Filipina model Alexandra “Alex” Escat was spotted rubbing sunscreen into the Duke of York’s back on a super-yacht off the coast of Sardinia (Mediterranean Sea).

Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II of England and his ” friend” made the front page of British tabloid, The Daily Mail.

Below is one of the photos showing her being “touchy-feely” with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

Whos is Alexandra “Alex” Escat?

According to Daily Mail UK, Alex Escat, 25, is a half-Filipina model whose father is a Spanish citizen and her mother is a Filipina by the name of Sandra Garcia.

Escat studied at the International School of Manila, where she became friends with KC Concepcion.

Marc Nelson, Alex Escat, Camille Villar and Gino Jacinto picture from http://heart-2-heart-online.com

Alexandra Escat is a familiar face in Philippine advertising. She has appeared in numerous TV advertisements. Perhaps most notable are Ponds and Creamsilk.

Will there be a Filipina princess soon in UK? Who knows!

The most beautiful day in the universe happens on August 23 at 9PM ET (August 24 Manila Time). The event will once again be aired from Mandalay Bay & Resort in Las Vegas.

Miss Philippines Venus Raj Body Paint

NBC, Donald J. Trump and Paula M. Shugart, President of the Miss Universe Organization (MUO) announced the celebrities and experts who will judge the most glamorous event of the year.

The celebrity panel of judges are: Criss Angel, illusionist and mystifier; William Baldwin, actor, producer and writer; Sheila E, world-renowned percussionist and drummer; Tamron Hall, anchor of “MSNBC Live”; Evan Lysacek, 2010 Olympic Gold Medalist and 2009 World Figure Skating Champion; Chazz Palminteri, Oscar nominated actor and director best known for his work in A Bronx Tale; Chynna Phillips, American singer and actress; Jane Seymour, multiple Emmy and Golden Globe winner and Niki Taylor international supermodel.

According to the producer, Donald Trump, “When you combine the world’s most beautiful women, bikinis, a rock star, and a panel of top celebrity judges, you have a recipe for success.”

As previously announced, the hosts of the show are multi-platinum superstar singer and season three winner of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” Bret Michaels and Natalie Morales, NBC’s “Today” show  co-host and correspondent.

Miss Universe 2009, Stefania Fernandez, will crown her successor at the conclusion of the live broadcast.

If you are looking for the live video stream of Miss Universe 2010, you can freely watch it on this link: Miss Universe 2010 Live Video Stream

I would like to invite all PinayMom’s readers to blog about this momentous event that will happen on Saturday, 21st of August. According to the organizers, you can re-post their announcement anywhere. Let’s do our share in remembering Ninoy’s martyrdom by sharing this announcement to other people. You may copy-paste the announcement below or you can write your own and just point it back to http://yellowribbonmovement.org.

Yellow Ribbon Movement (YRM), in cooperation with Spirit of EDSA Foundation & EDSA People Power Commission, will mark the 27th Anniversary of Ninoy Aquino’s martyrdom for democracy with memorial services at the People Power Monument on the 21st of August 2010.

7:45 am – Flag Ceremony (national Anthem to be sung by Tenor Nolyn Cabahug)
8:15 am – Wreath laying
8:30 am – Celebration of the Holy Eucharist (music provided by PCSO choir)

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) will provide free to the public (on site at the People Power Monument), the services of its Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Mission: The Mission includes:

• 5 Ambulatory Clinics, doctors and medical assistants to provide adult and pediatric medical services.
• Dental services including teeth extraction (if necessary).
• Pharmaceutical assistance, such as free medicines prescribed by doctors on site.

Everyone is welcome to join us.

This post  came to me via a mass-email from a friend.  I don’t know the name of the author who wrote this, and don’t even know if it’s true.  Still, it moved me.

This was written by a  of Metro Denver Hospice Physician:

I just had one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and wanted to share it with my family and dearest friends.

I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke and splutter and die – I barely managed to coast, cursing, into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow truck. It wouldn’t even turn over. Before I could make the call, I saw a woman walking out of the “quickie mart” building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell into a Gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay.

When I got there, it looked more like she had been overcome by sobs than that she had fallen; she was a young woman who looked really haggard with dark circles under her eyes. She dropped something as I helped her up, and I picked it up to give it to her.. It was a nickel.

