrees Centigrade.

Me and mom, visiting relatives in Butuan City.

It gets uncomfortably cold in the US, even in L.A., and even more so in the northern states.  In the summer (right about now), you can literally feel the sun beat down on you.

Here, all you need are relatively light clothes.  Plus a raincoat and an umbrella for the rainy season, and then a light jacket when it starts getting chilly over the holiday season.

3. Cheap services. One thing I really appreciated about the Philippines (which I only realized when I was in Los Angeles), was that you get so much for your hard-earned cash (more so, if you’re earning in dollars).

Getting a haircut, or having your laundry done, going for a massage- just about any service you can imagine can be had for cheap. One of the advantages of being in a third-world country, you might say.

Me and my ornery feet, about to get a scrubdown in a spa in Las Pinas city.

4. Cabs. While I admire the Los Angeles public transport system, I’ve simply grown accustomed to just standing out by the sidewalk, and hailing a taxi cab to take you pretty much anywhere you wish to go.

Caveat: a significant number of taxi drivers can be annoying, but remember that two can play at that game. They’re likely to play fair if they don’t see you as easy pickings.

That being said, I find the average day-to-day cab-riding experience in Manila rather worry-free. Even better if you know how to navigate your way around the city, and are familiar with general traffic conditions.

You can find all kinds of great stuff at the Salcedo weekend market. That’s my Tita Lina, looking for some stuff to bring home to the UK.

5. Shopping. I gotta admit, our malls here are truly great. Personally, I miss going to Shangri-la, Rockwell Powerplant and Greenbelt. Those malls were so close to where I used to live, it was practically just like home.

Heading off to Greenhills, Tiendesitas or even Divisoria brings shopping to an entirely higher level, an all-new experience altogether. Just a little out of the way (depending on where you stay, of course), but if you have time (as well as cash) to spare, these three spots are definitely worth the trip.

Besides all those, there are all kinds of food bazaars over the weekend- like the Salcedo weekend market on Saturdays, or all kinds of tiangges when the Christmas season is upon us.

Fish- tilapia to be exact- roasting nicely on some hot coals.

6. Fish and Seafood. Being the tropical island paradise we are, we got access to a great deal of fish and seafood. Sure LA food is (by comparison) cheap and plentiful too, I think there’s a great deal of fun heading for the public market or a dampa and have your seafood of choice cooked however which way you want.

All kinds of seafood: crab, fish and some skewered squid in the background.

7. Pirated DVDs. While you can easily get any CD, DVD, book, computer game, T-shirt or whatever else you fancy in the US (and have ‘em conveniently shipped straight to your home), you just don’t have that in the Philippines.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t encourage buying pirated software or digital media at all. I always say, buy originals all the time, as a show of support for your favorites, so they can keep coming up wth all kinds of great stuff in the future.

Now if I wanted to get into a brand new TV series, or if I’m curious about a specific horror movie or romance comedy, I’d like to know if the purchase of the real deal is going to be worth my time and money. And, for me, the locally available DVDs should serve that purpose.

You’ll be amazed at the kind of stuff you’ll find with the local DVD vendors- new releases, TV series, anime series, even hard-to-find old titles, documentaries and classics.

Again, if you like what you watched, be a true fan and score yourself the real deal when you can.

The ampitheater at Kawayan Cove was simply awesome.

8. The destinations. In the course of my travels, I’ve realized that there are still so many places in the Philippines I haven’t even had the chance of checking out. And it’s definitely part of the plan to seek good vacation spots outside Metro Manila (particularly so that I have plans to getting more involved in the travel business).

There are a number of  things going on even within Metro Manila as well, and you can read that in this online article from The Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

Also, thanks to Facebook, Multiply and a whole variety of other social media, I can get real customer feedback (good or bad) about specific resorts, beaches, hotels or whatever destination in just about any province in the Philippines.

Always nice to go provincial once in a while. A shot of our nipa hut, just outside the main house in our farm in Zambales.

9. I love the nightlife. Maybe it’s just our neighborhood in the area of Eagle Rock and Glassell Park, or maybe I’m just getting too old for the party scene, but when you feel like going out to party in Metro Manila, there’s easily a party anywhere you go.

I’m thinking that it’s also quite possible that maybe it’s because I’m not as well-connected there in LA as I am here in Manila.

In any case, if you want to get in on what’s going on in Metro Manila at any given time, all you have to do is go online, or scout around the areas of Makati, The Fort, Eastwood City and Ortigas.

Me with my good friends Tish and Coreen, hanging out at an 80's-themed watering hole with beers and good laughs.

