Being unfair is the secret to success
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
Unfortunately, fairness in some cases doesn’t work well. It gives the disadvantaged reason to wail and weep rather than build, and it is a sure path to mediocrity.
- Twenty five million kids get the same lousy education because we can’t bear to invest in 100 schools that do first class work. It wouldn’t be fair.
- All cities struggle because we refuse to invest lavishly in three that will fuel economic growth for centuries.
- Professionals won’t work in government because we cannot stand to see some people getting Yamashita’s gold while we are stuck with peanuts. So it’s a government that pays peanuts and operates unprofessionally.
Fairness assures failure when applied to negate the 80/20 principle. The 80/20 principle says 20% of your people will produce 80% of your results. (“The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes.” Wiki)
Successful investors know that you focus on where returns are greatest, then roll out broadly as your resources grow. Soon you are operating 500 first class schools. Then 1,000. And soon the Philippines is fielding graduates who can read and write and think critically, in droves. It’s a wholly different foundation. One built for the future.
The 16 National Science High Schools are exactly the right idea. But there are only 16, since the program was initiated in 1962. Define “languish”. And it takes an act of Congress to get to 25.
Start with three first class cities and soon you have 10. And it’s a different Philippines. One that investors like, and tourists like.
(Ha! And in political terms, turn one city Pink, then five, then ten, and you get a different election result.)
Pay top people well and suddenly corruption gets cut in half. Professionalize the deputies and competence doubles. Establish career paths for subordinates and, golly whiz! Corruption ends and competence skyrockets.
It’s a first world Philippines.
The top moral question is not “should you be fair?” It’s “should you be productive?”
Invest for the highest returns and everybody soon wins. That’s what’s fair.
_________________________
Cover photo generated by Bing using the prompt: “Produce a representation of the idea that 20% of the people produce 80% of the results, in oils.”
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
THANKS, Joe America!
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Ah, made my day, Sir Gemino. Thanks for stopping by.
Joe, I believe the Filipino crab mentality is complementary to the FYIGM mindset over there. FYIGM means f.y. I got mine and often means closing the door to opportunities to those next in line. Examples:
1) Honor students from good public high schools all got into UP in the 1950s, but some decades after public high schools sucked and the automatic scholarship for nationwide salutatorians and valedictorians no longer was.
2) Filipino migrants abroad often ferociously hate the next wave.
3) The new middle class sees those not yet where they are now as a threat and basically gave Duterte the license to tokhang them.
It is a mindset of there not being enough “fish and bread” to go around. Christians on the surface, but no belief in the miracle of bread and fish, Matthew 14:17-21. Even less negative examples show the scarcity mindset brought forth by the experience of such:
A) migrants to Manila and later abroad were usually expected and often did get their relatives or townmates jobs in the big city or abroad, or a foreign husband, seen a lot of that in Germany.
B) politicians who employ those who help them are seen as generous and helpful souls.
A positive example of B) would be movie and music stars who employ relatives in businesses they set up or outright have them run them. It does seem to work at times.
Didn’t Imelda say, “I’ll never go hungry again?” Oh, that was Scarlett O’Hara. In my recent deep dives into the Filipino music scene, I have found out how many of the stars have gone through hunger, and some literally said they don’t ever want that to happen again.
Well, maybe in the future, when fragments of TSOH are the New Scripture, it shall read, “And Joe the Baptist said, haveth faith, if you are productive all shall have enough fish and bread. In year 6, Post Pandemic, President Kiko Pangilinan brought forth fish and bread for all people.”
What I was trying to say is Filipinos have (often justified) fear of being left out, so one should not wait too long in redistributing the gains from productivity to the entire barangay, ehem nation.
The entire hingi MENTALITY BTW also has people saying, “If you want your luck to persist, don’t be stingy.” Fear of not being able to eat enough is behind that, deep inside.
Right. How it’s done is important.
Great insights Irineo. I might add that the hingi mentality is probably the greatest detriment to the national development. There’s plenty of Filipinos in lower economic classes just waiting around for the next chance to hingi, and they will support the politicians who “gave.” No understanding at all of baking the bread or catching the fish, just what they’ll eat the next day so to speak. I often see entire families and communities riding on the generosity of just a few people.
I got into a heated debate with a Filipino recently who had a reklamo of why the US gave “so much money” to Ukraine, while the Philippines gets secondhand equipment. This entirely misses the point that there’s currently an active war going on propagated by one of the world powers that threatens the global peace, Russia. It also ignores the fact that most of the “money” the US has given to Ukraine is in the form of our secondhand equipment, with the “money” just a number placed on the value of said equipment, and the money will be used to regenerate brand new modern weapons for the US military in the American defense industry.
In the mind of this person, the Philippines should also receive F-16s, F15s, and even F-35s and frigates, destroyers due to the MDT and being the “oldest ally in the Pacific.” Not to mention, with the disorganized state of the AFP and defense allocation by Congress, who knows if the Philippines can even sustain secondhand defense articles if given? The defense articles gifted by prior US administrations fell into disrepair under Marcos Sr. and beyond, including the former jet fighters that the TA-50PHs are just now replacing under the plan inaugurated under PNoy’s leadership. Ahem, last I checked the US isn’t wholesale bankrolling European allies, the US has bases there to provide protection to the EU NATO countries, similar to what is proposed under EDCA. Of course, the US would love the Philippines to retake initiative on her own defense, similar to what Japan, South Korea and Australia are doing now with US encouragement.
What I also dislike about the hingi mentality is the absolute disdain some will give if their hingi is rejected, or if they don’t receive the entirety of what they expected. No one decent person expects someone to bow down in thanks, but no one enjoys being generous if the recipient is ungrateful. The Ukrainians have proven their bravery, they adequately show their appreciation, and they police their own people who reklamo and are ungrateful, which is why most Americans are in awe of the Ukrainian fight for democracy.
I can’t help to think that again this circles right back to the ancient expectation of a datu/barangay captain to be the facilitator and provider. If no neighboring barangays were raided so to speak, loot brought back and divided, the people will grumble. This may be the reason why Marcos Jr. embarked on his multiple world tours to go around gathering Western grants and commitments so he can bring money back to divide among the people.
Maybe remind those comparing Philippines and Ukraine to how Filipino guerilla at least the USAFFE supported ones got American assistance via submarine in WW2.
But then again, Filipinos of that era, and even just a few years later those who won the Battle of Yultong in the Korean war, seemed people of more character than what the country has today.
One wonders how a nation can undergo such a degradation of character in just a few generations and I sometime ask myself yes how about my generation what are we in that process and how can it be reversed?
I often personally feel awkward explaining Filipino history to a reklamador, when I as an American know more about Filipino history than the person who tried to debate me. It should be the opposite where they are the more knowledgeable one, which is perhaps the problem. But then again, these reklamador types always seem to be the least educated and follow the party line of what they were indoctrinated in whether by their politicians or online disinformation.
