Shoppers get to score fantastic deals at the lowest prices while enjoying free shipping, cashback, ₱1 deals with ShopeePay

Use ShopeePay to get amazing deals, cashback  with free shipping this coming 5.5 ShopeePay Cashless Festival! 

Do you love online shopping for the ease and convenience it offers? Are you always on the lookout for the best deals and discounts? We’ve got one easy shopping hack for you: go cashless!

 

ShopeePay, Shopee’s integrated mobile wallet, offers users access to digital payment services. By going cashless with ShopeePay, shoppers can enjoy safe, easy, and timely transactions. Aside from this, Filipinos can also redeem exclusive rewards and make the most out of events like the 5.5 ShopeePay Cashless Festival from April 26 to April 29. 

 

At the 5.5. ShopeePay Cashless Festival, shoppers get to score fantastic deals at the lowest prices while enjoying free shipping, cashback, ₱1 deals, and contactless in-store payments with ShopeePay. Check out the best deals you can enjoy until April 29.

 

Get free shipping when shopping for your groceries  

 

Need to complete next week’s grocery list? Enjoy free shipping when you buy cooking and cleaning essentials using ShopeePay. Make breakfast fun for your kids with Kelloggs Chocos Magic, which contains chocolate-flavored cereals in cute shapes. If you’re in a rush, prepare meals quickly with Del Monte BBQ Marinade, packed with spices and seasonings for that perfect barbecue taste. Clean up after each meal with Joy Dishwashing Liquid, which helps cut grease effectively. To keep the rest of your house squeaky clean, use Domex Multi-Purpose Cleaner for removing tough dirt and stains and disinfecting surfaces.

 

Enjoy cashback when you purchase these R&R essentials

 

Now that many of us stay inside more often these days, we need to make our homes conducive for relaxation. The first step is ensuring that every nook and cranny of the house is virus-free. Use Mighty Disinfectant Spray, which is non-corrosive and less harmful compared to bleach disinfectants. Keep yourself comfy with Posee Indoor Slippers. Each pair is made of cotton and filled with a high elastic sponge. Then kick back, relax, and play your favorite online games with JBL Gaming Headset. Enjoy the surround sound that keeps you immersed in each game. Bonus: you get 20% cashback when you purchase each of these products with ShopeePay.

 

Avail of unbeatable deals on your next merienda

 

Are you looking for cheap merienda options for the whole family? You can buy yummy comfort food for only ₱1 when you order with ShopeePay! Take advantage of Big Guys Pizza’s buy one take one promo. With two boxes, there’s enough for everyone. Fries is the perfect companion to pizza, so place an order or two of mouthwatering Potato Corner Regular French Fries. If you’re in the mood for something a little sweeter, fluffy bites of Red Ribbon Butter Mamon & Ensaimada will surely satisfy your cravings. 

 

Stay connected while saving money on mobile load, data, internet, and more

 

Keep in touch with loved ones and communicate with your colleagues more effectively using ShopeePay’s big discounts on mobile load and data. On April 26, enjoy all-day deals such as ₱10 load for ₱6, ₱15 load for ₱9, and ₱5 load for ₱1. You can also get up to 20% cashback when you pay bills for your landline, internet, postpaid plan, and more on Shopee. 

 

Aside from these deals, you can get big cashbacks the next time you make in-store payments at Puregold, CBTL, or Potato Corner. Simply use Scan and Pay on your ShopeePay homepage wallet to enjoy contactless payments and redeem 20% cashback with no minimum spend. 

 

Topping up is now more convenient than ever since you can link ShopeePay directly to your debit card. You can easily make the most out of all the deals at the 5.5 ShopeePay Cashless Festival! 

 

For more information, visit https://shopee.ph/m/shopee-pay.

 

Download the Shopee app for free via the App Store or Google Play.

 

PLDT introduces the all-new Home Biz Fibr Asenso Plans

If youre starting up on business and needed a strong internet connection at home, PLDT introduces the all-new Home Biz Fibr Asenso Plans, with faster speeds and better e-commerce solutions especially designed for home-based entrepreneurs to better help them in mastering their businesses at home.

 

The new Home Biz Asenso Fibr plans enable these home-based entrepreneurs to do more with their businesses with faster internet speeds, free digital solutions from e-commerce partners, seamless unlimited calls to any PLDT landline and to any Smart, Sun or TNT mobile number, and a free CAT 6 Prepaid Home Wi-fi as a mobile back-up internet so that their business always stays connected. 

