Hey people... God has destined Albay for big big things. He did not give us Mayon and good people like Ola, Paua, Camilo Jacob, Duran, Imperial, Sabido, Aytona, Esteves for nothing (I made sure they are all somewhere so I dont have to mention the living). He commissioned an Albayano Lolo Poten Gregorio to write the regional song Sarung Banggi. He even gave us our own patroness who will lobby for us Nuestra Senora de Salvacion. He made 2 saints walk among us San Pedro Bautista who built the churches of Camalig, Cagsawa and Oas. The other is San Juan Pablo. It is for greatness I always assumed. More than destiny, it is actually more of a duty to our country to be its tourism capital in Luzon. Now I think people we expect to lead esp. outside govt and even young business leaders are so out of sync. Believe in yourselves. This is not for us; it is for our children. I always see scattered around in FB news feed where we trivialize the big picture- the structural changes and the secular trends. Instead of drawing grand visions from the emerging minutiae, we do the reverse- try to bonsify a major wave just so it would fit the world as we know it. I dont propose grandiosity or pomposity as a provincial Weltanschauung. But it is our duty to THINK BIG. THINK GLOBAL. But act local. From 8,700 foreign tourists in 2007 to 383,000 was mainly due to 1. a product positioning wc now everyone knows is ALMASOR. And of course w DOT guidance, that grand old dame of a lady Maria Ravanilla, we aggressively promoted in Berlin ITB, London WTM, Shanghai Travel mart and annually in PATA and local travel marts. 2. Our choice to go green. We increased our forest cover by 88%! We quadrupled our mangroves from 700has to 2,400has. We opposed mining. We banned plastics (more to do) and smoking (big syrides) 3. And from the start we wanted to be big in culture because it unites us and makes distinctive ftom the rest. We established Albay Historico Cultural Unit. The Albay Poet Laureate. We commissioned the History of Albay. And for Polangui, Oas, Guinobatan, Camalig, Daraga. We honored our heroes as contribution to national liberation We commissioned the Sayaw nin Tulong Bulod. We staged at the CCP Main Theater. We commissioned the publication of 3 coffee table book Almasor 1, Warm Albay, Warm People and Almasor 2. We competed for big time intl treaty conferences like APEC and UNWTO ASEAN.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 23:16:34 +0000
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