Mall Entrances

Being in the security industry, I still am frequently caught off guard each time security officers at some of the country’s posh malls request me to remove my dark glasses upon entering their premises. I DO understand why they do it though, and that is to help them recognize criminals or other individuals who are trying to conceal their identities for one reason or another. The problem is, I have yet to grow accustomed to having them practically point to my face to have me remove my dark glasses. The bag and body searches, I am used to. The face pointing, I am not.

It would help if they put up signs informing people that they should remove their dark glasses upon entry, or headgear for that matter, in addition to already being subjected to a search of their personal possessions.

They should also treat all customers equally. I have noticed that sentries at entrances adjacent to parking areas, or directly connected to these, are more lax than the rest. In fact, on occasion I have seen such entrances completely unmanned. Not a clue that a sentry post should be there.

Let me ask you this: If I were a criminal with evil intentions, would I go through the front door rather than the parking entrances?

The inconveniences caused by ensuring the safety and security of customers is definitely well justified and generally accepted by the public. It must be stressed, however, that keeping their customers safe and secure can be done with class, style and grace.

And that should be a standard.

The State of our Educational System: A Sample

I received this SMS yesterday, which I am really having a hard time deciphering. The subject, KC Concepcion, is a local celebrity in the Philippines.

– quote –

KC Concepcion. Maganda, mayaman, sikat, nag-aral sa France, anak ng sobrang sikat. Ayos na sana ang lahat ngunit sa commercial niya ng shampoo

My Mama always told me to look your best…Always.

Nice grammar: Always told

Cguro din she always ate, always slept, always smiled. Hahahaha!

Remember guys, always prayed. Hehe. “

– unquote –

Translated in English:

“KC Concepcion. Beautiful, Wealthy, Famous, Studied in France, Daughter of a famous person. She has it made, but in her shampoo commercial, she says:

‘My Mama always told me to look your best…Always.‘

Nice grammar: ‘Always told’

So, she must also have always ate, always slept, always smiled. Hahahaha!

Remember guys, always prayed. Hehe. “

I need all your help on this, and please leave a comment on this blog post, but I really can’t get the joke, although I think I got the geist of the SMS message.

My analysis: The writer of this chain SMS message obviously wanted to mock KC’s grammar. The problem is, although I have not validated whether this is her exact statement in the commercial, I find absolutely nothing wrong with it. The statement “look your best…Always”, presumably being her mom’s exact words.

Neither do I find anything wrong with “always ate, always slept, always smiled” nor “always told”, if used in the proper context, as is the case here. I mean, what did they expect her to say? “My Mama always tell me…”?!?

Of course, the statement “Guys, always prayed”, which was meant as a friendly reminder, really written to be sarcastic, is grammatically wrong. I do think that we have bastardized the English language, as an example of much more, in the way we muddle up the participles of certain phrases, like:

“Sir, please registered before you enter”, “Please parked your car properly”,”Waiter, I will charged this to my credit card”, “Please don’t honked your horn, this is a school”, worse, “Students, please raised your hand if you have any question”. OMG!

I have always been skeptical of mainstream educational system in general, which is why me and my wife homeschooled our eldest child for 2 years. I must say that the experience was wonderful, and the fruits made it worthwhile. By force of circumstance, all our kids now go to ‘regular’ schools, but I am still not convinced nor happy, especially with what I see these days, this SMS included.

And although I am a product of a combination of Jesuit, Dominican, State and Private educational systems, I have much to want in the way we educate our children.

To the dogs, I tell you…

Your comments, please.

The Proliferation of the Wireless Landlines

 A friend of mine and fellow Consultant, Elmer Cruz, came to my neck of the woods to conduct a workshop for one of his clients. I had received an SMS from him days before, informing me of his new landline number. When we finally met at one of the resorts here, I asked him about it.

Elmer had taken a Bayan Wireless Landline plan, and even showed me the unit, a sleek pocket-sized ZTE device. For P699.00 a month (US$17.50), he had unlimited landline-to-landline calls, even cross-carrier, within his service area. Unfortunately, my corner of the Philippines was not within his service area, so I couldn’t toy with the device. He told me that the best part about the service is that he can carry his phone around, and receive calls at the usual cost to the caller if he were to call a Metro Manila number. This means FREE calls for most callers within the Metro, and other BayanTel subscribers in other areas. Elmer added that the unit came with a cable for PC connectivity, which essentially makes the phone a wireless modem. Considering that the unit operates on CDMA, I believe he can get decent throughput from the configuration. Problem is, he has not tested it yet. Judging from my experience on Globe’s Speak n’ Surf, where I get pretty decent broadband Internet speeds, CDMA is a pretty solid platform, barring interferences from similar frequencies. Of course, it really all depends on the bandwidth Bayantel has dedicated to that channel.