I think that’s the right thread to pull. How did the nation undergo such a degradation of character in the first place? I’m sure there are multiple causes, but a main one seems to be the former Marcos Sr. regime replacing Quezon’s patriotism with empty nationalism. Nationalism is the antithesis of patriotism, which requires sacrifice versus nationalism’s flag waving at often concocted past history. I recently heard a very succinct explanation on patriotism by USN CDR Bobby Jones, Ret. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoD05Gfd4C8) where he makes the condition of personal sacrifice the key.
The generation that culminated in the hope and modernization post-WWII until 1965 were patriotic, brave and fought for their liberty despite being cut off from outside support during the Japanese occupation. Even against all odds, they hid in the jungles or blended into remote barangays while actively opposing an invader. They exemplified resourcefulness when American supplies were delayed due to IJN patrols. They kept the faith after the loss at Corregidor. All the while, many of their fellow leaders quickly submitted under the Philippine Executive Commission. The traitors did not make personal sacrifices, rather they quickly sacrificed the nation to save themselves.
When the Marcos Sr. regime cratered the former intelligenstia and industrialists that Quezon built the Third Republic on, their subsequent mass departure caused a vacuum in which there was no push back by informed citizenry. These were the citizen-soldiers and learned men who rebuilt the Philippines following the devastation caused by the Japanese occupation. Often those leaders also had actively resisted Japanese domination and recognized the Philippine’s budding role on the world stage. Add on 2 generations of incessant propaganda both by design under the remainder of the Marcos Sr. era, and later the misguided attempts to cultivate national identity through nationalism, the Philippines became ripe for Duterte’s rise and the Marcos family’s return because of a mass belief in a “Golden Era” that never existed because it was snuffed out by Martial Law.
So here we are, where a large portion of the population is numbed by economic struggle while a loud subset proclaims empty pride. The latter does not want to listen to those who could come back to help rebuild, while the former is gripped by such economic uncertainty that they are not yet ready for transformative ideas that does not involve placing more food on the table or securing a place to live. Sometimes the situation really does feel helpless.
Yes, they are complementary, aren’t they, driven by centuries of abuse, need, and neglect. In this piece, I talk to would-be leaders and anyone who can influence the way decisions are made. You have to start somewhere, so start already! That could be a subtitle to the blog.
It will, of course, be a challenge to present the idea to those who are not in the top 5 or 100. But I do believe the Philippines can field top high school graduates if it wants to. Not much different than fielding athletes who can win gold. And it can make some gorgeous cities. No need for me to stop believing, even if it runs against the grain.
Yes, Olympic gold is a good example. I kinda see the early Greek Olympics as a way to compete while avoiding the usual bloodshed and waste of resources between Greek tribes of yore. The Philippines probably needs an Olympic mindset to replace the “Highlander” mindset of “there can only be one” or the cockfighting mindset that the losing rooster lands in the cooking pot. The Olympic place gives space for silver and bronze medalists strive for gold too, and the rest to emulate the excellent each in their own way. The Greeks did bring forth a great civilization.
I used to not think this way but being much older now something that I used to not believe is undeniable based on my observations.
You have to lean into your strengths.
This means being unfair because we are dealing with a group.
Nice phrase. Lean into your strengths. Exactly.
As the only Bernie and Ralph Nader supporter on here, probably the only one who watches Democracy Now. this stinks like Trickle Down Economics, Joe. look I’m pro OFWs and BPOs, Filipinos making money. and I’m pro EJKs as reaction to Crab Mentality, whether aspirational or punitive. CDE Filipinos will bring down AB Filipinos. but I think the way to go isn’t Reaganomics (nor Bidenomics), just leverage the culture. That barn raising, bayanihan and balikatan spirit, that’s what’s gonna build the Philippines. hell that’s what built America, not this woke shit (woke is basically, like new age spirituality all about me, me, me, the world centers around my experience, and my morals). The Puritans, the Amish, the Mormons, the pioneers, etc. so doesn’t have to be religious, this bayanihan stuff comes from having to survive and huddle together to ensure said survival. the Philippines has it, the US has it, its humanity really, pulling others up. for example the Quakers have been pushing the buttons behind the scenes creating American exceptionalism from scratch, first in England, then in the USA, pushing for anti monarchy, then as abolitionists, then womens suffrage, etc. etc. and they did this not thru any sort of organization but just the idea that everyone is equal and has God stuff inside. ABCDE folks. all equal. none of this 20% vs. 80% bs, that’s just capitalism talk its crap. go with something older, not this dog eat dog bullshit. its all about principles. that all ABCDE are equal, is a mighty principle to follow. just go with that. with that said, I do believe in forming regional specialties, like CEBU for example shouldn’t become NCR but its own industries. competitive advantage. put all the tech in Mindanao all the left overs from Taiwan thats not going to Texas, but for Cebu it should be all creatives type industries. like Ireneo’s P-Pop, or movies, or comics, or books, why not write screen plays for movies too. look at the Albuquerque Santa Fe Taos triangle. get some ideas there. but don’t buy into this Trickle Down stuff.
I’m confused. You seem to object (80/20) then seem to agree (Cebu) which I agree should be invested in mightily to craft a modern metropolis. The method should fit the goals. My goal is simple. Invest smarter.
As for “woke”, it’s one of those words that means different things to different people. Your version builds nothing as far as I can tell. Mine is that woke is knowledge. It is pro-science, and within the sciences are social sciences that deal with issues of people. Tossing out the historical data and wisdoms for political emotionalism seems to me to be the wrong approach.
Beyond that, you are just into your own me space, like everyone else.
I’m saying follow the Quakers, Joe.
this 20% and 80% rhetoric is Reagonomics, its trickle down. do away with that. the rhetoric is what am disagreeing with. the plan is sound. its Bay Area, meets Hollywood, meets San Diego. being economically versatile. California didn’t get to where it is doing this 20% and 80% rhetoric. Californians would be pissed. if they were broken up into AB and C and DE. thats just not American. and based on Filipino culture nor is it Filipino. so am just saying theres no need for that.
As for woke. woke’ism is the reason Deadpool and Wolverine succeeded but the Marvels didn’t. its when you go against the flow. again look into the Quakers theyve been going against the flow since inception but seem to be on the right all the time. even environmentalism they were decades ahead. so American exceptionalism seems to be following the Quaker lead. the Quakers don’t get ahead, woke’ism gets ahead manipulates. like horses people are bucking against wokeism.
As for your last point I tend to agree solipsism. abounds. But again look at the Quakers. how they worship is solipsism they look inside then project out. but going inside is first. So in conclusion look into Quakers. they seem to be doing right consistently. otherwise, I agree with you. just not the rhetoric employed.
My kids in the US all got a great educational start at Whittier College lab school, so I’m indebted to its Quaker heritage in scholarship. Of course, President Nixon, as a Quaker, attended Whittier College. If you read the Wiki recount of Quakerism, you see the organization has had to deal with issues of faith, gender, and race, among other pressures from within, and has different ideals and arguments within the faith today. So it argues mightily to keep centered, knowledgeable, and constructive. I trust you will join the Church and put your money where your mouth is, lol. Meanwhile, I will stick with my advocacy for more productive investments by Philippine government.
I would add that I’m not seeing trickle-down as a driving ideology behind the sharper selection of productive places to invest. It occurs naturally among nations that invest well because real wealth is generated. And it flows to where it works best.
