Baybayin seminar at Dan Inosanto Academy

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

baybayin seminar

There will be a Bayabyin seminar at the Dan Inosanto Martial Arts Academy in Marina Del Rey, California on March 11 & 12, 2011. The event will be presented by Jay Enage, the founding chairman of Taklobo Baybayin Inc. and Baybayin Buhayin Inc. It’s the same team that brought us the Baybayin iPhone app.

I plan to be there to film my Baybayin documentary

Inosanto Academy of Martial Arts
13348-13352 Beach Ave.
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292

Image of Inosanto’s autograph in Baybayin. Courtesy of Tony Fajarillo from the Baybayin Facebook page.

Naga smiles to the world

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

The government site of Naga, Philippines has a nice graphic to promote their “Naga smiles to the world” tourism campaign. It’s great to see an “official” use of the script. It would be great to see all government campaigns and seals with Baybayin.

Agimat trailer

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

Pretty old but never posted it here. It’s the Agimat TV series from ABS-CBN. Looks the the Baybayin is from the Doctrina Christiana.

Baybayin Barong & Una Fight Gear

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

2 new clothing pieces from the team that brought you the Baybayin Buhayin iPhone app.

Baybayin Barong design will be available at SoulShop at Crossroad 77 in Quezon City, Philippines

Una Fight Gear – Filipino Martial Arts clothing

UNA Baybayin Tee in Black and White.

Call/SMS or contact via email or Facebook to order

0917.5771234
0915.9710063

UNA.fightgear@gmail.com

1000 Piso Medal of Honor

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

Bonifacio Comandante Jr. sent in a scan of the new 1000 piso bill with an explanation another Baybayin word in the center of the Medal of Honor.

The word dolapa is not used today as it is but has descended to darapa which is commonly used as nagkandarapa, meaning to fall and/or crawl to be able to achieve something.

Alibata still rules

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

I ran a query on Google search traffic trends for Alibata vs Baybayin over the last 5 years. As you can see, Alibata (red) is searched more than double Baybayin (blue).

Notes:
– What’s interesting is that the term Baybayin only started trending late 2007 around the same time Baybayin.com was launched.

– The peaks are around the month of June/July. I suspect that the increase is due to Filams searching for Alibata tattoos in the summer. These trends follow summer traffic patters on my Filipino Tattoo site.

– Around 2008-2009, there was a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) contest in the Philippines that used Alibata as their keyword. Basically, whoever could get their website at the top of the search engines when typing the keyword won the prize. This caused a lot of crap sites that are still out there. All of them were just copies of Wikipedia.

– I think within the next 2 years, we should see the Alibata vs Baybayin gap lessen.

Here’s a December 2010 graph. See how close it is at the end of the year? It could be because of the new Philippine bank notes that were released with Baybayin and reported by the news as Baybayin (bravo).

Cultural Artist to begin Art Exhibition at Bay Area Art Gallery

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

Linen Life Gallery is proud to present artist, Christine Balza. The reception will be held on January 23, 2011 at 6 – 9 pm at, 770 East Fourteenth Street Downtown San Leandro, CA and is free and open to the public
Christine Balza’s mixed media on canvas, ceramic, and jewelry, amongst others, expresses her Filipino-American experiences. Inspired by a long, lost script, Baybayin, Christine brings ancient expressions forward to modern day.

Baybayin script is a writing system not actively used since the 1800’s. The pre-Spanish symbols were used for commerce, a means of messaging neighboring villages of current events and can be dated as far back as 900ad. Baybayin lost favor to Roman alphabet and eventually was considered obsolete. Christine Balza use of art to awaken others curiosity to little known cultural traditions and follows up with workshops and seminars (TBA) on the basic use of Baybayin. She has been interviewed by Sharon Chin of CBS-5 and Henni Espinosa of Balitang America, TFC

*Biography and photographs of Christine Balza and her art work are available upon request. www.suku-art.com

Linen Life Gallery is located 770 East Fourteenth Street Downtown San Leandro, CA and has been nominated for a “Shine a Light Award.” Owner, Darrell F. Robinson has relocated the gallery from Emeryville, CA to its current address. www.thelinenlifegallery.com

Christine Balza of Dublin, CA is available for interview. Please contact email suku@suku-art.com

Baybayin standards defined by practitioners – Baybayin.org

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

My domain Baybayin.org currently points to the Baybayin Facebook page, the biggest Baybayin online community with over 4,000 members. I want to develop Baybayin.org is a place to discuss script standards as defined by actual writers. In order for this to succeed, we will need a mixture of enthusiasts, artists, scholars, etc. Coming up with these standars would include case presentation, justification and defense. I assume this will need to be a democratic system.

The goal would be to brainstorm, discuss, document and define standards for all things Baybayin. Some deliverable examples could be a base character set, character order, kudlits, modern characters, etc. I do not think we should set goals on script names at this time. The focus should be on items that solve the problems that deliver actual value now.

I’m also looking for the community to share documents and other resources in order to provide historical context.

Please provide me with your feedback and if your interested in helping out

GMA 7: Pintados Remake

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Kristian Kabuay

A new show from the Philippine network GMA 7 uses Baybayin in the opening credits to promote Pintados. What’s interesting is what character set they used. I would’ve expected them to use fonts from Paul Morrow. This looks like it’s in a style made popular by Bayani Mendoza de Leon. The Baybayin reads Pi-N-Ta-Do-S.

Couple notes:
1) The kudlit style appears to be pattered after Bayani’s “The Ancient Script of the Philippines” manual. Instead of + kudlits, a hash at the bottom right of the character represented the vowel cancellation.
2) The 2nd character Na is in a style I haven’t seen before in any old samples or new modern styles by artists.

Here’s an overview of the show:

After several rich Filipino families become victims of terrible crimes, they agree to set up and fund a foundation to battle the criminals. Under the command of “Guro”, an unsanctioned agency of the government sets up a clandestine crime fighting unit. Each of the members is themself a victim of hideous crimes. This elite unit taken from all walks of life take a leaf from Filipino warriors of old, and cloak themselves in armour, ethnic war paint and tattoos, gaining the name “The Pintados” (Painted Ones). Opposing Pintados is the army of the human/reptile hybrid Katana.

Way of the Ancient Healer