Three Zero
I browsed through old photos on Facebook to see how my twenties looked, not in total, but at least we get a glimpse.
Here is a massive image drop of the images that have made my twenties memorable.
I carried my interest with graphic arts into my early twenties. After moving back to Tacloban, I, with a few Waray-waray digital arts enthusiasts, formed a group called the Tacloban Art Collective — a play on the city abbreviation for Tacloban which was TAC.
At that time (2008), DeviantArt was still a dominant player in the online portfolio scene, so this was where we would upload our works which were mostly centered around/inspired by Tacloban City.
GoAbroad took me in as a junior designer in 2008. I was fresh off college and had come home to spend my years in Tacloban. This was how my UI Design career began.
Work was steady, but I needed a creative outlet that hit closer to my love for climbing.
In 2009/2010 I put up Dirt Climbing Softwear. Men’s and women’s tops were the main products.
Dirt was built to help me and my friends fund our trips to explore climbing in Eastern Visayas, as well as, host climbing classes and competitions. If we had money left after all that, we bought beer with
We called our merry band of climbers the Dirt Crew. We also had an adventure racing team that was regularly winning the local circuits. Dirt injected interest into climbing — a sport that was on a decline in the region. We saw it as a revolution.
Dirt Shirts were made, shirts were sold, shirts were embroidered, shirts were printed in my garage, shirts were outsourced to a professional, comps were hosted on a regular basis, climbing trips were made. It was all good.
The brand spread amongst the local community like wildfire, there was demand, but I was naive and had no real business plans. I just wanted to sell tees, climb, and chill with my climbing buddies. I wasn’t a business man. I was a dirtbag climber.
Eventually, the brand had to be shut down in 2013 because I wasn’t meeting expectations and it was hurting the image of the brand itself. A reboot was attempted with new partners, but it didn’t last long.
Pinoy Auto Trader, and eventually AutoDeal PH, were big projects in my UI Design career. Pinoy Auto Trader was shut down in 2014, a year after being acquired by Sulit.com.ph (now OLX).
Marabut made a big impact on my life. My friends and I were frequenting the place every weekend to explore and put up new climbing lines — bouldering, trad, and deep water solo.
In 2012, with all the hype that the world was ending, we chose to spend the “remaining days” in our usual secluded beach campsite, thinking that if the world ended, at least we would die in paradise.
There were a lot of campfire drinking, a lot of eating instant noodles to save for road trips, and a lot of sneaking into private areas to climb the rocks in these places.
One such special place is this bouldering line we put up in Padre Burgos, Southern Leyte: Forbidden Route. She is a line that sits within a cave in a hotel’s private grounds.
Tide would usually make this route inaccessible, but when midnight came, the waters would be low enough to allow us access. We’d sneak in, do our climb, then stealthily head back out.
Fun times.
Photography was something I wanted to try for the longest time. I knew my foundations in graphic arts would help me in my compositions. I just didn’t have access to a digital camera.
I did eventually get to own one about a year ago. We’ll see how this passion turns out
See you on the next version of this image drop when I turn 40.
