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Explosion at Serendra

Earlier, Jeanne, and I were having dinner at Mary Grace at Serendra when there was a loud explosion. The building actually shook. My first reaction was to grab Jeanne and duck close to the wall and floor.

There was no other explosion so I peeked up and saw people calmly heading towards the source of the explosion. Someone said that the it was at Market! Market!

Still, I had no intention of staying around. We quickly paid and drove out. To avoid the traffic, we went the long route away from Market! Market!

When we got home, I checked the news and it turned out that the explosion was from Serendra! Thanks to God were safe. Others were not so lucky, I read on the news there were some casualties.

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Fast and Furious 6

Last Sunday afternoon, Jeanne, Michelle, and I caught a screening of Fast and Furious 6. Just like the previous installation, it’s a heist movie with cars. But this time around, there’s a hint of James Bond. The crew gets together for a job to stop an ex-SAS international villain from stealing and assembling some kind of doomsday device. See what I mean about the hint of James Bond?

Assembling the crew for the task was care of Hobbs (The Rock/Dwayne Johnson). I guess, James Bond was busy and he needed Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) uncanny ability for doing the impossible with cars (and anything with wheels). He accomplished this by dangling the possibility of Letty Ortiz being alive to the playing-hard-to-get Toretto. Of course he succeeded, otherwise there’d be no movie. First love never dies indeed.

But as usual, the whole point are the cars. It doesn’t matter where they are, what they’re doing. It’s all about the cars. The stunts are over the top and absolutely ridiculous. But there’s no denying it was fun!

You’d think it’s hard to come up with a crazier and more outrageous sequel. But they just may even be able to pull it off. Think Jason Statham of The Transporter fame. Wait for the post-credit ;)

Rating: 3/5

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SM Aura

We decided to spend last Sunday at the new and somewhat controversial SM Aura. Michelle wanted to check it out and I agreed to go figuring I should at least try it before I knock it… some more.

To begin with, getting to the mall is an exercise in patience. The traffic was congested around the mall and the entrance to the parking was even more congested. I almost wanted to turn back. Typical SM.

Inside, I was quite impressed. The finishing, marble floor, and ceiling are pretty. But after a while I noticed some things that fall short: the stylish but inefficient layout of the escalators and stairs, the hollow 3D restroom signs, the crowd, the crowd…

First item on the list was lunch. We searched the directory and most restaurants were coming soon. We finally settled on Bulgogi Brothers but we couldn’t find it where it’s supposed to be. Maybe I missed some hidden premium restaurants area. The food court had some relatively interesting shops like Brasas and Pepper Lunch. But the lines were long and service slow. The crew was asking people if we’re willing to wait 45 minutes. So we ended up in KFC. Yeah.

After lunch, we went around. There was actually a good selection of shops. But nothing I could see that wasn’t in any SM mall. Maybe I missed some hidden premium shops area. We ended up staying mainly in and around Uniqlo and Forever 21, both SM-exclusive shops.

Next we went to have snacks. The food court shops were still crowded so got our food from the cinema snack bar and went back to the food court to eat. The good thing is that there are free tables. The bad thing is that it’s so dirty! There’s only a few busboys. I actually saw only one. We had to partially clear up the table before a busboy came over and cleaned up.

Then we went to the cinema to catch Fast and Furious 6. The cinemas we’re smaller than the typical SM cinema. The seats were better. However, the layout is awful. The screen is just too near. Anywhere near the screen and/or off to the side is intolerable. And guess where we ended up seating? Yeah.

After the movie, we headed out and leave it all behind. But wait! There’s more! There was still a lot of construction going on at the basement. When we got to the car, it was covered with a layer of cement dust! And finally, as we headed out, we learned that at least one of the exits was closed. I learned later that there actually was some flooding from the rain and I guess that’s why that exit was closed.

So in a nutshell, SM Aura is an upscale-looking mall. But with the usual shops, the usual restos, it ends up attracting the usual crowd. So yes, it’s a prettified SM mall with the full SM mall experience. And it will surely bring in lots of money to Mr. Sy especially once it’s more complete. But upscale? Not quite there yet.

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Minimum Viable Product

There’s this approach that I’ve been toying around with for starting up. I was thinking quitting your 8-5 job and going startup is risky enough as it is. But what makes it even riskier is an approach that requires significant expenditures. And with the relative lack of venture capitalists here, it’s not far fetched that much, if not all, of it comes from your own pockets.

I figured that if that a business idea that can start small and gradually expand by building on top of it would be a prudent approach given the situation. That cuts down on the options and especially rules out grandiose ideas but it certainly is safer and does not at all exclude innovation which, after all, is the fun part. So that’s the approach my dad and brothers are taking for one of our projects.

And today I read about it in an Apple vs Google article from Bloomberg of all things. The key excerpt from the article:

This is essentially what lightly funded startups do—they get a “proof of concept” product on the market quickly to see if their idea is viable and to interest additional investors. It’s known as finding the “minimum viable product” (MVP), a term coined by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup. An MVP is an inexpensive, often jerry-rigged product that delivers the desired consumer experience but at a lower cost, so that consumer interest in the concept can be tested.

Good to know the approach has been tried, tested, and even has a name that you can be bandied around in conversations ;)

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SM Aura: The Civic Center That Wasn’t

For months, I’ve been wondering what the huge construction along C-5 was. At first, I surmised that it’s a BPO center or something. Later, I heard rumors that it is a new SM mall. But it was only a few weeks ago that I learned that it is definitely an SM mall named SM Aura. It was all quite strange since normally you’d see huge signs indicating what’s being constructed.

It turned out that there was a reason for all the hush-hush. It seems that the land was supposedly provided to the local government by the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) for use as a civic center. The local government in turn leased it to SM who then developed a mall with space allocated for a civic center. Or a civic center with space allocated for a mall depending on how you look at it. But no matter how you look at it, that’s indication of wilful deceit in the part of  SM.

Admittedly, SM Aura is way better looking than your typical SM monstrosities . But it’s still too big, too densely built. Such volume of people in that amount of space can only result in traffic congestion in the surrounding roads. And sure enough when it opened, traffic in that part of C-5 and Global City was snarled for hours. And I don’t expect it to get any better. Global City prides itself as a master planned development. And then something comes along and messes things up.

Reason’s like these are why I will not patronize SM as much as I can help it.