Globe offers their service for P995/month plus P300 for the ammortization of the handset. This policy could have changed since last 2006, when I first started using the service, as these were the rates back then. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any updated information over the net. I have since switched over to good old reliable DSL service.

PLDT’s wireless landline is a different animal altogether. It is essentially a GSM phone, complete with a SIM card embedded within the device, with services offered at near-landline rates. I say so because landline-to-landline charges are still limited to 600 minutes a month, and is computed based on both incoming and outgoing calls. After the 600 minutes are consumed, a P1.00/minute rate applies. Being a GSM phone, it has no broadband internet capability, and the 600 minute cap doesn’t make it feasible for dial-up connectivity. Besides, I don’t know if PC to phone connectivity is even possible.

I have heard people refer to these wireless landlines as glorified cordless phones. I urge them to consider that broadband Internet connectivity on-the-go is not common on cordless phones. I must admit, though, that since the technology commonly used on wireless landlines, whether GSM or CDMA, was actually designed for mobile phones (Remember Piltel?) the carriers have resorted to restricting its use to specific service areas, lest they compete with their own mobile wireless services. Which is why, I presume, BayanTel is able to offer their landline services at all their coverage areas — they do not have a wireless mobile component to protect.  PLDT, for example, restricts usage to a 1.5km radius, presumably tagged to a specific mobile base station (cell site). Whatever the case may be, you get to roam farther than an ordinary cordless phone can. For some users, it can spell the difference between landing the deal or not, when you just need to discuss at length, and your customer expects you not to scrimp on him.

As a testament to my statement, consider that all the carriers provide SMS for their wireless landline services.

Now, whatever happened to Digitel Mango? I seem to recall them being the first movers in the wireless landline space. They had an attractive P660 Plan with unlimited voice service within all its franchise areas. Internet, though, was charged at P0.25/minute, although it was broadband.

And though I have heard many complaints from subscribers of all the different carriers, it must be noted that service quality depends on so many variables, from customer-side equipment to carrier configuration. As with the question of SmartBro’s service quality improving from what it was before, so it shall be that in the future, all these kinks will be ironed out. Ultimately, service quality is matter of signal reception from the base station, which in turn boils down to investment on the part of the carrier, given the current choice of technology’s limitations. Time will come when all will be well, whether with this technology or another newer, better one.

Could service quality issues be the reason why no information is available on the web, directly from Globe or PLDT, regarding their wireless landline services? In this aspect, BayanTel has all the information available on a website dedicated for the purpose. Could their implementation be the most mature? I have been hearing about it for the past 4-5 years.

To add to that, it is always a good business practice to  update or maintain the information on your website, especially corporate ones. Stale information says something about your company.

Carrier Offline!

As I write this post, my mobile phone carrier is offline, and it has been this way since 3:30PM.

Since I operate off Subic Bay, I initially thought that this was an isolated concern, that usually being the case with areas away from the Metro. Not so, as I soon found out as I logged on to the Internet with my laptop and scoured through today’s Twits. Fellow Twitters have reported signal problems all across the country, from Manila to Cebu.

Coming from the Telco industry, I know this is certainly no minor glitch.

My phone, a BlackBerry, has been a very valuable productivity tool for me. I use it for a number of tasks, and this has been the longest I have not been able to make the most use of it during my waking hours. I, in fact, have taken mobile communication for granted. What with the way I use it for email on-the-go, Twitter, Yahoo! messenger, GoogleTalk, browsing and of course, voice and SMS.

When I used to teach College students, I would constantly remind them how much technology has advanced in the past 10 years alone (That was in 2002). In 1992, when the mobile phone was still a thing of luxury, and most people had no access to them, we were forced to arrange meetings way ahead of time, using pre-arranged rendezvous places and precise meeting times. I used to remind them how it felt to wait at the same spot, sometimes for hours, for the person you were supposed to meet, and have no way to reach him except for his last known location, by landline usually. It was such a joy to be able to manipulate schedules on the fly with pagers, and later, text messaging, and to be able to speak to people half-way around the world from practically anywhere. No need to wait for dial tones or go through an operator anymore. I pretty much felt that archaic today. If I were not in Subic Bay, where the landline is still pretty much used as in Manila of 1990, I would have missed a meeting which we had pre-arranged to “txt2 sumtym in d pm”.

