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...

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 2 by Raia Jennifer E. Dela Pena-Landicho

My feverish email relationship with Dr. Aralynn Mcmane began soon after her congratulatory email. First things first: How in hell are we going to get ourselves to Europe? Pardon my French but we didn’t even have passports when we found out about winning the Natasa Prize. I haven’t renewed my passport in like nine years and my husband has never even applied for one. I know, I know, it may sound strange to some people but we didn’t have passports and it never bothered us that we didn’t have any. We had no reason to travel abroad and ever since we started the business, Sinag that is, we couldn’t imagine leaving the press for more than a few days or spending hard earned money on foreign travel when we were working our butts off trying to make the new business a success.

So there. We had no passports! Waahhh!

Imagine winning an international award and not even having passports. It’s absurd. I should have applied for passports as soon as we submitted our entry to the WAN-IFRA but as I said, I never thought we would win.

Our beautiful Natasa Prize trophy from WAN-IFRA

Then of course, it turned out the passport was the least of our problems. We had to worry about schengen visas too. One of the most difficult visas to acquire, the schengen is right up there with the US visa (the holy grail of Filipino bourgeois travelers). Apparently, people prepare months ahead of their travel period for schengen visa applications. We had around a maximum of a month and a half to get everything ready: passports and visas all together. Needless to say, it seemed an impossible feat to achieve all that in such a short period of time. When we went to a travel agency near our office, the staff there almost laughed out loud when we told them our situation. We were told, condescendingly, that passports now take around a month to two months to process. There is now a tedious appointment system implemented by the DFA ever since biometric passports were invented and people trying to get an appointment with the DFA should wait around two to three weeks to get an appointment for an application. That doesn’t include the processing time after your appointment date of course. Sigh.

Early on, I felt that yes, we won, but no, we won’t get to receive our award. The win felt like a defeat.

And then suddenly, in the midst of my passport induced depression, a very good friend of mine, (actually one of the regular speakers for the Sinag JTS), told me he had a good friend who works for the DFA and that DFA employees had a courtesy pass privilege for passport processing every month. He told our story to this friend of his and she took pity on our plight and even though we were complete strangers, she gave us three of her courtesy passes for that month! How amazing is that? It suddenly felt like pieces of a puzzle falling into place. I was so overjoyed by the serendipity of it all – a friend who had a friend who had courtesy passes! I won’t name the person who helped us with our passports as I’m sure she values her privacy a lot but let me just say that good Samaritans still exist in this world and she is definitely one of them. Helping a stranger is a noble thing and she’s a real angel, I tell you.

So, we got our courtesy passes and our passports were scheduled to be released by September 12, just enough time for visa appointments. We were optimistic and enthusiastic! We are going to Vienna!

Then again, the ax fell.

The Austrian Embassy said that it takes two weeks to get an appointment for an interview and then you have to wait another three weeks to get results, which means we should get our visas around two weeks AFTER the awarding ceremonies. So near, and yet so far I tell myself...TO BE CONTINUED

House Resolution No. 1863: Congratulating and Commending Sinag Publishing and Printing Services

We received this in the email today and were so happy to have gotten recognition from the Youth Representative in our Congress! Thank you to the kabataan Partylist and to Congressman Raymond "Mong" Palatino for this House Resolution on Sinag Printing. This is indeed a great honor! Below is the text in full of the said House Resolution:

REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Quezon City, Metro Manila FIFTEENTH CONGRESS Second Regular Session House Resolution No. 1863 Introduced by Kabataan Party-List Rep. Raymond V. Palatino

A RESOLUTION CONGRATULATING AND COMMENDING SINAG PUBLISHING AND PRINTING SERVICES AND ITS PROPRIETORS RUEL LANDICHO AND RAIA JENNIFER DELA PERA-LANDICHO FOR WINNING THE TOP PRIZE IN THE NATAZA PRIZE CATEGORY OF THE WORLD YOUNG READER AWARDS BY THE WORLD ASSOCIATION OF NEWSPAPERS AND NEWS PUBLISHERS

WHEREAS, it is State policy, in accordance to Republic Act No. 7079 or the Campus Journalism Act of 1991, to "promote the development and growth of campus journalism as a means of strengthening ethical values, encouraging critical and creative thinking, and developing moral character and personal discipline of the Filipino youth." In this vein, it is only fitting for the State to recognize various efforts aimed at improving the journalistic skills of young Filipinos and support programs and activities that promote at uphold the freedom of the press at the campus level; 

  WHEREAS, Sinag Publishing and Printing Services, a small printing press in Calamba City, Laguna owned by Ruel Landicho and Raia Dela Pena-Landicho, regularly offers free seminars, lectures and workshops on journalism to students of public and private institutions in Laguna through its flagship social responsibility program, the Sinag Journalism Training Seminars. First launched in October 2008, these events offer free lectures and workshops on journalism topics such as editorial and news writing; 

