Bobbit Suntay Answers 5 Questions to 5 Shots
Transcript
00:00There, cheers to Esquire
00:02Oh my god, I'm about to unleash a massive burp
00:04I probably shouldn't do that, right?
00:08Sorry, okay
00:11There's another, okay
00:14What am I supposed to say?
00:21Hi, everyone! I'm Bobbit Suntay
00:23and I'm here to do 5 Shots,
00:27actually, 5 Swigs with Esquire
00:30I'm coming to you from, not quite so sunny, Anilao, Batangas
00:36I am a marine conservation educator
00:40I make films to help people appreciate the amazing beauty,
00:46the critical importance, and the delicate fragility
00:50of our amazing underwater world
00:56I'm a beer fanatic and I love craft beers
01:00and special beers and stuff like that
01:02This one is most of my most favorites
01:05It's called Gulden Draak
01:07or Golden Dragon
01:10It's a Belgian beer and as you can imagine
01:13like all good Belgian beers,
01:15The alcohol content is nicely high
01:18Everyone who aspires to be [in] Esquire
01:21has to have Gulden Draak and drink it in their special glass
01:26So you can see it's coming in
01:30Look at that amazing, amazing caramel color
01:39Santé!
01:49Carewell is actually a nickname, the long formal name is Cancer Re-
01:55I'm already drunk
02:04Carewell is the nickname
02:06We started thinking about it as early as 2003
02:11when my late wife, Jackie, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer
02:16and we were able to go to this wonderful center in the United States
02:23called the Wellness Community
02:25And in that place they provided psychosocial support
02:29like counselling, support groups, that kind of thing, wellness activities
02:34for not only the person with cancer but for the loved ones
02:37and caregivers like myself
02:39I think 3 months after Jackie got diagnosed,
02:42her father got diagnosed with cancer,
02:45then 3 months after that my dad got diagnosed with cancer
02:48And we were thinking how unfortunate it was that
02:52they did not have access to something like the Wellness Community
02:57which really helped Jackie and I go through our cancer journey together
03:02That's what led us to talk to the Wellness Community folks and ask them
03:07Hey, can we put up something like this in the Philippines
03:10and one thing led to another and we established it and called it Carewell
03:15So we provide free support for everyone affected by cancer–
03:20the patient, the loved ones–
03:22we will take you into our community and take care of you
03:27Good, I was already gonna ask, "Can I take more than 5 shots?"
03:38In a word, accidentally
03:42You know, come to think of it
03:44all the best things that have happened in my life
03:47all happened accidentally, everything I've tried to plan
03:50Some worked out, some didn't work out
03:53But all the best things happened by accident
03:55It was Jackie who got me into diving
03:59This was back in 1993 and then I just kept diving
04:05And then, I guess in 2010
04:08I was leading a group of divers underwater
04:12I'm a professional dive guide, dive master
04:15And one of the divers got lazy and said, "I don't want to go anymore
04:21but I bought this brand new underwater point and shoot camera,
04:25why don't you take it, why don't you try it?"
04:27Okay! So I took it down and it was love at first shutter click
04:34and ever since then, I never stopped bring a camera down with me
04:38Although I got into video and not photography
04:41And lo and behold, I guess about maybe 7 years ago
04:46through the magic of Facebook because I had the temerity
04:50to keep posting my videos no matter how crappy
04:53I now realize they must have been
04:57Someone saw one of my videos and invited me to join a project
05:00Little did I know that it was a project that will eventually be
05:05purchased by National Geographic and the rest is history
05:10My friends and I filmed a 54-minute documentary on
05:14the whale shark industry in Oslob
05:18It won an international conservation film award
05:22and that's what prompted Nat Geo to purchase the film
05:26We've since formed a company– Studio H2O
05:31and we've been doing films ever since
05:35I think I need another drink now. May I swig?
05:38Okay, thank you
05:47It depends if there are trigger fish chasing me or if there are jelly fish in the water
05:52I was always athletic because sports was a big thing in our family
05:57particularly our mother side, the Abad Santos side
06:01and every single weekend there was some kind of sports competition
06:06Almost always it was either softball or swimming
06:09So you were a pariah in the family if you didn't know how to do
06:14softball or swimming, or both
06:16And that's kind of how I got into it
06:20But you know, the body ages
06:24Fortunately when I turned 56
06:28someone introduced me to the sport of free-diving
06:31so this is breath hold diving where you go down really, really deep
06:35on one breath of air and then you come back up
06:39Then the year after that someone introduced me to open water swimming
06:44where you swim, you know, long distances in the ocean
06:47and it's great because both of them are zero-impact sports
06:52so even with my neck, back, knees, all my cartilage gone
06:57These are sports I can do for a very, very long time
07:01When I first started open water swimming 3 years ago,
07:05I could barely swim 100 meters
07:08Now I can swim almost 8 kilometers already
07:14I swim at least 2 kilometers everyday
07:17It's a lot of fun and now since COVID, it's my mental health
07:22If I don't get into the pool, I just really go nuts
07:27Although people think I'm already nuts so
07:39Oh, shots?
07:43Just kidding, actually I'm not
07:45Well, you know
07:47In 1997, when I had made a major career change
07:53and I was really regretting the decision
07:56I went on a one-on-one retreat with a Jesuit priest
07:59and I started telling him about all my regrets
08:04and about my misgivings and then he said
08:06"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
08:08If you want to know, what it is
08:12your real purpose in life is
08:15If you want to know where you should be at this point in your life
08:20simply go where your heart's deep gladness meets the world's deep needs"
08:28And he said, 'don't switch the order ah'
08:30That's where people make the mistake
08:32They try to solve the needs of the world first
08:35and they neglect what makes them happy
08:37So it's simple di ba, if you do what makes you happy, you'll keep doing it
08:42And you'll get really great at it because you love doing it
08:46And then you have to have faith or have the resourcefulness
08:49to make sure that somehow, what it is you're doing
08:54will serve the needs of the world around you
08:58That's how I've been keeping it positive ever since
09:04I'll take another shot
09:06We need to change angle parang it's getting dark
09:10or am I just drinking too much and I can't see the screen anymore?
09:13See, it's hard to do this after 5 shots
09:28On the advice of counsel, I've been told not to answer the question
09:33and invoke my fifth ammendment rights
09:36Chance of what?
09:37Come on, man. You gotta be specific
09:40I don't want to give a misleading answer
09:43Oh, to date me? Oh, sure, yeah. Date, no problem
09:47All good
09:47Preferably, they're into open water swimming,
09:51free-diving, scuba, underwater videography
10:00But if not, it's okay, too.
10:02I'll finish my beer now
10:09Thank you! That was a lot of fun