” I trust you will join the Church and put your money where your mouth is, lol.” No, sir. not me i wouldn’t last 1 whole hour of silence. But I just saw https://weta.org/watch/shows/quakers-quiet-revolutionaries-0 and thus Googled that Quakerism is alive and well in the Philippines. maybe we’ll see opposite of trickle down there. due to them. I just think the Philippines of all countries have seen too much of this already. always with a boot on their necks. I hope more Filipinos get into Quaker Meetings, stop going to Quiboloys. I do agree with you that your idea does not need this trickle down rhetoric, thats why i’m saying just do away with it. the idea stands on its own. the trickle down stuff just gives it a bad taste. its not needed, Joe.
Good to know that we can slice through the razor grass with machetes and arrive to the other side whole and not bleeding. I’m with you on this wrap-up, especially the unbearable hour of silence.
Is there in the Philippines, a region that can replicate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle “The Research Triangle, or simply The Triangle, are both common nicknames for a metropolitan area in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of North Carolina. Anchored by the cities of Raleigh and Durham and the town of Chapel Hill, the region is home to three major research universities: North Carolina State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively. The “Triangle” name originated in the 1950s with the creation of Research Triangle Park located between the three anchor cities, which is the largest research park in the United States and home to numerous high tech companies.” cuz I’m thinking it’ll be University of Southern Mindanao since they tend to send a bunch of academics abroad, trick is to magnet lasso them back home, or since many of them return home to the Philippines activate them in their retirement. in Kabacan, so maybe Joey can chime in of said feasibility.
ps. regarding Quaker schools, Joe, these Quakers are really something else theyre so averse to organizations theyre such anarchists that I’ve notice they gift their schools away once established, the biggest they have that still somewhat Quaker is George Fox University outside of Portland OR but that seems to be more like your run of the mill Christian school these days too. and seems more quaker denominations are looking more like evangelicals, i guess many Quakers themselves can’t take that 1 hour of silence as well opting for the Joel Osteen style worship. with lots of noise. keep an eye if any Quaker colleges pop up in the Philippines. and how these institutions can form triangles or trapezoids of hubs for research. did your kids get into the Sunday Meetings one hour of silence? curious about this now. like what if theres someone with Tourettes.
The only Osteen I know pitched for the Dodgers. That Joel fellow seems another Quiboloy cult leader to me, personality centered. I run for my hideout in the mountains anytime one gets near. There was a religious underpinning to the school’s education, but the real trump card was forgetting about the “what” of learning, to obsess about the “excitement” about learning. It became a lifestyle for my kids. If there was an hour of silence, I suspect they’d have spent it reading.
The heart of Philippine education and research is Quezon City, anchored on UP Diliman, with Ataneo right next door. No other area comes close.
My, my this blog is on a roll. New substantive topics every week, reminds me of the Edgar Lores era
Good to see you, too, andrew. Yes, well, to build things, you need to lay bricks.
My oh my this blog is on a roll, substantive topics every week, like in the Edgar Lores era
I found Edgar’s X account and started tearing up. I miss him. May he is happy in the afterlife.
I’m confident he is one level up on the cycles leading to perfection.
He did tell me he was searching for …was it Nirvana or peace?
Both I believe.
Yes thanks.
I saw a youtube video once of a guy that says he died in the hospital for like 45 minutes he was already bagged up and set to go the morgue when he woke up. But he said he ended up at a place like real solid place that looked like a big train station looking place and a garden right next to it. with people coming and going. it felt like a whole day being there, so he was greeted by someone who helped him orient but the greeter was basically like How was it this time what die you learn? and the guy was like What are you talking about? give it time you’ll remember. and after just waiting, observing people coming and going, realizing there were also other arrivals with other greeters who sat and waited with them. then after awhile he started remembering his recent life, his past lives, and this place. and once oriented He was walked around the garden and they i guess debriefed. He remembered his recent and past lives, but he wasn’t really attached to them like an objective memory. he just felt belonging and love in that place. so the greeter asked him where he wanted to go now, gave him options and i guess he picked the library. after hanging out at the library which was more ethereal with knowledge just seeping into you, he was told they had to return. and he was like I don’t wanna go back, I wanna stay. Sorry, not your time yet, but we’ll be waiting for you here. and so he went back and woke up back in the hospital surrounded by family crying. One thing he did mention was that we come here specifically to live these experiences, then we return to share these experiences. and thats it. oh and i guess we volunteer to come live these experiences. maybe Edgar is already back among us or in a different galaxy. or maybe he’s just hanging out in that library taking a break from all these experiences. for sure, I would wanna come back as one of Taylor Swift’s cats. i’d be like send me back right away as a Birman kitten in her care.
if that happen to you, will you pls let us know how it is to go beyond where no one has really gone and live to tell the tales!
apparently of the five senses, one is most dominant, other senses are of no use in that realm. only those who have truly experienced the phenomenon can tell which is which.
nice of you to want to be cat. as for me, I dont want to come back. I have suffered enough and one lifetime is enough for me.
addendum to the deleted posts. kb, I don’t know what’s permissible or not on the other side but the fact that folks keep coming here has to mean theres a reason which is some experiences are just not possible on the other side. thus necessary to come down here. I also don’t know if its possible to return as a kitten, am just assuming. i don’t really know how reincarnation works. but I assume all lifeforms are available, to include maybe even fire or plasma. or maybe come back as a single drop of rain.
taken note, here we have joeam as editor, over there is the supreme editor whose decision is final. no correspondence entered into.
one problem with literal unfairness in the military world is having too many Generals sacrificing Military effectiveness being top heavy is not worth it.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/05/does-the-military-have-too-many-generals/the-costs-of-having-too-many-generals-are-crippling
Boy, that’s a superb example of the way not to invest. It occurs because of promotion creep, and happens in businesses, too.
Yes Generals = C Suite
when you are not paying for stuff you are less results oriented. being divorced from funding makes endeavors unsustainable. for vague goals that underpin security from external threats and disasters that you can only prepare for this is a problem.
LCX mentioned the Latin honorifics.
One use is you are exempted from taking the Civil Service Exam. The thing is some will only try for a few years then go abroad or private sector even in the Military.
https://csc.gov.ph/csc-offers-special-eligibility-for-honor-graduates
Thanks, karl. This is actually good use of these Latin honorifics. understandable they want out (private or abroad) but military seem like a good place for them, lots of warrior-academics here cuz DoD seems to prefer that. more generals with PhDs and such. which makes sense only thing is they’re getting their advance degrees masters and doctors from military colleges like Naval War College, etc. etc. when they should be rubbing up with real PhD programs either state side or like Oxford/Cambridge etc. see how they match up against other PhDs. so in the military is fine just keep grinding them to their sharpest point. then give ’em command to match theory with practice. if am not mistaken all Olympic athletes go in the military to be given stipend and time to train. not sure if this was the case for the recent Olympic gold Filipino tho’. since he seems to have trained mainly abroad, unless as a AFP military officer still. i dunno.
