Ferdz Decena

There’s always something to look forward to during the year end for Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf avid customers like me. Stamp collection for the  CBTL’s Giving Journal has been like a tradition already having gone three cycles with their hard-bound journal as planning companion. This year’s Giving Journal 2017 doesn’t deviate much from their tried and tested form from the Giving Journal 2016 . The earthly colors of the pages, the inspiring quotes on weekly spreads, the coupons and the solid simple design lines which a lot of people came to love are still there. The changes for the Giving Journal 2017 aren’t drastic but more artistic on the aesthetic that centers around the theme for 2017 “The Cup that Changes Lives”. Let’s take a look.

Ever since I started my yoga journey a year ago, I slowly realized I have become more aware of my eating habits. Not much on the choices of food first but on frequency and timing. Since yoga is best done on an empty stomach, I had to eat at least 2–3 hours before the session began. Eventually, I became more aware of what I eat, on how certain food and drinks can affect my practice. Like drinking coffee before practice makes me feel heavy. So it was very interesting to learn about the recent workshop from Life Yoga in BGC about “ Eat to Live: Yoga of Eating ” where the discussion focuses on mindful eating and yoga asanas to help on working on the internals. I was fortunate to have a chance to attend this workshop headed by French nutritionist Helene Dunlop and and yoga teacher Christina Dinkel Maningo . Hoping it would expand my knowledge on mindful eating and make simple adjustments in my lifestyle that could make a big impact beyond my yoga practice.

The realm of digital astrophotography used to be exclusive to large-sensor interchangeable lens cameras. But it seems that with the advancement of mobile imaging, smartphones are quickly narrowing the gap. Recently,  Asus Philippines invited a few media influencers from tech, lifestyle, photography and travel to try out their new ZenFone 3 line of smartphones. And I must give them credit for choosing Batanes  as the destination. There’s no better place to try astrophotography as the province has little light pollution in addition to the stunning landscape. I was handed a ZenFone 3 Laser to play around with during our photo tour and one of our challenges was to capture a galaxy or the night sky. I thought it was a good way for me to assess how far mobile camera imaging has gone by pitting it with the quality of my own DSLR, the Nikon D7100.