Sinag Printing in the News c/o Balitang Europe/TFC

The greatest adventure of our life so far (or the story of how we won an international award in Europe and the mad and crazy struggle of it all)

PART 5 By Raia Dela Pena

The World Young Reader Prize awarding ceremonies

The main event, the reason for the whole trip, of course, happened not in Paris but in Vienna, Austria. We arrived in Vienna on October 11 and checked in at the pleasant, hip, central and uber clean Wombats Hostel at the Naschtmarkt. This hostel came highly recommended by our hosts and it was good we took their advice because the location was fantastic – a few steps away from the nearest metro station and right in front of the oldest outdoor market in Vienna. It was wonderful! And all possible conveniences were on hand – supermarket next door and asian supermarkets all around. What more can one ask? It was perfect. I would go back to Vienna if only for the convenient and wonderful location of the Wombats Hostel. Vienna is an equally beautiful city, more relaxed and laidback than Paris, less tourists and people more friendly. We have a load of wonderful experiences in Vienna. We visited the famous Schonnbrunn Palace (another breathtaking sight never before seen or imagined by the Dela Pena-Landicho family) and saw pandas and flamingoes in the oldest zoo in the world (the Tiergarten Zoo in the Schonnbrunn Palace grounds). We watched a classical music concert at the palace orangery but we also saw a concert given by a string quartet that performed rock songs with their classical instruments. It blew us away!

The unbelievable views at the Schonnbrun Palace, Vienna

The biggest emerald we have ever seen! This is one of the treasures featured in the National Treasury at the Hofsburg Palace.

We went to the Saturday market and flea market of the Naschtmarkt, saw Gustav Klimt’s paintings in the Belvedere palace and rode the Riesenrad, one of the oldest ferris wheels in the world and one of Vienna’s cultural icons.

Of course, I am mentioning the side trips. The main event happened on October 12. It was a rainy morning and we were picked up from the hostel by Ms. Mcmane’s assistant, Teemu Henrikson, a nice and very accommodating young man who comes from Denmark, I think. He brought us to the event venue, the Messe Wien near Vienna’s Prater Park, one of the biggest convention and conference venues in Vienna, the Messe Wien was appropriately impressive.

After our Philippine Embassy visit, we visited the main drag of Vienna, the ringstrasse area.

We arrived early at the Messe Wien even though the awarding ceremonies were set for that afternoon. Most of the morning was exploring the Messe Wien, looking through the conference literature provided to us and nervously writing our acceptance speech for the award.

About an hour before the event, we finally got to meet the wonderful Aralynn Mcmane! We gave each other big hugs and although we saw each other for the first time that day, it felt like seeing someone you know quite well. She was as nice as I imagined, very friendly, approachable and unassuming. She was running the whole show and she didn’t look at all stressed out or frazzled. I can say with finality that Aralynn Mcmane is an amazing person.

Aralynn Mcmane with WAN-IFRA President Jacob Mathew

The awarding ceremonies were quick and efficient and horror of horrors, Sinag was the first one on the line up of awardees. I was so nervous and tense that I don’t quite remember what I was thinking right before the actual awarding. All I know is that I kept reminding myself not to make a mess of it during the acceptance speech. And true enough when we got to the podium, I felt the rush and the excitement but I can say with pride that I was able to say what I wanted to say and we may have looked a bit Pollyanna to the other more jaded participants of the awards but we were very pleased with how it all turned out. We got a really loud applause from the audience and I remember people clapping enthusiastically when I mentioned that we had our mother and our son with us who also came all the way from the Philippines.

Our trophy was the most beautiful piece there. It was unique and had a miniature of the Gutenberg press as a symbol for the printing plant. I love our trophy. It doesn’t occupy a place of honor in our office yet (due to budget constraints) but soon, it will be the star of the Sinag office.

After the awards, Mr. King Bueno of ABS-CBN/The Filipino Channel, did an in-depth interview of us at the halls of the Messe Wien. The feature on Sinag printing came out in Balitang Europe of the TFC and also here in the Philippines thru the ANC or abs-cbn’s news channel.

With Ms. Aralynn Mcmane and Ms. Gloria B. Anderson, the New York Times Vice President for International & Editorial Development News Services Division

I think I didn’t realize how tired I was until we got back to the hostel after the awards and I promptly fell asleep. We didn’t even get to the welcome cocktails at the Rathaus (Vienna’s Municipal/City Hall) for all the participants of the Newspaper congress that night. Hehe.