 

“With the challenges of the pandemic, entrepreneurs are able to thrive by quickly responding to the need of their businesses to shift to digital. We have upgraded our PLDT Home Biz Asenso Plans to fully equip our entrepreneurs in making that digital transformation – all within the safety of their own homes. Aside from providing them with faster and seamless connectivity, we are enabling them with digital tools such as a website builder, and payment and delivery solutions,” said Patrick Tang, Vice President and Head of PLDT Home Biz.

 

Connections made Faster, Stronger, Bigger and Simpler

Now home-based entrepreneurs can enjoy up to 60 Mbps speeds with the all-new PLDT Home Biz Asenso Fibr Plans.

 

Connectivity has also become stronger as each PLDT Home Biz subscription comes with a free CAT6 Prepaid Home Wi-fi unit pre-loaded with 10GB data as a mobile back-up to ensure that the business is always connected. 

 

Home Biz subscribers also can now seamlessly and conveniently communicate with anyone and everywhere using just their PLDT landline, as the new Asenso Fibr Plans comes with unlimited calls to PLDT, Smart, Sun, and TNT networks. 

 

Beyond connectivity, PLDT Home Biz also powers home-based entrepreneurs with a robust e-commerce ecosystem– from online store building to payment and delivery platforms. PLDT Home Biz has teamed up with the country’s top digital solution providers for end-to-end business solutions such as online store builder and hosting by UnionBank GlobalLinker, secure and hassle-free online payments by PayMaya, and delivery options by Grab and LBC.

 

PLDT Home Biz is also supported by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) through a partnership that gives entrepreneurs direct access to the latest business trends, learning opportunities, and events organized by DTI. 

 

Home-based entrepreneurs can now master their business from home better, faster, and stronger with the new PLDT Home Biz plans. Visit www.pldthome.com/biz for more details.

 

ComCo Southeast Asia kicks off 5th anniversary celebration with brand evolution

ComCo Southeast Asia is in “Blazing Sapphire” as it enters its 5^th year with renewed energy through a brand refresh, awards from esteemed local and regional communications and marketing organizations, and major account wins. 

 

Among the many milestones it is celebrating is a refreshed brand story chronicling the company’s journey from a kick-start-up to a premier multi-awarded regional boutique communications agency serving enterprises and organizations in the Philippines and across the Southeast Asian region, continued recognition for its communications and marketing campaigns, and new client partners. 

 

Trailblazing. Transformative. Limitless.

United as a coalition of brand architects, inspired storytellers and communication trailblazers, ComCo SEA is kicking off its anniversary celebration with the Agency’s brand evolution - the transformation of its symbol and promise, and the retelling of its brand identity and story. ComCo Southeast Asia unveils its icon - a mothership housing the company’s great works and individuals with immense talent, meaning, passion and dreams, and taking off to conquer new horizons. The mothership is a vessel, a second home, a safe zone, a creativity playground, and a jumping board that empowers the ComCo Squadron to do more groundbreaking projects and make a difference along the way. 

ComCo’s logo transforms from speech bubble into a digital screen, which beams the image of the mothership, and reflects the more modern, more complete and more integrated way of communicating in a world that has evolved. It shows the advancement, digital and multi-touchpoint integration, and completeness of the emerging global disciplines the Agency champions - New PR and Smart Social. It represents the company’s outlook of being a global independent communications agency working with a network of independents in Southeast Asia and across the regional centers of the world, in providing integrated communications solutions and services to brands, companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes.

 

Whether online or on-site, ComCo SEA is ready to soar higher with its unique brand of #MeaningfulStorytelling, which is also the Agency’s new mantra, to ignite brand love, social change, talent growth and regional alliance. 

 

The company’s focus remains to Ignite Brand Love, Ignite Social Change, Ignite Talent and Ignite Regional Collaboration, while ComCo’s corporate culture is now reinforced through the four Camp ComCo mentorship houses lifted from the team’s spirit animals which are valuable but endangered species inhabiting Southeast Asia and the Pacific, showing the Agency’s love for the environment. ComCo Southeast Asia upholds Unity Drawn by Individual Stories and Team Journey as represented by Hawksbill, Rebellion Against the Status Quo and Monotony to Pursue Excellence as symbolized by Bearcat, Commitment to Advocacies that Matter and taken to Heart as signified by Flying Fox, and Equal Access and Opportunity for All as reflected by Whaleshark.

