benign0's blog

Now is a great time to start a business! As evident in the raft of information "products" being churned out by that well of reliable factoids, Philippine Mainstream Media, doom and gloom sells like lechon manok in an ignorant medieval society such as the Philippines. The earthquakes that recently struck Japan and New Zealand, the prospect of a "big one" striking the Philippines itself, the spectre of radioactive clouds descending upon most of East Asia , civil war in the Arab world displacing thousands of henceforth unemployable Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs), "super moons" unleashing super storms and even more natural disasters over the face of the planet, even alien species threatening to overrun the archipelago -- the possibilities and opportunities are infinite!

Imagine getting your power supply from big 220-volt cylindrical batteries that are charged at power generating plants and then delivered to you every week by truck to be hooked up to your home's wiring. You then load the spent battery from the previous week onto the truck which then hauls it back to the nearest power plant to be re-charged. Doesn't this sound like a ridiculous way of being supplied electrical power?

This week is the home stretch in the race to make Valentine's Day 2011 a happenin' day. Do consider though what Valentine's Day -- or any occasion celebrated with a spectacular display of conspicuous consumption -- really means . There are many disasters going on around us, not least relevant to Filipinos is the devastation caused by heavy rains and unstoppable flooding going on outside the awareness of most citizens of the Philippines' Imperial Capital.

Blogger Paul Farol recently brought to my attention an initiative to develop a "brand" for the Philippines . The initiative is being championed by a certain EON Philippines which, according to its website , is a "stakholders relations firm". EON have written a whitepaper, " Branding the Philippines: Championing the Filipino " that consolidates ideas brainstormed in a recently held forum that included representatives from various business stakholders in the Philippines (chambers of commerce, business clubs, industry associations, etc.).

Everytime I walk by the local Flight Centre (an airline ticket booking chain that offers McDonalds-like travel agency services) in the city, I note the posters and fliers displaying sweetened holiday deals to various Southeast Asian cities beckoning Aussies shopping for their next overseas getaway "adventure". You can't help but notice the ridiculously low fares to "exotic" cities like Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and even Phnom Penh - a city just fresh out of the Stone Age. With the Aussie Dollar flying above the rest of the developed world's deppressed currencies, and winter fast approaching in the southern hemisphere, our credit cards are locked and loaded.

Fear not my desperately underpaid compatriots! Even as Filipino nurses pour into the job market in enormous value-crushing volumes as Filipinos tend to do, there is yet another lucrative overseas market emerging for starving Filipino workers. In her paper " Pirates' in the Sea: Private Military and Security Company Activities in Southeast Asia and the Philippines ", Katherine Marie G. Hernandez reports that there is a lucrative market for Filipino mercenaries in various war zones all over the world.

A " study " conducted by Synergy Business Consultancy (SBC) revealed the most powerful celebrity endorsers in the Philippines, with Manny " Aprub Agad !" Pacquiao, Vicki " Charice's face is getting wider " Belo, and Venus " Major Major " Raj topping the list. These are people who will be paid millions by Big Corporate to stand behind their products flashing their winning smiles at their adoring fans.

There's been a lot of trumpets being blown over how the Philippines had recently surpassed India as the world's biggest remote supplier of call centre and back-end business process outsourced (BPO) services. The value proposition of such services to the market is quite clear as far as Filipinos are concerned: they are delivered on the cheap by a society awash with under-employed university graduates who speak excellent English.

Should Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew feel insulted? The latest ululation this time from a bunch of brown-nosing bozos comparing a man with a vision to a man who cannot plan his way out of a paper bag.

There is good debt and there is bad debt. Like, say, a loan taken out to buy property or start a business, good debt is used to fund appreciating assets. The cost of the borrowed funds (the interest the borrower pays on the principal disbursed to him) is offset by the returns that are yielded by the asset purchased using said borrowed funds. Those yields could come in the form of (1) income generated by the assets -- such as rent or earnings from the funded property or business, and (2) capital gain -- such as when you sell the property or business for more than its value at the time it was acquired -- also taking into account the cost of funding (interest expenses) and cost of ownership.