[Published Post] Filipino start-up Tripkada bares tech updates, celebrates gains

[Published Post] Filipino start-up Tripkada bares tech updates, celebrates gains

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Tripkada, the first and fastest-growing trip-pooling platform in the Philippines, recently launched its new app for iOS devices at its first Travel Meet-up for the year, which also allowed partners and investors to touch base with the start-up and its growing traveller community.

 

Tripkada co-founders April Cuenca (CEO) and Ragde Falcis (CFO) at the Tripkada Travel Meet-up: The iOS Launch

Tripkada co-founder and CEO April Cuenca presented stakeholder updates, revealing that the platform now hosts an average of 50 to 150 trips weekly. Its community to date has more than 10,000 travellers and over 300 organisers, with more than 800 applications currently underway. She described the vetting procedure for organisers as “rigorous,” with reviews from verified clients enforcing a continuous screening process even after organisers have passed training in first aid, life support, emergency response and traveller ethics.

She also fielded questions concerned with the tour offerings of the platform, sharing that Tripkada found bicycle tours “expensive” because of the protocol necessary to conduct them. “Biking tour organisers have to have a support vehicle and certified first-aid respondents on board,” she explained. “Biking requires endurance – cyclists travel through dangerous trails and open roads.”

She discussed the start-up’s plans to expand all over the country, an archipelago of more than 7,100 islands. “We are working to connect with airlines right now so that we can provide tour bundles with flights to places like Batanes (the northernmost Philippine island province near the Taiwan boundary), Siargao, Palawan, and Cebu,” she said.

The new app, geared towards consumers or ‘joiners,’ allows users to view, book, record, bookmark and review trips by ‘organisers’ who are verified by the company. “Travellers can now get the trip-joiner app from either iTunes or Google Play," explained Tripkada co-founder and CTO Ragde Falcis. “Tour organisers can download the Android organiser app, but if you’re using an iOS device you can still create trips using the web version which also allows you to join trips.”  

Cuenca also shared an important app update: “While we haven’t yet launched this feature officially and fully, it’s already possible to book trips that require air travel through Tripkada. If you open our app and explore it, you should be able to find our Skyscanner menu.”

Regarding the chatbot’s capabilities, Cuenca had this to say: “If you’re on free mobile internet data and want to browse our full trip menu, or if you want someone to talk you through the booking process, you can access our messenger assistant.”

The last revelation of the night was that the start-up platform now allows travellers to use PayPal for credit and debit payments as well as TagCash for mobile wallet payments. These are on top of Dragonpay-facilitated money transfers as well as online and offline bank deposits which are already available payment options in the Philippines, a country that continues to rely on cash and offline transactions.

 

Originally published on Travel Daily Media on 12 February 2018.

 

SInigang sa Sampalok

SInigang sa Sampalok

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Sinigang is a sour, clear soup/broth dish from the Philippines that has outlasted centuries of colonisation; the name comes from the Tagalog root word "sigang" or "to stew." It's my favorite of the two national dishes and my comfort food whenever I'm feeling the slightest hint of a cold, especially given some of the vegetable ingredients are popular for their healing properties in the motherland. You can adjust the sourness to taste, which also makes it a great barometer to track loss of smell when sick (this really helped me a lot when I had COVID, even if it was a dish that takes a while to cook). 

The best souring agents are tamarind (sampalok), guava (bayabas), unripe mangoes (manggang hilaw), kalamansi (calamondin/Philippine lemon), cotton fruit (santol), bilimbi (kamias/iba/belimbi), binukaw (Philippine mangosteen), hog plum (libas) leaves, or butterfly tree (alibangbang) leaves. Outside of the Philippines, seasonings, pastes, powders, and even dedicated sinigang mixes made of tamarind or guava are available in many Asian groceries and supermarkets. Please note vinegar cannot be used for sinigang because that's an ingredient already found in Filipino adobo (ingredients marinated then cooked in vinegar, which is the other national dish), paksiw (vinegar-based stew), and kinilaw (our equivalent of the Latin American ceviche). Shortly after I moved to the USA, I tried to use unripe peaches as a souring agent given it's a stone fruit like many of the ones I mentioned previously, but strangely it didn't work. 🤷‍♀️