 

Wins in Awards and Accounts

In its 5 years, ComCo Southeast Asia has reaped over 76 awards and is celebrating more wins in 2021 from both local and international award-giving bodies such as IABC Quill Awards, MarCom Awards in USA, Mumbrella Awards, Marketing Event Awards in Singapore, Campaign Asia Pacific’s PR Awards Asia in Hong Kong, Spikes Asia, Anvil Awards, Asia Pacific Stevie Awards, Kidlat and ARAW Advertising Values Awards. The company recently received 13 metals from the prestigious IABC Quill Awards along with brand partners Eastern Communications, Jobstreet, World Vision and WWF-Philippines, including the recognition of Agency of the Year 2nd Runner-up. Recently, ComCo Southeast Asia also emerged as regional finalist in the Marketing PR Awards in Singapore for Best Use of Micro / Niche Influencers for its Write to Ignite Blogging Project. 

 

More than the awards, ComCo SEA also continued to strengthen its client portfolio, winning major accounts in recent agency pitches such as Xiaomi, Unilab Foundation, Defensil isopropyl alcohol, Sunlife ASC, and Lamoiyan Corporation’s Gumtect toothpaste.

 

Blazing Sapphire 5-Part Celebration

To mark its 5th year in the business, ComCo SEA is inviting its friends and stakeholders to join its year-long 5-part celebration dubbed as “Blazing Sapphire”. First in the 5-part series is the kick-off which included the virtual townhall and digital unveiling of ComCo SEA’s brand evolution, while the summer would mark the inauguration of the Camp ComCo Alumni Society “Unity Games”, where the graduates of the company’s mentorship program from House Bearcat, Flying Fox, Hawksbill and Whaleshark will get reunited, which also serves as the celebration of the company’s strong alumni culture. Meanwhile, bloggers, micro-influencers and content creators can sharpen their storytelling skills anew as ComCo SEA opens season 2 of the award-winning and much talked about “Write to Ignite Blogging Project”.  

 

In “5 Gifts to the Community” of Citizen ComCo, the Agency’s advocacy program, ComCo SEA aims to give back and pay forward to different sectors - children, youth and education; heritage, culture and tourism; wildlife, biodiversity and environmental conservation; micro, small and social enterprises; and Southeast Asian integration. Afterwards, stakeholders and partners can look forward to the culmination of the celebration through the “Blazing Sapphire” anniversary main event.

 

ComCo Southeast Asia’s Regional Integration and Chief Executive Director and Co-Founder Ferdinand Bondoy shared, “We did not expect to grow this fast as we are just enjoying the journey of working together again (founders are former teammates who did landmark projects together) and growing the team with a unique, non-conformist and progressive agency culture that we’ve always dreamed of. 

Then we just realized that there are so many milestones to celebrate and to be thankful for already. In 5 years, we’ve already taken care of 61 brands or accounts; 76 local, regional and international awards from real, authentic and impactful campaigns in collaboration with existing and actual clients; mentored 65 apprentices from 14 cycles of the Camp ComCo Mentorship Program; and established a network of independents in Southeast Asia primarily in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.”

Mr. Bondoy added, “While the team, or ComCo Squadron as we fondly call it, has accomplished many things in a short period of time, we believe that there is a lot more to do. And as we kick-start our 5-part 5^th anniversary celebration, we are also jumpstarting our 10-year masterplan which is set to even revolutionize the game and do more for our society, as we work on projects and initiatives with people, brands and organizations that share the same vision.”

 

Watch ComCo SEA’s Blazing Sapphire anniversary video here: https://fb.watch/56kB9j1xeW/

To know more about ComCo Southeast Asia, visit www.comcosea.com. Follow them on social media: facebook.com/comco.southeastasia on Facebook, linkedin.com/company/comco-hq and @comco_sea on both Instagram and Twitter. 

 

Landers offers free membership and renewal for medical frontliners

The country’s medical frontliners are not just battling the pandemic. They are also parents, siblings, and friends, who also have other obligations that they need to fulfill including shopping for food and other essentials. 