At that moment, everything came into focus for me: the crying woman, the ancient Suburban crammed full of stuff with 3 kids in the back (1 in a car seat), and the gas pump reading $4.95.

I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help, and she just kept saying ” don’t want my kids to see me crying,” so we stood on the other side of the pump from her car. She said she was driving to California and that things were very hard for her right now. So I asked, “And you were praying?” That made her back away from me a little, but I assured her I was not a crazy person and said, “He heard you, and He sent me.”

I took out my card and swiped it through the card reader on the pump so she could fill up her car completely, and while it was fueling, walked to the next door McDonald’s and bought 2 big bags of food, some gift certificates for more, and a big cup of coffee. She gave the food to the kids in the
car, who attacked it like wolves, and we stood by the pump eating fries and talking a little.

She told me her name, and that she lived in Kansas City Her boyfriend left 2 months ago and she had not been able to make ends meet. She knew she wouldn’t have money to pay rent Jan 1, and finally in desperation had finally called her parents, with whom she had not spoken in about 5 years. They lived in California and said she could come live with them and try to get on her feet there.

So she packed up everything she owned in the car. She told the kids they were going to California for Christmas, but not that they were going to live there.

I gave her my gloves, a little hug and said a quick prayer with her for safety on the road. As I was walking over to my car, she said, “So, are you like an angel or something?”

This definitely made me cry. I said, “Sweetie, at this time of year angels are really busy, so sometimes God uses regular people.”

It was so incredible to be a part of someone else’s miracle. And of course, you guessed it, when I got in my car it started right away and got me home with no problem. I’ll put it in the shop tomorrow to check, but I suspect the mechanic won’t find anything wrong.

Sometimes the angels fly close enough to you that you can hear the flutter of their wings…

Psalms 55:22 “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”


Charice! From YouTube to Glee and The Making of a YouTube sensation. These are the banners written on the front cover of Reader’s Digest Asia and Philippines for their August 2010 edition. I haven’t got a copy but I’ll be happy to share the articles once I have it in my hands. Charice joins the list of other Filipinos who have been featured in the magazine which includes boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, comedian-singer Michael V, and actor Diether Ocampo.

This is the cover for Reader’s Digest Philippines:

Charice on Reader's Digest Philippines August 2010

For other Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan, Reader’s Digest Asia has a different cover page but Charice was still featured on it. Here’s a sample cover of the RD Asia Edition.

Charice on Reader's Digest Asian Edition August 2010

This is an email I received from Ivan Anthony Henares. I’ll post it here verbatim.

1. South East Asian Airlines (SEAIR) and Microtel Inns & Suites will be choosing eight lucky bloggers to join an all-expense paid bloggers’ tour of Boracay from September 10 to 12, 2010. This includes round-trip tickets from Manila to Caticlan and accommodation at Microtel Boracay.

2. To be selected, you will have to write a blog entry telling us why you should be chosen to join the tour. Each blog entry must have a link to the SEAIR website <http://flyseair. com/>, the SEAIRFacebook Fan Page <http://www.facebook .com/flyseair>, and the Microtel Philippines website <http://www.microtel philippines. com/>.

3. You can publish your entry from 12:00 a.m. of July 26, 2010 to 11:59 p.m. of August 20, 2010. Only one entry per blog will count.

4. To let us know about your blog entry, post it as a link in the SEAIR Facebook Fan Page <http://www.facebook .com/flyseair>. It has to be posted from 12:00 a.m. of July 26, 2010 to 11:59 p.m. of August 20, 2010. Once it is acknowledged by our administrator, your entry is counted.

5. Three winners will be selected by a panel of judges based on which is the most compelling. The top three entries with the highest scores from the judges will be invited to the tour.

6. Three winners will be selected by fans based on the number of “likes” to the link. The three entries with the most number of “likes” by 11:59 p.m. of August 25, 2010 will be invited to the tour.

7. One winner will the selected by the SEAIR Adventure Club. The entry with the most number of votes from our resident travel bloggers will be invited to the tour.

8. One winner will be selected at random in a manner to be determined by the organizers.

9. We will notify the eight (8) winners on August 27, 2010. In case any of the winners cannot make it, we will invite the one next in line.

