I once spoke to a lady named Andrea and at first i thought she was american bec she was so articulate and spoke good, american english. But then i asked where she was located and told me that she was in manila. No offense to indian tech support, but i believe Filipino technicians and customer support agents are the BEST! they are very cheerful and patient.

Ok, I’m risking falling into the colonial-mentality trap of “Waw! Perfect English!”, but I think this anecdote, located on Dell’s forums, could be a great answer to all them Filipino-CSR-haters.

But then again, I’ve “proven” nothing else except for our ability to provide great service to foreigners located halfway around the world. Anyone out there with a touching and true story of Filipinos serving each other?

On a related note, if anyone still doubts our Perpek English, LJ Serrano at You Had Me at Hello will shame you.

Last March 29 was Earth Hour, a movement aimed at building environmental awareness. Various businesses and establishments promised to close shop (or at least turn off their lights) for one hour, from 8-9 pm.

I happened to be at Bonifacio High Street during this time, and I witnessed the reality of Earth Hour:

As you can see, BHS was a participatant, and they turned off their lights during the hour. On the other hand, many establishments kept their lights on. A notable exception was All Flip-Flops:

I’m not condemning the non-participants. After all, Earth Hour wasn’t a requirement. And while Bonifacio High Street would continue to make money (since they’ll still be getting the same rent at the end of the month), its establishments stand to lose a large amount if they closed shop.

This article over at iloiloviews.com is getting a lot of deserving attention. It provides an interesting perspective on the whole Brian Gorrell (yes, that Australian blogger trying to shame his ex-lover into paying back $70,000) brouhaha. To wit:

Our legal system calls this thoughtless extravagance, or the ostentatious display of wealth – an act made illegal under Article 25 of Republic Act 386, otherwise known as the Civil Code of the Philippines. This law prohibits “thoughtless extravagance in expenses for pleasure or display during a period of acute public want.”

But the website left out an important part of the article: “… or emergency may be stopped by order of the courts at the instance of any government or private charitable institution.” Just like any law, Article 25’s effectiveness relies on how well it is enforced. Which is practically impossible in this case.

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Let us focus on Mr. Baldomero “Toto” Olivera. Here’s a short biography:

Baldomero M. Olivera was born in the Philippines, received his early education there and received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of the Philippines, a PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Caltech and did Post Doctoral work at Stanford. His early research contributions included the discovery and biochemical characterization of E. coli DNA ligase.

His laboratory initiated the identification and characterization of the biologically active peptides found the venoms of predatory cone snails; this led to a broad involvement with molecular neuroscience, particularly the functional role of ion channel and receptor subtypes in nervous systems.

The Conus peptide project has raised wide ranging biological questions, from mechanisms of protein folding and post-translational modification, to gene organization and mechanisms of speciation; several Conus peptides discovered in Olivera’s laboratory are being developed as therapeutics and one is approved as a commercial drug.

Pretty deep stuff. So what does it mean? It’s obvious that our country can produce effective citizens. If we are to believe the biography, then it’s clear that Mr. Olivera spent his formative years in the Philippines.

The problem is that with the lack of quality opportunities here, Filipinos who are destined for great accomplishments have no choice but to move abroad. So much potential, so little options, as was probably the case with “Toto”.

Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom.

So began a historical article by the New Yorker. As we observe the US treat prisoners from the “war on terror,” are we not seeing history repeat itself?

The image above sickens me, and makes me wonder: in a time where there was no “urgent need” for torture (such as the need to know where an activated weapon of mass destruction is being hidden), what was the point of the atrocities perpetrated by those sadistic American soldiers?

Any Filipino would probably assume that the headline was about Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao punching a stripper in a club. But I’m actually citing a story about Adam “Pacman” Jones, an American football player, being accused giving the smackdown.

I’ve already written about this on my personal blog months ago:

Let’s make “Pacman” mean something more significant—a boxer who shows what Filipinos are capable of with hard work and dedication. That’s definitely better than a yellow circle running around all day eating pills, and a football player with a history of assault.

Then again, dominating the search engine rankings probably won’t change the naming habits of American sports writers.

Duncan Riley does a great job of explaining what a comment troll is: “[those] who make it their business to criticize anything written and the people who wrote it, in some sort of sad attempt at self validation by being nasty towards others for the sake of it.”

But to be honest, there was no need to discuss the scientific psychology behind comment trolling. As anyone who’s been online for quite some time knows, the formula Anonymity + An Audience = Total F*%&tard could be a postulate of sorts.

What online publishers do need to know is that a website’s content defines its community. As Gina Trapani once commented on Lifehacker:

Also, netiquette in public forums has a lot to do with the content around which the community is centered. Lifehacker’s posts set out to help folks, so in kind, our readers want to help us and each other back. Digg is a popularity contest of oneupmanship. Gawker is all about making fun of things, so its readers mock each other and it right back in the comments. Karma’s a boomerang.

Is it any wonder that my snarky posts on Malu Fernandez inspired an endless stream of mean comments? Figuring out the cause of comment trolls is less important than coming up with ways to minimize them. Granted, there’s a little jerk in all of us, and we can’t expect every comment to be civil and genuinely add the conversation. But as many a blogger has learned the hard way, keeping comment trolls at bay has a lot to do with what you write, and the realization that feeding trolls gets you nowhere.

Eugene of Vista Pinas shares his own personal experience of claiming AdSense payments through Western Union. Our hero shared the AdSense-Western Union stories of others, then decided to try things out for himself. “Receiving the payment is actually as easy as others have said it would be—it just took me about five minutes—but finding an open Western Union outlet is another story altogether.”

The intrepid blogger, the man behind Lakbayan, finally found salvation at a local hotel, taking advantage of the fact that remittance centers there stay open longer to service foreign guests. He then realized that it was better to receive his payments in dollars, then look for a nearby forex, as “Western Union’s peso-dollar exchange rate seems to be always lower than the market value.” Here’s to your entertaining—and realistic—assessment of the procedure Eugene!

It’s a cultural thing. Every year, starting from Halloween up to All Souls’ Day (October 31 up to November 2), many Filipinos visit their dearly departed. This means that, in a heavily-populated city like Metro Manila, the traffic to, from, and within major cemeteries puts typical rush hour problems to shame.

City governments employ a large number of people on a holiday just to keep everything in order, and actually change the flow of the roads surrounding cemeteries. At least one major road in Quezon city becomes one way come the end of October. That’s why new cemeteries are now designed to handle a large volume of visitors. A cemetery recently put up in the Taguig municipality actually connects to a major highway. Who would’ve though that urban planning would play an important role in the placement and construction of cemeteries?

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Thanks for taking suggestions for the Happy Slip DVD. I’m sure we’ll enjoy the promised features, like the commentaries, and an interview with your lola (grandma)!

I only have one suggestion for you, but I think it’s really important: Could you make Happy Slip easily available in the Philippines?

Could you find a local, Philippine-based distributor for the DVD? I’m sure your many fans back home will appreciate seeing high-resolution versions of the videos that made you the 5th most subscribed YouTube user of all time as of this writing.

Of course, you can use only Amazon or any other major online retailer to ply your wares, but having something shipped from the US is quite a killer, and American websites usually don’t accept non-US-issued plastic.

By selling Happy Slip in the Philippines, you might even gain new fans in the motherland. People who are just discovering the wonders of the Internet and YouTube, and who’ll eagerly subscribe to your feed once they find out how.

Whaddya say?