As a gesture of support and gratitude to medical frontliners, Landers Superstore is giving them a special treat:In its latest promo “Our Heroes Treat” Landers gives the medical frontliners –doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others in the field – the opportunity to sign up for membership and renewal for free!

The promo is open to all medical frontliners who would like to apply for membership and to those with existing memberships that will expire on December 31, 2021. They must present all of the following proof at Landers branches: valid ID, valid PRC-ID, valid company/hospital ID, and old Landers membership card for those who will be renewing. 

A representative of the medical frontliner may avail of the free membership card, provided that he/she presents any of the three valid IDs of the frontliner, the representative’s valid ID, and authorization letter from the health worker.

 

Landers members enjoy a host of exciting benefits including exclusive access to a wide selection of local and imported items, great super deals and savings throughout the year, free haircut at its in-house barber shop, low-priced medicines at its own pharmacy, super fuel deals at Landers-Caltex gas stations and many more!

 

The promo is only for premium primary membership and will run up to April 30, 2021. The free membership and renewal offer are available at  Landers Superstores Otis, Alabang West, Arcovia City, Balintawak, and Cebu.

Huawei launches six innovative products and services at HDC.Cloud 2021

At the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC.Cloud) 2021, Huawei launched six innovative products and services, including HUAWEI CLOUD CCE Turbo cloud container cluster, CloudIDE intelligent programming assistant, GaussDB(for openGauss) database, Trusted Intelligent Computing Service (TICS), Pangu Model (including the world's largest Chinese NLP model and CV model), and infrastructure software for diversified computing. These six products deliver new levels of efficiency and quality to help developers push new frontiers. Huawei also announced a US$220 million investment into its Huawei Developer Program 2.0 this year. 

The Huawei Developer Program 2.0 will include the newly announced HUAWEI CLOUD Partner Innovation Program, Kunpeng OpenMind Project, and Ascend OpenMind Project. This rich package of support will help to continuously foster a robust ecosystem around HUAWEI CLOUD, Kunpeng, and Ascend.

HDC.Cloud 2021 takes place in the University Town in Shenzhen, China. The three-day event will feature keynote speeches, technical summits, training camps, code labs, developer carnivals, and a variety of forums featuring teachers, young talents, and Huawei luminaries. This event brings together the industry's top minds, talent from the academia, as well as leaders from the developer ecosystem, together to discuss the latest trends in cloud, AI, computing, and open source.

Richard Yu, Executive Director of Huawei, and CEO of Huawei's Cloud BU and Consumer Business Group, opened the event with a keynote speech. Yu said, "By 2025, 100% of enterprises around the globe will be utilizing cloud technology. Cloud is the future of the ICT industry and the foundation for enterprises' digital transformation. Developers are the soul of the industry. Huawei will continue to open its technological innovation capabilities and work with developers and partners to accelerate the cloud and intelligent transformation of business."

现场相片（待补充）

Richard Yu, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Huawei's Cloud BU and Consumer Business Group, announcing the launch of six new products

 

6 Revolutionary Products for Cloud Native and AI

With the development and application of cloud native and AI technologies, industries are accelerating their upgrade to all-scenario intelligence. Three opportunities will arise: application modernization, data assetization, and AI industrialized development. Huawei's six new products help developers get better positioned for the opportunities in this process:

l HUAWEI CLOUD CCE Turbo: accelerating enterprise application innovation

Containerization is critical for application modernization. As containers are widely used in enterprise core systems and innovative services, enterprises' expectations of container performance, elasticity, and scheduling capabilities are getting higher. HUAWEI CLOUD CCE Turbo accelerates computing, networks, and scheduling.

Ø  For computing acceleration, CCE Turbo is the only container cluster in the industry that supports full container component offload with zero loss of server resources or performance. This feature helps VIPKid, a leading education company, improve audio and video service performance by up to 40%. It smooths user experience with zero frame freezing in online classes.

Ø  For network acceleration, CCE Turbo's innovative container pass-through network transforms a two-layer network into a single layer network. The end-to-end connection time is halved — meaning that capacity expansion of thousands of containers can be performed in seconds — and latency is reduced by 40%. This has helped Sina Corp, a leading social media company in China, cope with traffic surges.