It’s now 9:30PM and my service has just been restored….hooray….I really hope this never happens again.

The funny thing is, my alternate line, Sun Cellular, is alive and kickin’!

I wonder if the cause was unavoidable or whether it was caused by poor practice? Could they have been attempting a system upgrade, but did not take the necessary precautions?

Now, the question is: How could my carrier have made this bad situation better for its subscribers? Could they have anticipated this glitch and informed us ahead of time? Or could they have sent an apologetic SMS during bouts of GSM activity?

Bottom line: Let this be the last time.

Update (18Jan2008, 7AM): I have not received any explanation or seen any news article related to this service outage. Talk about customer service. I would at least have expected a poorly concocted tale of force majeure, but alas not a peep.

Countryside Economics

We should all live simpler lives. This makes us happier and a lot more friendly to the environment and our fellow man. If we all lived simpler, we would be free from at least some of the woes that beset modern man.

In fact, taking the idea a step further, why don’t we just relocate to the provinces? With the wide reach of connectivity and technology these days, we could actually continue to enjoy the pleasures of modern day life, and still make a living, while out in the boondocks. The countryside is developing rapidly, we have internet almost everywhere — the competition between our telcos made sure of that. Back in the day, the Hacienderos of Bacolod would live on their farms, seemingly a great distance from civilization, ut they continued to live decent and auspicious lives. They were able to educate their children who now play many an important role in our industrial world. These days, there are options such as homeschooling, the phenomenon of the internet, courier companies that reach the farthest corners of our expanse, transportation routes that grow each day, airline flights that seem to serve more and more routes. If that doesn’t work for you, there are seaplanes and boats, FTP and email. What a wonderful time we live in.

Imagine this:

Sitting on a rocky stream somewhere in a cozy corner of the country, a Dr. Pepper soda in hand, reading my email on my BlackBerry. Oh my, I need to edit that draft attachment attached to that email message. Good thing I brought my IBM laptop and wireless aircard, then connect to Smart’s 3G (or at least GPRS, if really way out in the wilderness) service and send back that contract, duly proofread and ready for my client’s signature. I will probably get the signed copy through fax tonight.

Enough of relaxing, I need to check back on my business. I return home on my Old school Toyota Land Cruiser, and swing out back to where my livelihood is. Passing through my pine tree grove, taking in a whif of its lovely scent, I check on my Anthuriums, my vegetables, mushrooms and free-range chicken eggs, which are just about ready for packing to be picked up by 2GO. My client has been waiting for my shipment. When 2GO gets this to him, his customers will enjoy their fresh mushroom soup, arugula and baby lettuce salad and main dish of assorted grilled vegetables with devilled free-range chicken eggs. If I prefer to use Air21 tomorrow, I’ll just give them a call.

I go in my house, see my wife and children busy homeschooling, researching over the internet. My, am I glad they don’t have to go through miles of traffic or the risk of any mishaps if we had decided to school them in Manila. I feel better knowing I have control over the information made available to them, which not only includes those seen in school but also mass media, adverts and even newspapers. that is not to say that they will never get to come across these types of information, but at least either me or my wife will be close enough to satiate their hunger for knowledge in the proper manner, and in the right perspective. You cannot avoid such situations, especially while they go to town for their Kumon and soccer games with the other kids. But I know I can rest easy knowing that their parents are the dominant characters in their early lives. When the time comes that they need to go to Manila for college, their minds would have been molded correctly such that they can filter the bad and suck in the good.

That fax came in. I will have to visit Cebu every other week for a consultancy engagement in ISO. Not bad. Now, I have something to tell my friends when we meet for a few drinks at our usual haunt, the Bahay na Tisa. It is, as common here as pan de sal, al fresco, since the pollution we have all grown used to is practically non-existent here. the guys would probably be sick and tired of all the new niceties I have called “projects”: my new composting toilet, my new cistern that gets filled up by rainwater, my new waste disposal/composting system, my new solar-powered pathway lights, my new wind-powered water pump, my new blah-blah….

Now, we just moved here 2 years ago after purchasing the property we live in now, but I was so taken and accepted among brothers and fellows of my fraternity. I have never met them before, but I came well recommended, and we now treat each other as brothers would.

Not ready to make that leap yet? Imagine the economics of it all. I generate more jobs where I live, preventing the locals form having to go to Manila for that dream life that will not come as easily as imagined. I am helping minimize the influx of people into Manila that contribute to its pollution, homeless colonies and crowds, thereby exerting more stress on the already-complicated eco-system that is Manila.

Now, doesn’t that make you at least a bit more excited?