With one of the Indonesian participants after the awarding ceremonies

After the awards, everything was pretty much normal. We went to the Messe Wien everyday as participants of the World Newspaper Congress. We got a lot of new ideas for the Sinag Journalism Training Seminars, new stuff we can try that were shared with us by other newspapers in the congress. All in all, it was a very fruitful trip and one we won’t forget! We met so many new people and learned a lot of things, not just for business but for life in general.

My husband, Ruel, while visiting booths during the World Newspaper Congress

We came back home last October 20 and now everything is pretty much back to business as usual.

And that is the complete and unabridged story of our greatest adventure so far or how Sinag printing won an international award. It was fun writing this blog and re-living the whole experience thru writing. I remember during our interview with TFC, we were asked what we think will change in our lives because of this award and my husband honestly said we don’t know yet what will happen but one thing is for sure, we will definitely work harder at making bigger and better social responsibility programs for our community’s youth.

It sounds chummy I know but that’s really what it’s all about, the community work that we’ve been doing is really what won the award and so with the recognition and the credibility that the international award has brought Sinag and the Sinag JTS, we would have more leeway to do bigger and better journalism training seminars. And that, I think, is the whole point of the matter.

So we are now thick in the planning of our social responsibility programs for next year and we are very excited for other new adventures to come!

Thank you to all our family, our Sinag family, friends and supporters! This has been a great year for Sinag and we will never forget this! THANK YOU!

The greatest adventure of our life so far (or the story of how we won an international award in Europe and the mad and crazy struggle of it all)

Part 4

By Raia Dela Pena

Sinag goes to Europe!

So we finally get our visas and we were off! A terribly rushed trip this turned out to be, like we got our tickets on a Tuesday, the visas were stamped Wednesday and then our flight was Thursday morning! We arived in Paris on a Friday afternoon, October 7, and we were so tired from the trip that it was tempting to just spend the first night resting in the hotel. But I told my mother and my husband that we only had 5 days in Paris and we couldn’t afford to slacken on our itinerary. Besides, it wouldn’t feel like we were in Paris up until we saw the Eiffel Tower. And so around 8pm of our first night, while familiarizing ourselves with the biting cold, we took the metro to the Trocadero near the Eiffel Tower. I prayed real hard we wouldn’t get lost on the intimidating Paris Metro on our first night but everything went fine, we even found our way back through the long and complicated passageways of the St. Lazare station with no problem at around 11pm that night.

But first, the Eiffel. Oh dear, it is as grand as they say it is. No wonder it’s a world icon. It’s so beautiful at night that it doesn’t matter if there really is no purpose to the tower. It exists because it is.

As we went up the stairs of the Trocadero exit I could feel my blood pumping in anticipation, the cold night air that blasted our faces was a bracing reminder that we were, indeed, no longer in Calamba. Then came gorgeous music from somewhere near the square and we turned a corner and there it was -- the Tour Eiffel. Beautifully lit and gleaming like a true superstar. I do not exaggerate when I say it took my breath away. I almost cried. It sounds silly but my eyes were threateningly and embarrassingly wet when we got our first look at the Eiffel. I couldn’t help but feel that that moment was the reward for all the hurdles – the passport hunt, the visa nightmare, the rush of it all. I always dreamed of seeing Europe. Who wouldn’t want to see the City of Lights? Yet I always believed this to be a far off dream to be achieved during retirement when we have paid our dues. To have come here so soon (to be the recipient of an international award at that), to see this… it was priceless.

The Paris trip went without any hitches, making me realize along the way that five days is not nearly enough for this big and terribly beautiful city, we were pressed for time and didn’t get to see all that needed to be seen. One of the highlights of our trip though was dinner at Dave and Aralynn Mcmane’s Paris apartment. Dave is a great cook, I still can’t forget the wonderful chicken dish he made for us and he really went the extra mile that night – he made rice for us!

Dave Mcmane and the wonderful dinner he prepared in their Paris apartment

Dave's great cheese platter. I loved the cheese he called tomme.

Our son, Anton, during our memorable Paris dinner at the Mcmane's

We also met a real Parisienne named Aurelie who gave us a free walking tour of the Marais area of Paris. We met her through parisgreeters.com, an organization of Parisians who give free walking tours of Paris to visitors so they can share their own version of the Paris that they love so much. Isn’t that a great idea? Aurelie was so passionate about Paris and the history of France, it made me think that these people look snooty but they know what it’s all about and you can’t help but admire them for that.