I remember Senator Cynthia Villar scolding people at the senate. “Research kayo nang research, makakain ba yan?” (Research is all you want to do, can your research be eaten?). That ticked me off. Yes, we can eat research. Not right now but in the future. People like her impede PH progress. Research and development is the pipeline to innovation, progress and prosperity. America is where it is today because it funded research and development, experiments, prototypes and pilot projects.
Villar should be the poster woman for what ails the Philippines. Privilege, greed, favoritism, and incredibly self-involved thinking.
The difference between Mr and Mrs is that the Mister knew how to be poor.
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1175450/villar-hits-da-for-high-budget-on-corn-research-baliw-na-baliw-kayo-sa-research
I think, this is the link. what senator cynthia villar said may have been taken out of context. apparently she was angry that a big chunk of dept of agriculture’s budget in 2019 went into research and could not be of much use to farmers. she would have preferred the money be used to buy seeds, fertilizers and farm implements so crops can be planted, harvested and then marketed. the sooner the better.
if DA funds research year in and year out, shouldnt the results be in by now!
and yet despite all the researches, it’s apparent our farmers are still at the bottom of the food chain and allegedly not much better off.
who really benefits from DA research? the researchers who published the findings and owns the copyright for maybe 5yrs, and then put their imprimatur on their intellectual property, sell the research findings to the highest bidder, and be paid accordingly. so where do the farmers come in?
ah, the farmers may have to pay to access the research findings (newly minted products) and if they cannot afford to pay the asking price, appears to me, they have been priced out of their own budget! if they felt duped, I did too.
good point on intellectual property and research in.general.
the senator did not ask for an update on the research. I suppose DA dont answer to her, they’re appointed officials and answerable mostly to the president. but mayhap out of courtesy, DA can be informative and cordial, and talk about their pet projects like research and promote it. so next time, DA’s funding wont be unnecessary questioned in the senate.
I think there has been a number of agricultural researches done on top of other similar researches already done by our neighbors like vietnam, indonesia, thailand, malaysia, etc. maybe I was wrong to think we can learn from them and adapt the result of their findings to our own needs, considering there has been joint studies and exchanges of scholars and agronomists among ASEAN nations, philippines included. have we gone that way, it would probly cost us a lot less.
I’m not really sure if we are duplicating the researches already done by our neighboring countries, comparing the results, and or if we are in the threshold of discovering something even better, newer.
The ownership of the research funded by the government and done by government employees in a governmental institution should belong to the government and the Filipinos. There should be contracts specifying that the data resulting in those research belong to the government and the public.
“With government funding, it is important to distinguish between grants and contracts. Under grants, researchers must carry out the research as planned and submit reports, but control of the data remains with the institution that received the funds. Contracts require the researcher to deliver a product or service, which is then usually owned and controlled by the government.”
https://ori.hhs.gov/content/Chapter-6-Data-Management-Practices-Data-ownership
There is evidence that corn research in PH had been fruitful. The link below contains an up-to-date summary of the PH corn production. It had been steadily increasing on a year to year basis. Do you know that corn is the staple food of 20% of Filipinos especially the indigenous tribes? For some, it is their sole livelihood. It is also important for the animal feeds industry and for the production of various consumable food products. It is also being used as an alternative fuel and as a sustainable material for various non-consumables like food wrappers.
https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/countrysummary/Default.aspx?id=RP&crop=Corn
Is Villar right in saying that the research money should be used by the corn farmers for tangible aids such as seeds, fertilizer and farm implements? No. There should be a balance in funding of intangibles (research, cutting edge knowledge) and tangibles in any forward looking governmental entity. The investment in the future should be balanced with the present needs. If what you are saying is true about government researchers, the fault lies in the government in which Villar is a part of. The Legislature branch has plenty of rights and responsibilities to make sure that Filipinos get what they paid for and they should act accordingly.
What sticks to my crow is her pronouncement that if she as a smart woman could not make heads and tails of the corn research, how could a farmer understand it? The good senator’s slip is showing and not in good way (to put it delicately). Researchers do not print PDFs of their studies and hand them to farmers. Like legislations, research results are put in practical context with implementing guidelines before the knowledge is funneled to farmers. Researchers are often academics who have background in teaching people from all walks of life. After all, what is the use of a research without practical and beneficial applications?
you should read Annie Jacobsen’s book about DARPA, JP. DARPA, used to be ARPA but they wanted it pinned down to DoD hence the name change. but they set the research funding academic institutions only to have all those research given essentially given to the likes of Lockheed Martin Boeing, etc. who then use said research to sell it back to the gov’t like 10 fold mark up. same with the Nat’l labs here. so if i were a taxpayer i’d be pissed but i guess the thinking is that the research has to be scaled up. or shut down. totally under gov’t auspices with all the give and take and pay to play that entails. and probably why when 2 scientists in Alabama came public with anti-gravity research they got killed. but i digress, who owns research is important. Monsanto for example sue farmers whose crop turned out to be GMO trademarked by Monsanto. and the farmers were like the seeds just wafted into my farm! so theres the gov’t, theres the schools, theres the corporations and theres the regular people who invariably would be taxpayers themselves. whose research is it?
funny how those ‘seeds’ traveled. sometimes birds dropped them from the sky and if they are migratory flock, I can only imagine what they could have left behind, aside from bird flu that is.
yeah, birds cannot get into protected green houses and steal experimental seeds, but they can be very devious at times.
LOL. yeah nature and patents just don’t mix, kb. exactly!
senator cynthia villar’s tirade in the senate has been editorially responded to way back in 2019.
https://www.pids.gov.ph/details/editorial-we-need-research
The reason why America excels in technology and the resultant productivity gains is exactly because the US federally funded research provides a way for scientists and researchers to investigate fields that have no current profit incentive for private corporations to invest their money in. Federally funded research often fails, which is the point of learning from mistakes in science and medicine so that the next project can move towards success.
An early form of federally funded research was increasing agriculture yields through developing then pushing out more effective farming methods, then by developing technologies to mechanize agriculture which the US was the first country to implement on a large scale. The mechanization of US agriculture was also federally funded by cheap interest farm loans. As the agriculture workforce was reduced through technology and better farming practices, that released a large available workforce for industrialization in the great American factories of yesteryear. Once manufacturing productivity increased, that subsequently released another wave of workers for the services industry and so on.
An observation I made early on about Philippines governance is that it is utterly lazy in its thinking, while the people are largely not equipped with adequate education to question their politicians. A vicious cycle that repeats itself every generation where small incremental gains are quickly rolled back, and the Filipino starts back at square one. The problems that the Philippines faces can often seem insurmountable when taken as a whole. It appears as a daunting wall that is impossible to vault over. Seemingly impossible obstacles can be defeated by chipping away at the problem little by little, making small but achievable goals and building on small successes. In the end, the insurmountable can often by conquered.
