A double celebration for Sanso

A double celebration was held recently at Museo Sanso in San Juan City for renowned artist Juvenal Sanso’s birthday and Fundacion Sanso’s third anniversary.

Launched at the celebration was an exhibition titled Expansive Vista featuring a selection of Sanso’s early landscapes, including an early ‘80s mural-size work from a private collection.

Melody Cosio and Raymark Sanchez opened the program with an Argentine tango number. Fundacion Sanso director Dida Cosio-Salita delivered her welcome remarks, followed by Fundacion Sanso and the Lopez Museum’s Ricky Francisco, who gave his curatorial notes.

Fundacion Sanso chairman Jack Teotico introduced some guests who sang the birthday song for the well-loved artist.

I, too, had my photo with Sanso as I fondly showed him our photo together in Paris in 1999. Juvy (as he told me to call him before) smiled and continued eating his favorite chocolate cake.

Before the program ended, Teotico announced that a new three-volume coffee table book on Sanso’s art, career and legacy will be launched on February next year in time for National Arts Month. The book titled La Definitiva Sanso: A Life Lived Thrice was written and researched by scholar and critic Dr. Reuben Ramas Cañete (this is his last book), and will contain never-before-published photos from Sanso’s life and career.

Order La Definitiva Sanso: A Life Lived Thrice before Jan. 18, 2018 for a special price of P3,200.

(For inquiries and reservations, call 952-1568 and 0998-7912057 or e-mail [email protected].)

Nvidia Philippines country manager Jerome Matti, APAC South consumer business director Simon Tan and senior manager for consumer marketing Alex Liao congratulate CS GO champion team, Signature of Thailand. (From left) Tosapol Sae-kow, Siwet Kruavit, Anupong Mueangngam, Waritton Kalanukan and Kitsada Pookamroong.

eSports on the rise

Gamers from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Philippines got together recently to compete in the GeForce Esports Xtreme Tournament (GEXT) 2017, an eSports (internet gaming) tournament at the Glorietta Activity Center in Makati City. The event was organized by technology company Nvidia.

The teams battled for supremacy in multiplayer online games DOTA 2 (Defense of the Ancients) and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS GO). Teams from Thailand and Vietnam emerged as champions.

According to Nvidia Philippines country manager Jerome Matti, over 1,300 teams from these countries have been fighting for slots in the finals for the past six months. The tournament kicked off last June in Manila and concluded just last November. 

A predominantly male crowd of internet gaming fans ages 12 to 40 trooped to the venue to watch the competition live. GEXT 2017 was staged in GeForce Certified iCafes featuring gaming PCs driven by Nvidia GeForce GPUs in the participating Southeast Asian countries. It was supported by gold sponsors Colorful, Coolermaster and Palit along with silver sponsors Galax, MSI, Thermaltake and TTesports.  The goal of Gext 2017, which was streamed live, was to grow the gaming community in the region by creating more accessible opportunities for amateur gamers.

Nvidia put up the $10,000 prize money with the help of its partners and mounted and organized the tournament.

Matti said, “This is the first Southeast Asian finals and it was held in the Philippines because there is a fast growing gaming community here. Nvidia plans to stage GEXT again in 2018.  We were warmed by the enthusiastic response with thousands of teams taking part and millions more following GEXT either at the event venues or online. Nvidia and our partners are thrilled to be able to help fan the growing interest in eSports across the region.”

Nivdia APAC South consumer business director Simon Tan added that the company’s award-winning GeForce GTX 10 series GPUs enabled the gamers to have a better gaming experience.

Nvidia designs graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming, cryptocurrency and professional markets. It also creates system-on-a-chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automative markets. It is best known for its GPU product line called “GeForce.”

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