10. My friends. I miss my friends back here, most of all. While modern technology allows us to keep in touch via all kinds of social media (Facebook, Flickr, etc.), VOIP (Yahoo, Skype, etc.) and other chat & microblogging services (Google Talk, Plurk, etc.), actual human contact and interaction is still much more favorable.

Precisely the reason why I’ve been meeting up with different groups of friends (and still continue to do so) ever since I got here.

Hanging out with my good buddies: Mich, Abi and Gelo at TGIFriday's in Bonifacio High Street. June 2009.

At any rate, I’m glad to be back in the Phiippines.  Sure, I know I’m going to take off from time to time, but I know I got all these waiting for me whenever I come back home.

For you Filipinos outside the country right now: what do you miss most about home?

Cheers, everyone.

Living Solo: The Importance of Manscaping

practical solutions to life’s biggest challenges with Andy Botwin and Renzie Baluyut.

Whether you’re living solo, or happily married with a wife and kids, there simply is no excuse for a terrible sense of personal hygeine.

There’s a reason why grooming is so important, particularly for singles and bachelors: you want to get into the habit of making yourself more appealing to the opposite sex.  And that means working on grooming and hygeine all the time, 24/7.

Here to talk more about the subject matter of manscaping is Professor Andy Botwin of the University of Andy.  Pay close attention, man.  This will save your life one day.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, go right ahead and visit the University of Andy official website, and sign yourself  up in one, several, or better yet, all of their classes designed specifically to make you a better man, all of ‘em practical solutions to life’s biggest challenges.

Enroll now!

Cheers, everyone.

Living Solo: Spending Money The Right Way, part 2 of 2

money management, made better with Renzie Baluyut.

In the last post, Part 1 of  Spending Money the Right Way, we discussed a simple money management technique recommended by “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” author T. Harv Eker.

Eker recommends that whenever money comes our way, we should make it a habit to divide it up into six different accounts, each with a particular purpose.

• 10% goes solely for investments (the FFF fund)
• 10% is for big-ticket items you’re saving up for (the LTSS fund)
• 10% goes to your continuing growth and education (EDUC)
• 50-55% goes to your bills and necessities like rent, utilities, food, clothes, etc. (the NEC fund)
• 10% goes to rest and recreation (the PLAY fund)
• 5-10% goes to gifts, donations and charities (the GIFT fund)

So for every Php1000.00 I have, it would be broken down accordingly:

The Philippine One Thousand Peso Bill. Image courtesy of WikiPilipinas.org.

• Php100 goes to a fund for future investments, particularly for acquiring more passive income.
• Php100 goes to saving up for, say, brand new appliances at home, or that new laptop I wanted for myself.
• Php100 goes to a fund that will support my digital photography lessons, or business workshops, or more books on marketing.
• Php500 goes to doing groceries, or paying off bills, or for buying a new shirt or something.
• Php100 goes to my “movie-and-coffee” fund, or “dinner-and-drinks-out-with-friends” fund.
• Php100 goes to feeding those stray cats outside the apartment.

Which means if I had received a check for, say, Php18,000.00…

• Php1800 goes to the Financial Freedom Fund,
• Php1800 goes to Long-Term Savings for Spending,
• Php1800 goes to my continuing Education,
• Php9900 goes to paying off day-to-day Necessities,
• Php1800 goes to my Play fund,
• and the remaining Php900 into the Gift fund.

This habitual allocation of funds should be in effect regardless of amount, no matter if you receive, say, Php100 or Php20,000.

Now bear in mind that the percentages may vary according to your need, and can therefore be adjusted according to your current situation.  But the most important thing is getting into the habit of putting money into EACH of these separate accounts, no matter what.

The system works so that it allows for more controlled spending.  If my friends invite me out for beers, I know that I can spend up to Php1800 and nothing more.  Otherwise, we can find ways to just party at home so we can spend less.

Putting a cap on my Necessities Fund also conditions me to live a simpler lifestyle, as I now have to find ways to cut down on unnecessary bills (why subscribe to cable TV when I have a fairly efficient internet connection?) as well as to save money.

It might be hard at first, but just like forming any habit, it becomes second nature as you go through the motions on a regular basis.

Personally, I think it’s great advice; something that would have been a lot more useful 15 or 20 years ago when I was just starting out.  But hey, there’s no better time to start than right now.

You can expect a lot more articles on the topic of money management and personal finance on this blog in the future.

Special thanks to Andy, and his post on the Financial Freedom Formula, and to Chase of Barfield Management.  You guys were great help on the topic.

Hope this helps all you chicks and dudes living solo, all you entrereneurs, and pretty much everybody else who’s looking at taking their money management a bit more seriously.

Cheers, everyone.