Ø  For scheduling acceleration, CCE Turbo senses different application models and network topologies, automatically optimizes task scheduling policies, and implements large-scale hybrid deployment and intelligent scheduling of offline and online services based on the large-scale concurrent scheduling capability of 10,000 containers per second, helping improve the resource utilization of container clusters by 40% for Meitu, one of China's top Internet enterprises specializing in AI-driven image and video processing.

l HUAWEI CLOUD CloudIDE: an intelligent programming assistant for developers

CloudIDE provides developers with a lightweight and fast programming experience, enabling them to perform intelligent online programming anytime, anywhere, and on any terminal. It supports the following features:

Ø Thanks to the intelligent code completion technology of SmartAssist, CloudIDE can find all completion results, and determine and sort possible results, improving the accuracy of multi-symbol and long results.

Ø It supports completion for complex contexts, and even obscure third-party APIs.

Ø By automatically avoiding recommending outdated, obsolete, and dangerous APIs, it makes your code more robust and secure.

l HUAWEI CLOUD GaussDB(for openGauss) database: a trusted choice for migrating enterprise core data to the cloud

For an enterprise to truly go to the cloud and become data-driven, a key step is migrating its database to the cloud. Unlike traditional databases, HUAWEI CLOUD GaussDB(for openGauss) has the following three characteristics:

Ø High performance: Its transaction processing capability is 54% higher than that of similar products in the industry, and its complex query latency is 82% lower than that of similar products.

Ø High elasticity: In the face of traffic peaks, computing nodes can be expanded in just minutes and storage capacity can be expanded in seconds. The expansion process does not disrupt services.

Ø High availability: When a single point of failure occurs, the unique Switch Turbo technology ensures switchover within 10 seconds (less than one third of the time required by its counterparts) and provides the geo-redundant DR capability.

l Trusted Intelligent Computing Service (TICS): unlocking data value while ensuring security

As a key factor of production, data needs to able to flow flexibly to maximize value. However, in reality, it can still be difficult to realize openness, sharing, and circulation. HUAWEI CLOUD TICS provides security for innovative and converged applications of data elements, enabling secure data flow and maximizing data value. It has the following features:

Ø Based on multi-party federated data exploration and modeling, it processes privacy data in place, keeping data usable but invisible.

Ø A federated AI algorithm and homomorphic encryption algorithm are used for collaborative optimization. For example, batch computing of encrypted data is supported during model training, improving the training performance tenfold without the need for an accelerator card.

Ø It supports interconnection with some of the most used data sources, adapting to typical big data application scenarios without conversion.

l  HUAWEI CLOUD Pangu Model: including the world's largest Chinese NLP model and vision pre-trained model

AI has become a new driver of productivity, but AI development is still at a rudimentary stage, severely curbing the full potential of AI productivity. Based on the industrial AI development model of "pre-training + downstream fine-tuning", the Pangu Model is accelerating the introduction of AI into a wide range of industries and is making inclusive AI a reality. It has three characteristics: strong generalization ability, small-sample learning, and high model accuracy. A single model can be applied to a large number of complex industry scenarios and can achieve high accuracy even with a small number of samples. It is based on the underlying optimization of the CANN heterogeneous compute architecture and the MindSpore all-scenario AI computing framework, and represents significant breakthroughs in performance and usability.

The Pangu Model includes four flavors, addressing the needs of scenarios in natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), multi-modal models, and scientific computing. The freshly released Pangu NLP model is the industry's first Chinese NLP model with hundred billions of parameters, and the Pangu CV model is the industry's largest CV model. In the Chinese Language Understanding Evaluation (CLUE) Benchmark, the Pangu NLP model ranked No. 1 in the total CLUE ranking, CLUE classification ranking, and CLUE machine reading ranking.

l Infrastructure software: enabling diversified computing

Cloud innovation depends on the support of infrastructure software root technologies such as operating systems, databases, and middleware. Huawei has built a complete set of basic computing software stacks, including the operating system, enterprise-grade database, and all-scenario AI computing framework, to enable diversified computing power and support HUAWEI CLOUD innovation.