We are now back home and currently hopelessly in love with all things Paris. Been buying books on Paris and CDs of movies in Paris and often wonder when would we ever get back to the beautiful City of Lights? Well with the horror of visa applications still fresh in my mind, not any time soon, I think.

Here are some of our Paris pictures:

One of the numerous flower vendors during our walking tour with Aurelie through the trendy Marais area of Paris. Some of the great produce at the market that day!

TO BE CONTINUED...The last part, Part 5, our Vienna Trip and some more pictures from Paris to come later this week.

The greatest adventure of our life so far (or the story of how we won an international award in Europe and the mad and crazy struggle of it all)

Part 3

by Raia Jennifer Dela Pena-Landicho

Aralynn Mcmane

The second part of this narrative should be titled “The story of our European Awards adventure or how Aralynn Mcmane became Sinag’s fairy godmother.” :)

I could go on and on about Ms. Aralynn Mcmane but really, this would not have all been possible if she didn’t go the extra mile for us. First off, she said that since the WAN-IFRA is a Paris based organization and it would be easier for them to coordinate the visa applications directly, that I should apply with the French embassy instead of the Austrian embassy. I immediately checked online about the requirements and processing period of the French embassy, it was shorter than the Austrians (around ten days processing) so I emailed them and surprisingly got a reply the next day that we have visa application appointments for September 21! Our awarding was set for October 12 so that was just enough time for processing and everything! There was hope yet! So we went about our work – birth certificates and financial documents prepared, visa invitation letters were sent by WAN-IFRA thru Ms. Mcmane to the French embassy. So everything seemed all ok. Come September 21, we calmly and confidently went to the French embassy for our interview. I never thought that the hardest part of our struggle was yet to begin.

Let me contextualize the whole visa application process. I have never applied for visas as an adult. Most of the visas I got were given as a minor – US visas, Chinese visas, Russian visas. I remember it was my father who always arranged everything for our travels as a family. When I hit my twenties, and up until recently of course, I never had much thought for travel abroad. We did go on short vacations but these were all within the country and never more than long weekends. I was preoccupied with a lot of things, work mainly and then later running my father’s newspaper and then getting married, having a baby, starting a business, father getting cancer, taking care of dad (he died last 2010), picking up the pieces of my life after that loss and going on with the business. Why would I ever think of going on a European tour in the midst of all that?

And yet, when we got to the French embassy that day, all these facts of my life were made suspect by the person who interviewed us. It seemed to him we were a family of potential illegal aliens who want to migrate to France. I guess that was the assumption. And so he proceeded to interrogate (not interview), yes interrogate, let me emphasize that, us on why we live our lives the way we do and why we never travelled and why we suddenly all want to go to Europe when we have never travelled as a family outside of the country so far.

The nightmare of the Schengen Visa

I never believed that applying for visas would be such a traumatizing and horrifying experience and yet, I can say with certainty that I have never been so insulted and humiliated in my life. First off, that place felt like some torture chamber of sorts. You had to go though guards and a police to get through the door. They had a big and heavy metal door to the interview area. That door, I now call the door of doom. There are 5 windows inside but apparently only 4 windows that are used. You approach these windows for interviews. The people who interview you are behind thick glass enclosures and they use mics to speak to you. The whole place is set up so you can hear everybody who is being interviewed and thus, you can hear everybody who is being berated, humiliated and interrogated. The room is full of tension and fear. The fear is so thick you can almost smell it.

If there is an art to supreme rudeness and cruelty, the people who do interviews in the French embassy must be PhD holders of this. I have heard so much crap while waiting in that room, I don’t know where to begin.

They post signs in that room like “Kindly wait to be called” and stamp notes in your passport like “Kindly report to the French Embassy after your return” but there is no kindness or courtesy whatsoever in that room or in that process or in that office.

These people call you up and talk to you brusquely, they seem to purposely intimidate people prior to the interview so people’s guards are down or so that you are more vulnerable to their attack. For example during visa releasing process, they call up the numbers and say line up to submit your passports. Most people end up giving their claim stubs along with their passports, which is logical, but apparently not part of the process. So people making this mistake are berated and shouted at. “Passports only!!!” is said in varying tones of anger and condescension, all with the same effect of making the waiting game more excruciating for people waiting to find out if their application was approved or declined. If by some chance you were late and did not get to join the “line up” for visa releasing, if you approach the window to ask if you can still submit your passports, depending on the person’s mood, they can either accept your passport or say rudely that “ask the window that interviewed you if they will still accept your passport because you’re late!” I heard one lady apologizing and saying that perhaps they can still accept the passports since they came all the way from the province but the visa people at that embassy are impervious to people’s situations. That lady was just five minutes late and all they had to do was accept those passports but no, they just had to be a jackass about the whole thing.