  WHEREAS, Sinag Publishing and Printing Services recently won the top prize in the Nataza Prize category of the World Young Reader Awards (WYRA). The Nataza Prize for newspaper printing plants is an award for projects by newspaper printing plants that effectively teach the young about newspapers and journalism. The WYRA is organized by the Europe-based World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, a global organization of more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries; 

  WHEREAS, according to the WAN-IFRA jury which judged the awards in Brazil, "this printing plant's journalism seminar activity is clearly a fitting tribute to the person after whom this category is named as the commitment is clear to assuring that the youth learn about the importance and fragility of a free press and about how to do good journalism." The Nataza Prize is named after Nataza Vuckovic Lesendric, a Serbian who founded and ran a distribution system and then a printing plant for the independent press under the regime of Slobodian Milosevic; 

WHEREAS, the Laguna based husband-and-wife team of small entrepreneurs received the international award last October 12 in Vienna, Austria during the occasion of the 63` d World Newspaper Congress and the 18 th World Editors Forum at the Reed Exhibitions Wien; 

  WHEREAS, Sinag Publishing and Printing Services, in a statement, said that the international recognition bestowed upon them "proves that you don't have to be a big company to do a successful social responsibility program, and that even small entrepreneurs can give back to one's community in a big way"; 

  WHEREAS, despite the grim picture of press freedom in the country, with the Philippines being named by international bodies as the "most dangerous place for journalists in the world" due to rising and unsolved media killings, the commitment of Sinag Publishing and Printing Services to train and encourage young Filipinos, students and budding journalists to become skillful and ethical journalists and defenders of press freedom is a beacon of light in the media gloom and a show of trust for the Filipino youth that they can effect genuine change in our nation; 

  NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, AS IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED, to congratulate and commend Sinag Publishing and Printing Services and its proprietors Ruel Landicho and Raia Jennifer Dela Pena-Landicho for winning the top prize in the Nataza Prize Category of the World Young Reader Awards by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. 

  Adopted, HON. RAYMOND V. PALATINO Representative, Kabataan Party-list

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)

by Raia Jennifer Dela Pena-Landicho

Part 1:

Who would have thought that in a matter of months, our life would change so drastically and go upside down like some roller coaster ride? That is exactly how I feel about us winning the Natasa Prize in the World Young Reader Prize given by the WAN-IFRA (World Organization of Newspapers and Publishers).

Last June, we received an email from Ms. Aralynn Mcmane. She introduced herself as an executive director of a department in the World Organization of Newspapers and Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and invited us to join an annual competition given by their organization. This year, she said, there is a special category called the Natasa Prize to be given to newspaper printing plants that advocate teaching journalism to the youth.

Of course, Sinag printing has become well known for its social responsibility program, the Sinag Journalism Training Seminars, and our Sinag JTS was a perfect fit for the Natasa Prize category. And yet, who’d have thought there was a competition for such an endeavor?

My husband, the perennial skeptic, thought it was another email phishing scam. Keeping that warning in mind, we did our research first before answering Ms. Mcmane’s email. Of course, all our research told us that this was, in fact, a big and prestigious international organization we were dealing with and we immediately went to work creating the power point presentation that was to be our entry for the Natasa Prize.

We submitted our program entry a few days before June 30, WAN-IFRA’s deadline for the competition. We then got an acknowledgement from Mcmane and her staff and were told that we’d find out the result of the competition by late August. That was that. I wrote a short blog about joining the contest, I felt then that it was already such a privilege to have been invited to join the competitions but never thought about winning it. I remember daydreaming about winning and imagining going to Vienna but these were daydreams and I soon forgot about the Natasa Prize as we did work on various things, including the 3^rd Sinag JTS last July.

Around the third week of August we started waiting for any kind of email announcement from WAN-IFRA and when no emails came, we assumed that somebody else won and forgot about it since it was a busy month for us at the press.

Then one morning, I was still upstairs when I heard the girls (our assistants that is) screaming downstairs. My first thought was perhaps an ax murderer got into the office but since the screams sounded happy enough, I thought maybe something else. As if on cue, of course, they burst into our room and showed me a paper – apparently Aralynn Mcmane’s personal congratulatory email. WE WON TOP PRIZE for the Natasa Award!!!

Oh! that day was such a dream. Probably the happiest day of my life – barring the day I gave birth to my son, my wedding day, and the day I found out about passing the UPCAT, that is. J It didn’t really sink in at first. I read the words but I didn’t really feel it was real when we first found out. I remember taking a shower that morning and looking at my reflection in the mirror, I was wearing a silly and slightly stupid looking smile, it’s the kind of smile dumbfounded people must wear all the time. :) TO BE CONTINUED...