10. The decision of the organizers in final. Good luck to everyone!

Towards A Baby-Friendly World

From 1-7 August 2010, the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), and breastfeeding advocates in more than 170 countries worldwide will be celebrating World Breastfeeding Week for the 19th year with the theme “Breastfeeding: Just 10 Steps. The Baby-Friendly Way”.

World Breastfeeding Week 2010

Research shows that the best feeding option globally is the initiation of breastfeeding within the first half hour of life, exclusive breastfeeding for a full six months and continued breastfeeding through the second year or beyond. Breastfeeding improves short and long term maternal and child health; and thus contribute to the attainment of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY and IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH, to which many countries and agencies are committed.

UNICEF recently noted that the reduction of child deaths from 13 million globally in 1990 to 8.8 million in 20081 is partly due to the adoption of basic health interventions such as early and exclusive breastfeeding.

More and more studies have shown that implementation of the Ten Steps with continued postnatal support contributes to increased breastfeeding initiation and exclusive breastfeeding at the local, national and global levels.

Today, an estimated 28% of all maternity facilities in the world have at some point implemented the Ten Steps which has contributed to an encouraging increase in breastfeeding rates despite aggressive commercial promotion of infant formula and feeding bottles. However this is a far cry from the original goal of ALL maternity facilities practising the Ten Steps by 1995 as stated in the Innocenti Declaration (1990) on the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding which had outlined what countries should do to support breastfeeding.

In 2005, fifteen years after the original Innocenti Declaration, the Innocenti+15 Declaration had called upon individuals, health care professionals, communities, governments and multilateral, bilateral organisations and international financial institutions to ensure that all women can succeed in breastfeeding.

In 2007, UNICEF and WHO completed an update and revision of the Baby-Friendly materials which acknowledge new research and experience, and suggest new approaches to Baby-Friendly beyond the maternity hospital in other health settings and in the community.

Action at community level is particularly important since globally only 56% of women deliver their babies in a health facility, (only 33% in the least developed countries) and they may be discharged within a day or two. Women need ongoing support in the community whether they deliver in hospital or at home.

Whilst rates of exclusive breastfeeding have increased in many countries, there has been stagnation or decrease in some, partly because reduced political support for BFHI and poor compliance with the Ten Steps in BFHI certified facilities.

Recent studies have shown that with more of the Ten Steps in place, the more likely women are to achieve their breastfeeding goals. This confirms that importance for every maternity, hospital, clinic and community to strive to increase the number of steps in place, even if they cannot achieve all ten steps immediately. Therefore every step counts!

‘Let’s join hands in taking the reliable Ten Steps to making this world a Baby-Friendly World!’

The “Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding” are the foundation of Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) and summarize the maternity practices necessary to support breastfeeding. A maternity facility can be designated ‘baby-friendly’ when it does not accept free or low-cost breastmilk substitutes, feeding bottles or teats, and has implemented these 10 specific steps to support successful breastfeeding.

World Breastfeeding Week 2010

Every facility providing maternity services and care for newborn infants should:

1. Have a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health care staff.
2. Train all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.
3. Inform all pregnant mothers about the benefits and management of breastfeeding.
4. Help mothers initiate breastfeeding within a half-hour of birth.
5. Show mothers how to breastfeed, and how to maintain lactation even if they should be separated from their infants.
6. Give newborn infants no food or drink other than breastmilk unless medically indicated.
7. Practice rooming-in – allow mothers and infants to remain together – 24 hours a day.
8. Encourage breastfeeding on demand.
9. Give no artificial teats or pacifiers (also called dummies or soothers) to breastfeeding infants.
10. Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.

Everyone has the right to information about the benefits of breastfeeding and the risks of artificial feeding. Governments have a responsibility to provide this information. Communities as well as media and other channels of communication can play a key role in promoting breastfeeding.

This post is regarding the latest promo of Nuffnang for the special screening of SALT (starring Angelina Jolie) and the “conspiracy” that some bloggers are commenting/posting about.

The promo’s mechanics are actually very simple. All you have to do is post (copy-paste) the promo and make sure that you are a registered Nuffnang member if you want to join. After publishing the post, just submit the blog entry URL to the comment section on Nuffnang’s page announcement.

Here’s the kicker, the first 70 comments with valid blog posts get three (3) invites.
And guess what?…the comment section was filled-up with 70 comments in just 2 1/2 hours!

Now where’s the brouhaha that some bloggers were saying and some even posted it to their blogs?