Now let me get to our momentous interview. The person doing the interview works under the assumption that all you tell them are lies and proceeds with the interview with that line of questioning. To begin with, he didn’t even believe we received a real award. He asked details about the award but there were questions like “what did you give them to win? Did you join a promo?” I told him our company winning the award was featured in the Philippine Star newspaper but he said that would not help and he refused to see the newspaper I brought with me. It doesn't make sense, why would he refuse "hard evidence" such as a feature in prestigious national news daily if he suspected we weren't legit? I couldn't help but think that if he wanted proof that we were legit, a news feature that was sure to have been fact checked by the newspaper was good enough proof but he refused to consider that. I found it all so strange, how he was so belligerent about it.

He grilled my husband about our gross and net income last year, and asked me machine gun style, when we were married, what year and which Parish church -- as if to indicate that he wasn’t so sure we were really husband and wife. My husband, who’s not so good with English, asked if they could speak in Filipino since the person doing the interview was himself a Filipino but was coldly and rudely refused, with that person saying “No, you cannot speak in Filipino.” And yet, previous and later interviews we have heard this person doing while we waited for our results showed us that he even conducted interviews in Cebuano to some of the applicants when he felt like it. Everything seems so absurdly arbitrarily decided by these people.

Then he zeroed in on my mother, he said that our proof of income (bank statements, passbooks and income tax return) will not suffice. She had to show that she had money to travel, like her own bank account and other means of income. Needless to say, my mother was mortified by the whole interview. All she wanted was to see me receive this award. I never thought I'd have to put her through hell to do that.

I'm sure it's their job to scare the heck out of applicants all the time. But there must be a better way of doing this. I half think they actually enjoy doing this to people, a couple of other applicants before us (both grandmother types) came out of that window in tears. They were denied visas and were shouted at and humiliated by this person (they had the temerity to question the interviewer on why they were denied visas and that person loudly and curtly replied that "we cannot comment on that and if you want to appeal the decision, you can do so with the Ministry in France!" -- such a stupid suggestion, if you could call it a suggestion, since how could these grandmas appeal the consul's decision abroad when they were denied visas to enter France in the first place). It doesn't help that the visa section is a public space, so everybody hears everybody who's being interviewed. So if the interviewer is particularly vicious on you then everybody knows as well.

Oh and that person ended our interview with "come back and we will submit this application to the Ministry for consideration." And without any further acknowledgement whatsoever, he turned his back on us and left the window (he didn't even say anything like "thank you, this interview is over."

That person never even congratulated us for being the only Filipino company to win top prize in the internationally renowned World Young Reader Prize of the WAN-IFRA. It just makes me sad that there really are people like that. My son calls him a “bad person,” I don’t correct my boy or tell him otherwise. Kids should know early on that bad people really do exist.

Oh and one last thing, that interviewer even asked why it took me so long to travel again as last time I left the Philippines was to visit relatives in California in 2000. I told him I never had a reason to leave the country again until now, I think he thought that was strange and threatened me that they can check on the DFA for other issued passports that I did not declare, and I told him go ahead and check because I have no other “secret” passports. The nerve of these people! I almost told him that I haven't been applying for visas to first world countries since I became an adult because of all the horror stories about visa applications. And I don't relish the thought of being interrogated and humiliated before going for a tour or vacation. And now, I have my own horror story to add to the Filipino collective experience of visa application/humiliation.

I just sometimes get sad thinking that one of the happiest experiences of my life was marred by this awful experience. And yet I know, they will all just say it’s not personal, it’s just all in a day’s work for them but I said this before and I’ll say it again -- there must be a better way of doing this job. Because to intimidate and humiliate people on a regular basis for a living? That’s not much of a job.

Anyway, a part of me also believes as well that it wouldn’t have been such an “adventure” if there were no hurdles and cliff hangers to the story. In hindsight, the whole story of our international award and trip to Europe feels all the more like a” movie” of a sort because it had its own twists and turns, with bad guys, heroes and allies and the happy ending everybody wishes for. And this time, the happy ending is true.

TO BE CONTINUED...