Sinigang is also very vegan-friendly: while I like adding beef, pork, shrimp, or fish, you can switch the fish sauce (patis, a traditional salting agent) with Japanese miso paste or vegetable broth, and substitute the meats with tofu or neutral-flavored mushrooms. In the motherland I would always start with aromatic garlic (bawang) and onions (sibuyas) before adding spinach (water spinach/morning glory/kangkong), bokchoy (pechay), white radish (labanos), jicama (singkamas), fresh tomatoes (kamatis), yardlong beans (Chinese string beans/sitaw), okra, eggplant (aubergines/talong), and taro root/corm (gabi, which also makes the soup slightly thicker); ever since I moved to Kansas, I've found great substitutes in shallots, kale, collard greens, green beans, winged beans, and potatoes/sweet potatoes. For a tangy kick, add a long-fingered chili towards the end of the simmer right before serving it with fluffy rice.

If you're looking for recipes, I just review the ones on Filipino cuisine websites and blogs like Panlasang Pinoy, Kawaling Pinoy, Yummy.ph, LutongBahayRecipe.com, and others. 

[TRIGGER WARNING] Clout-Chasing and Motivational Speaking.

[TRIGGER WARNING] Clout-Chasing and Motivational Speaking.

Friday, January 5, 2024

LinkedIn recommended a person named Todd Dewett and his LinkedIn/Lynda training class "Coping Strategies in Difficult Times" to me. But when I saw this post, I just... I can't, I'm sorry.

I mean, a title like that coupled with a really punchable face, like, come on, WTFH?

You see, some of you may know I am related to someone who was incarcerated unjustly (for those who don't know, my surname is distinct enough that any search engine will find news articles from 5-8 years ago). They were acquitted, but that experience has taught me so much about incarceration, the broken mess that is the government rehabilitation system, and the uncertainty of the future once someone is "free."

While it's true that being behind bars makes persons deprived of liberty or "PDLs" honest (those who are innocent admittedly have very little money to hire a lawyer, while those who have indeed committed some form of "criminal*" act openly admit doing so) it comes at the cost of brutal dehumanisation. One hardly eats a square meal a day, toiletries are rationed, PDLs sleep cheek-to-jowl, visits are tightly monitored (visitors get full-body searches coming in and out; PDLs always get surprise searches), sharp objects and mirrors are forbidden. Where I'm from, there is no purging or expunging of records; once you've been reported as someone who was sent to prison, that follows you forever. Even if you made it out. Even if you're doing extremely well. Even if there is publicly available proof that you were innocent and the judge awarded you an acquittal. The reputational damage is so immense, nobody wants to talk to you, much less hire you, when you've been acquitted; let's not even talk about the trouble the banks gave us even if the incarceration reason was not financial fraud! (Just being related to a PDL forced me to shift away from the marketing communications profession in the Philippines, simply because I was no longer deemed trustworthy. I am indebted to the organisations who hired me, STAFFVIRTUAL and British Council, during those years.)

It's really difficult to be authentic, granted, but it's almost impossible once a person has a rap sheet, a past conviction or a prison stint. So I try to minimise posting about feel-good stunts, and instead share current initiatives that focus on what incarcerated people need and how to help them reintegrate into mainstream society when they get out. Stories like this, while very heartwarming at first read/listen, strike me as inauthentic at best and disgustingly clout-chasing at worst. Of course, I will obviously tank my social media and my online reputation by posting this. But if there's one point I want to leave you, dear reader, it's that the true motivational leaders are those who have lost everything and lived to tell about it, not some PhD with zero lived experience.

PS: I put the word "criminal" in quotes because I've learned there is a sliding scale. Some people will call the act of theft a criminal act; I consider stealing necessities for survival insignificant in a country where the police lead kidnap-for-ransom schemes along with providing fake evidence or "tanim ebidensya" (there's a clue for y'all as to who put my relative into prison) and politicians steal billions of pesos/dollars at face value.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.