 

A US$220 Million Investment in Huawei Developer Program 2.0 and the Launch of the HUAWEI CLOUD Partner Innovation Program

At HDC.Cloud 2021, Huawei announced that in 2021 it would invest US$220 million into its Huawei Developer Program 2.0, and launched initiatives including the HUAWEI CLOUD Partner Innovation Program, Kunpeng OpenMind Project, and Ascend OpenMind Project. Zhang Ping’an, president of Huawei Cloud BU and Consumer Cloud Service, said that Huawei will invest US$100 million in HUAWEI CLOUD Partner Innovation Program, focusing on enabling SaaS and ISV partners, and providing cloud resources, technology enablement, and business promotion support. The program covers six technical fields, including containers/microservices, SaaS, big data, AI, video, and intelligent edge.

图片

Huawei and partners launching the HUAWEI CLOUD Partner Innovation Program

 

Since the release of the Huawei Developer Program in 2015, Huawei has been committed to a philosophy of open hardware, open source software, partner enablement, and talent development, as it works to build a constantly prosperous industry ecosystem. Up to now, HUAWEI CLOUD, Kunpeng, and Ascend have attracted 2.4 million developers. HUAWEI CLOUD IaaS ranks No. 2 in China and No. 5 in the world, making it the fastest-growing mainstream cloud vendor. Partner-shipped products based on the Kunpeng motherboard accounted for 52% of the total Kunpeng-based product shipment in 2020. Three open source communities, openEuler, openGauss, and MindSpore, have been built around operating systems, databases, and AI frameworks. These communities are now taking shape and thriving. Huawei has worked with the Ministry of Education of China to build an intelligent foundation for collaborative education of talent. To date, Huawei has worked with 72 universities in China, offering more than 1,000 courses, training more than 1,500 teachers, and the company plans to provide software development training to 3 million university developers over the next five years.

 

The annual event of Huawei's ICT infrastructure business for global developers, the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC.Cloud) 2021 are held from April 24 to 26, 2021 in Shenzhen, a city on the South coast of China. Themed "You make all the difference", this event brings together industry leaders, Huawei scientists, top experts, young talent, and developers to discuss the innovation and application of the latest ICT technologies, such as cloud, computing, and AI, across industries. Every developer has a part to play as the world surges forward towards an intelligent era. Every developer makes a real difference. For more information about the conference, visit: https://developer.huaweicloud.com/intl/en-us/HDC.Cloud2021.html.

 

Mayor Joy Belmonte provided "Super Lugaw" in Bgy.Holy Spirit

Thanks to the efforts of Mayor Joy Belmonte, Barangay Captain Chito Valmocina, Councilor Star Valmocina, and Quezon City Police District (QCPD) Director General Antonio Yarra, the local government provided “Super Lugaw”, or arroz caldo made with calabash squash and moringa for added nutritional value, to 1,000 beneficiaries in Brgy. Holy Spirit which is currently under a Special Concern Lockdown.

The GrowQC Mobile Kitchen - Nutrition Feeding Program is a project by the City spearheaded by the QC Food Security Task Force (QC-FSTF), a program chaired by Mayor Belmonte. It was also supported by the Council for the Development of Volunteer Leaders (CDVL) as well as the Barangay, ensuring utmost safety protocols and adherence to required health standards for the conduct of outreach and humanitarian efforts. 

 

The CDVL is currently working with Brgy. Holy Spirit officials and purok leaders to ensure the safety of the beneficiaries, and help to remind the public of the importance of appropriate foot traffic and necessary social distancing. Arrangements were made before the feeding program with the QC-FSTF as well with the Office of the City Mayor. 

 

The QC government recently acquired over 5.5 tons of kalabasa, sourced from farmers in Nueva Vizcaya. Other ingredients used in the “Super Lugaw” were from urban farms in the city. The establishment of urban farms has been an on-going project of the QC-FSTF for the past couple of years.

 

“In cooperation with the CDVL, we hope this program serves as an example of community-based humanitarian action,” shared Mayor Belmonte. “We are happy to announce that GrowQC shall be implementing a city-wide centralized feeding initiative for food security, as well as providing education and support for urban farms and community gardens.”

Cebu Pacific continues to salute its pilots, crew, and other frontliners who play vital roles in enabling everyJuan to fly safely

“The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul,” so goes the saying. As the world celebrates World Pilots’ Day, get to know three dedicated aviation professionals and proud pilots of Cebu Pacific, with which one of its pillars is supporting the education of aspiring Juans and enable them to make their dreams take flight.

