It’s been a long time since I attended a TEDx event — the first one is TEDxDiliman years ago.
Thankfully, I was admitted as a participant for TEDxXavierSchool, which has held at San Juan last Saturday. A variety of speakers were selected as part of this year’s theme, “Rethink Change.”
Among them was Ramon Bautista, which gave the last talk on his definition of ‘pogi’ (cool guy). While I find some of his advice off-tangent to what happened to him, I still had a good time because I was able to speak with him directly… for a few minutes. Just a few minutes are enough.
Another topic is about eggs, told by Chef Sharwin Tee who has his curiosity set to full throttle because of eggs — soft-boiled, omelets, so on and so forth.
Here are some of the other things that I want to share from last Saturday’s set of talks:
- Joddi Chua: “Change is a gradual process,” involves working with our weaknesses and is finding balance.
- Nicole Tomas speaks from her perspective as a debater. You talk to find purpose, to feel alive, and you do it as a means of forming a collective identity. She also talked about hate speech and how lies easily spread and how talking can curb this to make a worthy discussion of things (or so I understood). Her final words: “Don’t stop talking.”
- Xavier alumnus Laurence Cua (country manager of Uber) talked about the traffic and how technology can (actually, is trying) to solve it.
- Verlin Santos: “Does God give you patience, or does He give you opportunities to be patient?”
- Philbert Dy: “It’s so easy to dismiss an opinion that is not yours.” Also, “The worst thing that makes art stagnant is apathy,” talking about how to argue on the internet (or as I understand it, “How to elevate the discussion on the local movie scene from just looking at it as a fight between the fans of the big two local terrestrial networks in the country that makes Metro Manila represent the Philippines as a whole”). Final words before ending the talk: “Lead them into the light.” Instead of crossing them outright, be curious as to why they react as such.
- Jinggoy Buensuceso: “Tame your dragon, live your philosophy and change the landscape.”
I asked Ramon this question: “With all the bad things that you have done — and knowing that you have made horrible mistakes, how do you forgive yourself?” He told me that the fact that you have admitted your mistakes as you get called out for it, you are accepting your mistakes and forgiving yourself.
The organizers of the independent TED event will upload videos of their talks soon on their website for us to relive the good vibes. Looking forward to be at TEDxXavierSchool again.
After going to TEDxXavierSchool, I went quickly to Megamall to check out my comrades at AniZone. The way I am now, I can say that I’m with good company, and will be working with them on different tasks in the future.