I often think of the majority of the Philippine Congress to be out of touch dynasts and clueless celebrities (did anyone see Padilla’s recent insane comments about marital rape?). They are often a knockoff version of our American Republicans, who strive for office not to help the people, but to make video clips of themselves “acting tough” to further their popularity among the masses in lieu of actual action to help the citizens. The job of Congresspeople should not to be the experts, but to ask broad questions to experts who can inform the public, then to enact legislation which will enable the experts in each field to convey the message directly to the citizens who will be affected, such as farmers in this case.
oh, dear. it’s like trainspotting for us, watching and observing. a number of philippines congressmen and congresswomen, as well as senators dont turn up to work, session after session. it was alleged one time ex senator, and one time ex congressman, manny pacquiao, is winner being top absentee. and he was apparently pivotal in senator de lima’s losing her senate portfolio, her senate chair declared vacant, leading to her incarceration and fall from grace.
Well, the recent altercations between Sen Risa and VP Sara are so typical. One represents good governance and institutions, the other defies them openly..
hontiveros has been busy. she also revealed who alice guo really was and said alice guo left our country on july 18. guo’s notary lawyer, elmer galicia, said guo was in his office in aug 14 and could not have been out of the country; that guo parked her landcruiser outside his office. and yet the lawyer cannot provide evidence like cctv footage of gou’s landcruiser parked outside his office, and of guo going into his office with documents for him to notarized.
I’m with hontiveros, vp cannot have a book published in her own name and charged the govt for distributing and publishing expenses. if book was deped project, she should have said on the book jacket, and not epal herself. schoolkids bringing the book home to their parents for them to remember sara by, now that election is coming.
sa panahon namin, we only have a book to be shared by us 39 pupils. so our teacher passed the book around, and we take turns reading excerpts. poor readers were picked up along the way and told how to read words correctly. then our teacher tested us on how well we understand what we have read. so we listened well and we listened hard, and no chitchats, knowing we will be tested soon after. there were laggards, hard of hearing dahil malnourished e. and some have earache and have burst eardrums, common childhood diseases. but they have general idea what the book was about and passed the test, just.
Why should a majority of Congresspeople and Senators need to show up to work, when they are only using the position of power to secure the government resources allocated back to their province (meaning their family and friends)? Manny Pacquiao was a weird case since he was earning so much money in boxing bouts already, and didn’t need to steal the people’s money. I think I remember reading that he has a god complex where he even thinks he should be president one day. Now take that basket-case Robin Padilla though. Sir Robin must be very broke, which is why he’s always showing up for work to earn his salary and spouting nonsense!
apparently, it is disrespectful to the people who voted for them, hence senators and members of congress must always turn up at work. unless on leave, absences must always be explained and presumably approved.
incidentally, not only robin padilla has perfect attendance but also bato de la rosa, bong go, as well as cynthia villar, hontiveros, jinggoy estrada, gachalian, raffy tulfo, zubiri, villanueva, and legarda.
it is alleged alan cayetano has overtaken pacquiao’s record and currently has the most absences.
and they got paid whether absent or not, and the higher the position like the senate president, the higher the pay.
each of them chair their own committee and must be present for plenary sessions.
I think this is a toss up. all are villains here. We are not a rich country that can fund basic research. even in the US a lot of basic research is done by universities because it is unprofitable. I see this in the DEPED achievements where they hit the research goals they met. I am willing to bet a 100K that those research were practically useless. And given the way business people think which I believe deep down the Senator Villar is. This was exasperation with a government bureaucracy that thinks spending tax money is their birth right and not an investment from common people like us.
TLDR: a lot of research people in the Philippines are trained by US based institutions and do not face the reality that when you have less resources you have to be more focused. I saw this a lot in UP. Classmates from poorer families trying to spend their college lives like Upper class classmates. When you have less you need to spend wisely. A lot of our scientists are not spending wisely.
Why do we have a space program exactly?
Microsatellites like those made by the Philippines and launched by Japan, etc. are student projects at the Technical University of Munich, so what the Philippines has isn’t exactly NASA..
To get an overview over erosion, flooding, land use, etc, these microsatellites ARE useful. Of course with Project NOAH scrapped they are HALF as useful.
With LGUs barely on board when it comes to mangroves, forest cover, not strip mining, and quarrying like crazy, I guess the satellites just can be a way of helplessly observing stuff go down on the ground so yes are they useful?
it’s actually a question of planning for me. are going towards a goal or are we doing this to create capacity/capabilities.
The DOST with private sector and I believe Japan built a test track on UP. What has happened to that project? are we abandoning that? why? what are the reasons? what did we learn?
Doing something is actually something positive for me because the bureaucracy just wants to exist. Cashing in the checks is perfect for the bureaucracy. That is why when something happens it’s usually a passion project or someone is gonna get paid.
The DOST AGT or Automated Guideway Transit system could have been to build capabilities, even as I saw test runs in Diliman on YT that sucked.
It could also have been what YT channel RM Transit, run by Canadian transit expert Reese, calls a Gadgetbahn, older generations might say Rube Goldberg machine.
What shocks me a bit is that the DOST project to build own PNR wagons was not utilized even as they managed to get prototypes working.
Possibly coordination with DTI is missing, or something like what Japanese MITI was postwar.
Or an oligarch firm that takes over going to series production like the Korean chaebols did.
we are not rich we have to build towards something. we shouldn’t be a nation of beginnings
That is why the own PNR wagons were the sweet spot between being overly ambitious, like with the AGT, and just buying abroad all the time. Existing capabilities in bus manufacturing were utilized und built upon for instance.
Being poor just means you have to ramp up in smarter ways, not try to be world class at once like the Western educated often do, or stick to unimaginative and jeepney like solutions like some others do. I have written half a dozen examples of what that narrow path can be.
Also I have to correct that notion about NOAH.
A project has a set start and end. NOAH is a project. The correct way or institutional way to handle that is for an agency to handle it. The next level is to make this a program whose budget would be defended in Congress ala VP Sara defending her budget. It was orphaned because it wasn’t institutionalized before its supporters lost their power.
To be fair pagasa has something like this:
https://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/products-and-services/risk-analysis-maps
So in a way it was institutionalized within pagasa already.
Are you guys seeing companies from Taiwan trickle there already? they’ve already opened up shop here in AZ and Texas, and i think in Oklahoma as well. once all the eggs are not in one basket anymore, i think the Taiwan China rhetoric will quiet down. I always figured they’d open those Taiwanese chip making stuff in Mindanao away from Chinese attacks.
TSMC is building a microchip factory in East Germany..
https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/von-der-leyen-rings-in-chipmaker-tsmcs-dresden-plant-as-eu-greenlights-german-e5bn-subsidy-plan/
not much news on that front yet
Some are expanding.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1202217
Joe, sometimes I wonder if the American optimism inherent in me and you enables us to keep on rooting for a better Philippines, a country we both feel great affinity for. The longer I travel the Philippines, the more I’ve realized that Filipino cheerfulness is not a result of optimism but the lack of it, in a way inoculating regular Filipinos from the dread of constantly being stuck no matter how much (or how little) effort one gave.
It brings me back to an old Bisaya expression “purya gaba,” where one spends more time warding away evil than developing good karma. In a nutshell that’s what I’ve observed normal people’s lives to be, because “ang gaba dili magsaba.” People are simply too tired to even care, much less have larger aspirations. Those who succeeded despite the system holding them back try to migrate as quickly as possible. In a sick way, I think this is what most of the dynasties in power want to maintain the status quo where they are in power.