Beyond safely and comfortably flying passengers to their destinations, these aviation professionals also take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve played valuable roles in our nation’s ongoing fight against COVID-19, as well as during disasters—be it through cargo flights that carry much-needed aid and relief goods, or through sweeper flights which bring people home to their loved ones.

While the past year may have been difficult for everyJuan, it is also during these turbulent times that passion in everything our pilots do, coupled with the best of the Filipino spirit, was made manifest.

                        Tiffany Piccio in Singapore for type-rating training inside an Airbus flight simulator

A childhood dream takes off

Many young dreamers hope to become pilots and finally take to the skies someday. For Captain Bensie Tan, the youthful fleet manager of the A320/A321 aircraft of Cebu Pacific, this desire has never rung truer.

“My mom tells me that, noong bata pa ako, [when I still was a kid] I’d always say, ‘I want to be a pilot,’” shares the 35-year-old father of two, whose wife also happens to be a Cebu Pacific pilot. This dream led him to enter PATTS College of Aeronautics, eventually graduating with an Aeronautical Engineering degree. But despite coming from a traditional Chinese-Filipino family of businessmen and professionals, Capt. Tan was made aware early on that sending him to flight school was something they couldn’t afford.

          Capt. Bensie Tan with his wife Christine, a Cebu Pacific pilot herself, and their daughter Brielle in Nagoya, Japan.

Luckily, he got word of Cebu Pacific’s pilot program which includes a sponsorship of half of the needed fees to get licensed. With the odds evidently being in his favor, he got accepted to the program in 2007.

“There were a lot of bumps and obstacles along the way,” Capt. Tan recounts. “What was supposed to be a 1-year course took us over two years to finish.” But his perseverance clearly paid off, and he formally joined the Cebu Pacific team in 2009.

And much like an aircraft’s steady ascent in altitude, Capt. Tan also steadily rose through the ranks at the airline known for enabling everyJuan to fly: from limited first officer to regular first officer; to his promotion to Captain, and then as instructor and examiner; and now as part of the management team.

“Our leaders have steered towards the direction that will not only get us through these arduous times, but more importantly come out better prepared, equipped, and well-rounded than ever before—with the strength to face any challenge going forward,” Capt. Tan adds.

An early passion for flying

As a young elementary school student, First Officer Neil Mark Enriquez would save his daily allowance just so he could buy plastic model airplanes, which he would then line up in his room after assembling them together. This childhood hobby exposed him early on to different types of aircraft, allowing him at a young age to easily differentiate one from the other. “I already knew what a 747 or an A-10 was. Or even an F-14,” beams the Cagayan de Oro native.

                                                                                      FO Neil Enriquez

It was when he first saw and rode an Airbus during a flight to Manila from CDO that Enriquez knew he wanted to be a pilot—only that it took him a while to get there, graduating first with a degree in Library and Information Science. But thanks to Cebu Pacific, he was able to go through intensive aviation training in Australia to make his childhood passion a career.Following his first solo flight, which is forever etched in his memory, Enriquez is now a First Officer assigned to Cebgo’s ATR fleet. He remains grateful to the airline for opening many doors he would otherwise never have been able to pursue. “I'm glad to be part of a company that exemplifies its values by investing in their people, by fostering diversity, and equipping them for eventual leadership in the service of the flying public,” he says.

The sky is the limit

For First Officer Tiffany Piccio, being a commercial pilot has been a dream for as long as she could remember. “I was just amazed at how such huge metal ships could carry so many people at such high altitudes,” she says. This yearning was further pushed when, during a flight to visit her grandparents, she saw a man and a woman in the cockpit area. That was when she realized that, yes, women can be pilots too!

Owing to the opportunities given by Cebu Pacific through a study now-pay later program, Piccio is well on her way towards reaching the peak of her career plans in the aviation industry, as part of the country’s growing number of female pilots. “I’ve met a lot of lovely women who are either studying or having a successful career as an air traffic controller, air force jet pilot, and even an aircraft mechanic!” she shares.

This example of success is proof of Cebu Pacific’s commitment in providing equal opportunities to women in the industry. “Thanks to Cebu Pacific for not only making everyJuan fly, but also for making my dreams come true and giving me this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This simply proves that no matter who you are, no matter the background, if you put your mind to it, you definitely can!”

As the carrier celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year, it continues to salute its pilots, crew, and other frontliners who play vital roles in enabling everyJuan to fly safely for #MoreSmilesAhead.