I think one of the most visible among the posts/comments was the comment from “Concerned Nuffnanger” -

Your contests are sometimes weird. You will email the contest details, yet there were those who were able to join the contest 2 hours before the email blast. Look at this info:

I received your email notification

date Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 5:15 PM
subject SALT Special Screening
mailed-by nuffnang.com

This is the first entry of the first contestant.

Jenn Says:
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:35 pm

I’m wondering, how come a number of these winners were notified 2hrs before the email blast?
Concerned Nuffnanger.

The other comment that got my attention was this:

Michael Viilegas Says:
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
This is just great! So some were informed hours before the email even got to the others???? Isn’t that crazy?! And the best part is when the email got to the others, there are more than 70 entries already which means the email we just got is already useless. GOOD JOB, NUFFNANG!! YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST INFORMED YOUR FRIENDS INSTEAD OF MAKING US FEEL STUPID FOR RECEIVING USELESS INFORMATION BY THE TIME IT GOT TO US> AND PLEASE DON’T USE THE LAME NETWORK TRAFFIC EXCUSE BECAUSE IT WON’T WORK. WE KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS ARE UP TO.

There’s actually a lot of replies on these. If you read their comments, it seems there’s really a conspiracy that had happened, that is if you based their conclusions from the time they received their emails against the time the announcement was posted on Nuffang’s blog. The emails they received were actually delayed. Even us here at PinayMom, we received Nuffang’s email more than 2 hours after it was posted on their blog.

Is this a conspiracy, an inside job or …?

Before I’ll give you an answer, let me first share which I think was the most “accurate” reply among those comments:

My favorite was from blankpixels:

blankpixels Says:
July 24th, 2010 at 1:05 am

To the “Concerned Nuffnanger” who posted on my blog about this special screening, I left a response for you there. But, I’m going to post it here, too, for everyone’s info:

“FYI, the post of Nuffnang about the Salt special screening giveaway was posted on their blog at 3:03pm. The first poster, Jenn, left her comment at 3:35pm. So, there’s nothing fishy going on there, if you ask me. I’m one of those Nuffnangers who bookmark their blog so I can easily check on any updates for giveaways, etc.

The email blast came way too late, I agree. But, there was no conspiracy, in my opinion.”

I just hope that next time, email announcements will also be sent the same time it’s posted on here. Just to give a fair shot to other Nuffnangers who only depend on email notifications from you.

BlankPixel was correct in her observation. How do I know this?

To give you a background, I work as a software consultant and one of my responsibilities is to test thoroughly the software that our programmers developed. This software looks like an MSOutlook wherein you can send emails and SMS (text messaging) on the same program.

Incidentally, our company also developed the mail server (the software being used for sending and receiving) so we can monitor all the mails transaction from sending it to our mail client until we received it in our mail server. From these transaction logs,  we can see the time stamp (and the delay if there is) from sending, and the various mail servers it passed through before it goes back to our mail server.

I don’t want to bore you with technical details anymore.

So here is PinayMom’s conclusion: Nuffnang is using an automated software that sends email not in batches but in a scheduled basis. This is to avoid clogging the network and making sure their mail server won’t be tagged as a spammer by various agencies. With over 8,000 Nuffnang’s member, the delay in sending the emails is unavoidable.

This is the first time Nuffnang had a movie screening project  and also their first to have a promo like this. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s not accuse them of being a CIA agent and a Russian spy at the same time just like the character of Angelina Jolie on the SALT movie.  I’m sure they’ve learned a lot of lessons from this kind of blog contest and the way they handled the sending out of emails.

Conspiracy: None
Delay: YES!

For those who won the promo, enjoy the movie. And for those who are not so lucky, let’s just enjoy the Heaven ice cream while watching the movie with our friends in a different venue. Have a good day everyone!

Divine ice cream pleasure is HEAVEN Ice Cream.

Give in to the richest, smoothest, and creamiest by NESTLÉ Ice Cream. Revel in the exquisite goodness of its four sophisticated flavors—Belgian Chocolate Bliss, Strawberry Dream, Vanilla Almond Secret and Butter Pecan Obsession. HEAVEN Ice Cream is made with only the finest ingredients and contains no artificial food colors. Available in 800mL(Php 175) & 450mL(Php 115) tubs across supermarkets, groceries, and convenience stores nationwide.