During the American period there was a massive effort to set up an American style educational system that was available to all in principle. IIRC, this was carried through to Quezon and Macapagal which provided a large number of educated Filipinos who either went onto higher education or the skilled workforce in industry to modernize the Philippines. Under Marcos Sr. DeptEd was renamed to the Department of Education AND CULTURE, which seems to be the breaking point of where Filipino education started to decline. Increasingly it seemed the Filipino education system was used at the previous K-10 system (and now K-12) to instill empty nationalism and pageantry rather than learning and civic responsibility. Of course, PNoy tried to reform this and modernize towards global standards, then Digong proceeded to incompetently tear down the reforms. Recently, Sara Duterte as Sec DepEd at the time even dumbed down the curriculum even more to hide the fact that Filipino students are falling behind, and replaced the missing curriculum with “Makabansa” state propaganda. Nationalism are empty ideologies to hide societal flaws and always is bad news, the opposite of patriotism.
During my travels and conversations, including some work I’ve done as a consultant for companies with BPO contracts in the Philippines, I’m surprised at the amount of BPO workers who originated in informal settlements. While their English might not be as polished as a middle class kid who had access to better education, they somehow pulled themselves out of their situation by teaching themselves better English through media so they could enter the BPO world. Imagine how much of a better and more prepared workforce there can be if Filipino schools were better funded.
Although I was lucky enough as a poor kid back in the day to attend Catholic school on a diocesan scholarship, American public schools are the backbone of the US economy. It would be unimaginable to have American public school students pay for their own learning materials and transportation, and increasingly states are realizing that providing meals to students increases success as well.
What about doing something similar to what Aksyon did in Manila City? By having control of the LGU, one can direct funds towards making the local college free, or attract FDI to build a new public city college, create a startup of city high schools that fully pay for all the student’s needs (supplies, books, uniforms).
Two takeaways. 1. The spirit of the Filipino, defeated? 2. The power of LGUs to reconstruct education and other functions.
1. The psyche to me is of the battered orphan, and when one escapes the orphanage, or is taken out, then the dynamic changes. That’s why I’m the optimist. And it explains the OFW push and the ingenuity of the escapee to make something of himself, ala Oliver Twist. I also have my wife for enlightenment, to understand the place of rituals in place of money or health, and the unlimited potential of the orphan, once set free. She’s beyond amazing. Graduated from high school at 23, now so absolutely rich with knowledge and understandings shaped by her background.
2. The LGUs are the future. Right now there are too many Dutertes and not enough Robredos, but the framework inspires good governance today, I think. I’ve got an article in the hopper about how to break the dynasties without a constitutional amendment. The way is by bringing the larger cities into the good governance fold, one by one. So let’s defer this conversation for about a week. But, yes, a well managed LGU can bring the Philippines forward into modern offerings. I read yesterday that your Cebu had approved an ordinance to require telcos to remove overhead wires or put them underground. Hopefully it will stand up to court challenges. They’ll be given six months to clean the wires out, some 80% of which are no longer in use. Thumbs up for Cebu!
It seems to me that there is a heavy emphasis and respect in Filipino society for “diskarte,” sometimes trumping the respect for education (or lack of respect rather). It may be a modern day incarnation of the barangay datu who takes power for himself, gathering resources whether by chance or by force. Mostly by chance and bombast haha.
Some Filipinos, after exchanging life stories over a beer, have described my life experience to be one of diskarte and accorded additional respect to me, deserved or not. The same respect is garnered for BPO workers who “found” success despite the odds, and previously given to OFWs. No matter the fact that one just needs to be self-driven enough to take the first step to those jobs.
I have a young friend I mentor in Lapu-Lapu City where she and her older sisters were struggling after their mother died because their father is a tambay with many “bisyo.” They have 14 siblings in total, ranging from 3 years old to 29 years old. Now her two elder sisters work to support their siblings in the market, and as expected, the two elder brothers ran off and “started their own families,” abandoning their younger siblings. I had her practice English with me during my interactions with their family and introduced her to a job at a BPO based in Cebu IT Park through another friend who is a manager there. Now she is respected as a goddess among earth that “made it” in her informal settlement. Sometimes it just takes a push by a mentor or teacher for someone to realize their potential they had all along. I don’t see that as diskarte.
Even though I had the luck and privilege through scholarships of attending private Catholic school for K-12, I truly believe that generally my taxes go towards supporting the American education system for the next generation. There will always be those who say they don’t have school-age children in their local school system so therefore why should they pay those taxes, but that defeats the point of giving kids who are developing mentally and personally as even a playing field as possible given the available resources. Smart American governors and mayors lobby the federal government for education gap funds to supplement local resources.
The basis of an informed citizenry is access to information, which is why there is no surprise that the American version of oligarchs have engaged in a decades-long battle to defund education through increasing tuition for public colleges, removing resources from local K-12 systems, making life as miserable as possible for families with young children. A less informed citizenry is unable to apply critical thinking and thus unable to recognize or fight back against the forces arrayed against their ability to advance their families in the economy. As always, there are parallels to the Philippines as the breaking down of a decent-for-the-time education system up until the 1960s and replacing it with empty nationalism dumbing down the curriculum presaged what those who want to hold power and money will always do, and have tried to do in America.
A detriment to Filipinos is being able to watch the outside world, and demanding “all the nice things” NOW, without recognizing the hard work needed that often requires incrementalism. Create conditions for small wins, take the winnings, and keep moving forward. Eventually those small wins add up into a huge societal and economic change. Just like in the US, we were essentially an isolated and weak country compared to the old European powers until the period following WWI. Americans envied the European powers so much a subset of loud Congressmen even got our country to embark on a misguided trip towards colonizing other territories outside of our traditional sphere, the Philippines included. But the economic collapse of the Great Depression provided an impetus to totally refashion society and the economy, culminating in the current US global dominance in almost all fields of technology, trade, culture despite the regressions wrought by the conservatives since 1968 until the present day. All that is to say, the wins that FDR gave to the US were no single plans but a multitude of small programs that continually compounded over time. It was led by effective political leadership, but also the buy-in from the American people. The progress didn’t happen overnight.
I did see the news out of Cebu. I’m not entirely fond of Cebuano politicians since they shift in the wind like a bamboo stalk, joining whatever coalition they think is going to win. I despise Gov. Gwen Garcia and don’t like Mayor Mike Rama or Mayor Ahong Chan that much either. But still, I’ll acknowledge good things. The rats nest overhead wiring is famous in Metro Cebu. When I lived there for extended periods of time, it was difficult to work remotely since some truck would inevitably hit the overhead wires every few months then it would take weeks to be fixed haha.
You do get around, ha! Good that you open doors. That’s all some need. I share your views on Governor Garcia, shaped by her prominent role trying to get CJ Sereno impeached. I’m not that familiar with the mayor or others there, but was surprised that the city went for Duterte. Blowing in the winds of greed I suppose.
Cebu politics is heavily influenced by the Garcias and their corruption racket. Gov. Gwen Garcia’s greed and lust for power is probably the main reason why Metro Cebu being held back to reaching the city’s full potential. If you recall, PNoy suspended her governorship over graft charges and one of the things I wished PNoy had done was to actually order the PNP to arrest her. The entire time, she was still the de facto governor acting through the vice-governor.
One of the sad realities of Duterte’s rise is the loud resentment among Visayans that they are overlooked by Malacañang, and that somehow Visayans in Visayas and Mindanao are paying far more in taxes than Malacañang sends back to the LGUs with Bisaya majorities (not true in the least). There’s also the cultural aspect, which culminated in multiple protests to force DepEd to allow the teaching of Mother Tongues, which was a Bisaya-led initiative in Cebu.
To that end, I’d say Bisaya people voted overwhelmingly for Duterte just based on the fact that he’s a Bisaya also. There’s a common saying when I challenged someone for being DDS, and they said “Digong did good things for Bisaya.” Interestingly, they didn’t go for Isko Moreno who is also of Bisaya descent probably because they saw him as too “Manila metropolitan,” while Duterte speaks like their crazy uncle back home. Also interesting that the Duterte clan has connections to Cebu, having migrated from there to Davao during the great Filipino migration from other islands to Mindanao.
Thanks for the insights.
I see two Dutertes as mayors here wonder how they’re related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_Cebu_City#City_of_Cebu
Yes, the Dutertes were originally from Cebu City and Danao City, the cousin of Digong having been the former mayor of Cebu, while Digong’s father was the former mayor of Danao. Digong’s father Vicente Duterte was also governor of Davao province under Pres. Carlos P. Garcia. So the entire story of Digong being a common man was fake and made up. He had just adopted the crude language of the masa. The Dutertes are a Cebuano political dynasty that was sent to govern Davao during the internal migration into Mindanao from the other provinces following WWII.
A few years back, I read an interesting book, Gambling on Development, by the Oxford economist Stefan Dercon. I don’t agree with all his views, but his experience with working in developing countries informs a novel theory of economic development.
“Their elite bargains are based on an apparent political bargain for short-term gains by those in the elite who control the state. It is an economic deal with far less interest in creating economic growth and development than in redistributing the gains from controlling the state to the groups that happen to be in control or support those in control. The state structures in both countries are built to serve this purpose through patronage and clientelism. Leadership transitions are possible through electoral processes, but, as described in this chapter, those processes appear to function mainly as a way of simply passing control of the patronage structures from one group to another.”
An example of an elite risking change would be those chiefs of the Philippines up to the 16th century who shifted from mainly raiding to more trading by, for instance, protecting local craftsmen who made valuable goods for trade – for instance with Continental East Asia.
LGU heads today risking their power by allowing modern economic progress would be similar. Those who succeed in that gamble would be like those who rule Iloilo nowadays, would the Osmeñas who lost power in Cebu be an example of those who lost the gamble?
Those are great examples. Over time, there may have been a regression to the older model of local chieftains “raiding” and “gifting” resources rather than the prior historical advancement to a more advanced economic system so to speak.
The problem with LGU heads face is: should they keep the status quo while doling out just enough resources to keep their voters happy? Or should they embark on bold modernization that may have a chance to fail due to lack of prior examples of success, but if modernization is successful both they and their supporters (voters) become better off economically?
The Osmeñas bet on long term developments that would benefit the entire Cebu City and province, while the Ramas famously left BOPK and joined in alliance with the Garcias and have pursued more short term profits that look shiny on the outside (see the Osmeña vs Rama plans for South Road Properties), but are based mostly around tourism. Not that tourism is a bad thing for a beautiful city like Cebu, but the Ramas and their allies neglected basic infrastructure and a long term economic plan which is starting to show now that more business is being attracted to the city-owned developments. And when BPO is inevitably less needed due to increasingly automated systems, all that cash flow will trickle to a stop. IIRC, Osmeña’s plan was to invest in light manufacturing from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea which would provide sustained growth. Well, short term profits that allowed Rama to spread the wealth *now* won out.
I can see BPO drying up. OFW though seems going strong. last summer, I was on I-80 headed to Denver. detoured on surface streets cuz accident ended up in a bunch of small farm towns, was trying to cut thru I-70 to Denver. stopped by for lunch at some local diner and came across 5 Filipinas. OFWs for sure the way they were huddled. not maids, so I was like what part of the Philippines are you all from. all over. one in particular was from Cebu City. Chong Hua hospital. I was like I know that place used to go to Larsians before going over to Mango Ave ( the Mango Ave part i left out). turned out they were all medical technicians and physical therapist all over Philippines recruited for some rural hospital/clinic forgot the town now. I mention TNT, and they laughed. 3 year contracts and get re upped. they said they liked it there, except for the tornados and tornado warnings. so I said you’re lucking tornado alley’s shifting east these days. more during Joe’s time. so OFWs are gonna continue for sure, but BPO should start thinking of jumping ship now before LLM AI catches up puts ’em out of business, all that English speaking will be obsolete soon. So my question, if BPO folks were to start diversifying now, aside from opening up sari-sari stores, what are viable feasible businesses to get into? i remember there were young Filipinos who came back from Singapore and ME who worked there as graphic designers etc and they returned to Cebu to open up art schools. I dunno what ever happened to those schools but given that comics and illustrating for childrens books and even designing art for tshirts hoodies sold at Target I’ve always thought that industry would expand.
Why does your story make me think of this video?
Seriously, articles like the one below are now popping up in the USA:
https://www.grammy.com/news/p-pop-artists-to-know-pinoy-music-filipino-singers-groups-philippines
My feeling is PPop could take off big time internationally by next year – if the present momentum is maintained and no major mistakes are made.
That won’t replace BPO but could start creating new jobs – in places as diverse as Quezon City where the big media firms are, or Baguio with its indie scene and small recording studios and live venues. Cebu and VisPop have potential and could grow in the wake of all that.
Interest in the Philippines could not just fuel tourism but finally allow Filipino teleseryes to be marketed to the Global North. ABS-CBN already markets series to SEA and Africa. Sure, they have to improve their storylines, make em tighter. Technically, they are already world-class.
Agreed. thats a whole industry too. you’ll need press people, graphic design, sound engineers, fashion, etc. etc. as for storylines, Deadpool & Wolverine had no story at all, and it worked. so something fun. its gotta be fun to watch. since Eternals the MCU has been taking itself too serious like DC. comics are suppose to be fun escapes. i think too much romance is a bad thing, which is a Filipino preoccupation it seems. maybe diverge there.
Well, Dirty Linen by ABS-CBN last year was a bit like a popularization of On The Job, with kasambahays as victims instead of businessmen or journos. Unfortunately, they dragged out the story beyond belief to have many episodes. Fortunately, they didn’t have the weakness of many GMA dramas that repeat the previous episode to the point of boredom, some critics say that is for the crowd that half watches while doing the dishes or gossiping with neighbors.
They also dragged out some cheesy love subplots for kilig, but I suspect the shorter Prime Video version of the series had a lot of fluff cut out. I suspect they are slowly learning. The Filipino music biz also took a while to learn what works in the West yet has Filipino flavor.
Over the years I’ve grown very fond of Vispop and had a few chances to attend local concerts when I’m in town. Kuya Bryan has done a lot of good work elevating Visayan voices from his base in Cebu, cultivating artists such as Kurt Fick who is famous now in his own right.
The propagation of a nation’s culture is a manifestation of soft power, which requires certain conditions. China still doesn’t understand this because they are too belligerent on other fronts despite their efforts to blanket Africa and Southeast Asia with C-drama in recent years. C-drama has high production value but it’s vacuous and often pushes blatant Chinese state propaganda.
Soft power is the ability to exert global influence by economic and cultural means. Soft power is often carried out not by a government’s direction but by private corporations and organizations. However, cultural soft power often needs the condition of economic soft power to be successful.
For example, there were early forays by South Korea in exporting culture to increase tourism and investment, but those efforts largely failed since many Westerners associated Korean products with bad reliability. From what I’ve seen, only when the South Korean industrialists greatly improved reliability did the second wave of Korean culture become successful as we see today. The South Koreans also hired American media consultants and adopted aspects of American popular culture, which many people around the globe already were familiar with.
Another example I’m familiar with is Japan’s cultural exports. Post war Japan’s products mostly catered to the domestic market, where Japanese were happy to have any products coming off of wartime rationing. When those early Japanese electronics and cars were exported, the quality was quite low. Japan spent a considerable part of the 1970s and 1980s improving quality, to the point where Westerners began to view Japanese society as high tech and futuristic, no doubt fueled by the cyberpunk themes popular at the time. Japanese animation exports started off as Americanized dubs, but now anime-style productions have a stranglehold on the animation industry.
As I said I’m a fan of Vispop (I was listening to my Bisaya playlist in the car just now), but my worry is this inorganic push by Filipino media will ultimately fail, because the cultural export doesn’t have any economic export to parallel it. Westerners don’t have a sense of grand pageantry the way Filipino culture has. It might be another example of jumping the gun, focusing solely on the goal line before surveying the field of defenders ahead, to use sports speak. That being said, if P-pop succeeds I’ll be pleasantly surprised!
I also see the marketing of PPop so far as haphazard and the successes it has as somewhat hit and miss. Even though, for instance, ABS-CBN has been hiring an American marketing firm for years, the girl group BINI only went viral early this year with Pantropiko covered by three Filipinas in the KPop group UNIS. Actually, two Filipinas and one half-Filipina Korean, but Filipino KPop fans only took BINI seriously after Western KPop fans went crazy for them. Probably, Pantropiko was just intended as a B-side since it lacks the ABS-CBN jingle at the start – actually better for international audiences whom it irritates, the lyrics are from a 19 year old intern at the FlipMusic songwriting firm and the choreo is by BINI’s 19 year old main dancer.
I am not surprised that Pantropiko seems to keep gaining views while the recent hit Cherry on Top for which they hired international songwriters has slowed down. A song with reggaeton beat and choreo elements of Hawaiian hula and Jamaican dance hall seems more “Filipino,” even as ABS-CBN probably seeks to compete in the growing SEA-POP and GPop space, but that means they go against TPop and MPop, already a force, and GPop like Hori7on and Katseye.
Probably the marketing of PPop should be different, someone who knows the international music market told me the marketing could be a mix of “brown” like Brazil and Jamaica and “white” as in the Western elements and recent East Asian influences in Philippine culture.
The successes of the first major breakthroughs of SB19 show that might be right. Mapa, which is about one’s parents, is covered in countless languages, and IMO parallels the success of Freddie Aguilar’s Anak in the 1970s. Sometimes, the West loves what it feels it lacks.
Gento by SB19 is an aggressive hymn of the Filipino new middle class, just like Crimzone or the recent Kalakal rap with Gloc 9. Actually, I am happy there is NO government involvement in PPop given who is in power now and what happened to 1970s and 1980s OPM under Imelda. BUT I do see a marketing strategy that shows the Philippines as an emerging country AND a friendly tropical nation that speaks good English as a possible way to succeed. So let’s see.
I’ll be completely honest that I don’t really enjoy P-pop. SB19 is ok, but BINI seems too obviously manufactured to me with their blocky lyrics and awkward dance moves. Or maybe this is just me becoming an old curmudgeon over time as I get older. Perhaps soon I’ll shake my fist at the kids to get off of my lawn, haha. I prefer a bit slower music nowadays as I get older, so Vispop and the Visayan love for ballads rooted in life experiences is what gets to me.
Over on this side of the Pacific, P-pop had a brief surge of popularity recently in June as Fil-am Zoomers discovered it and were fueled by pinoy pride to tell their friends. I think they have mostly moved on though, because when BINI came to Los Angeles for KCon this year they seemed mostly a squeezed in afterthought. I haven’t seen many examples of BINI’s American tour in the American cultural media, if at all, though I saw that was covered widely in the Filipino press from the various Philippine print/online media I read daily. Many Filipino friends texted me to ask if it was awesome that BINI had landed on our shores and were a bit disappointed that the group didn’t really make a lasting impression this time. Westerners, especially Americans, are receptive to new and interesting things that plugs holes in what they lack, but they are also quick to move on once the fad is over.
I still think it would be better to start with introducing culture and cuisine hand-in-hand with economic development that generates manufactured goods for export that gain a reputation for quality. Most Americans’ exposure to the Philippines is “terrible tech support by robotic agents who took away American call center jobs.” That single factor is the biggest complaint against American companies, especially telcos and cable providers who moved their tech support, then account support overseas. The hate by customers is so bad that the customer support issue alone dragged formerly highly regarded companies down the gutter.
I know Filipinos are eagerly waiting for their “breakthrough” moment, and I’m cheering that aspiration on as well, though I think it should be tempered in terms of expectations. Too often it’s easy to feel more cynical after failures caused by jumping the gun.
BINI is very clearly manufactured, but so is most KPop.. I kinda see looking at the new stuff as a mental stretching exercise, and I didn’t like any PPop at all initially.. SB19 has a bit more influence from R&B, rock, and rap, as one can see from the solo ventures of its members.. one main reason I see for the rise of BINI is similar to the reason showgirls were popular in the 1930s and 1940s – people are looking for a happy pill in pretty dreadful times.. yes, the KCon performance WAS an afterthought. It was not originally planned, and BINI was removed from another ABS-CBN show in Florida to the chagrin of fans who had booked flights. As for the lack of US mainstream media coverage, ABS-CBN and TFC are too accustomed to the captive market of what I call the Filipino overseas barangays. SB19 was able to get more non-Pinoy fans in and even have concerts in Chicago and Dallas with non-Pinoy majorities. Even Gigi de Lana did better in barnstorming the USA this year, but it was diskarte to earn money mainly.
Yes, it could be that Americans move on quickly from exotic fads. Probably the only reason why Latino music has such staying power is their sheer numbers globally. Exotic fads that came and went in Europe were Portuguese fado novo and Romanian EDM, for instance. An example of a hope of Filipinos that faded as she generated only short interest in the USA due to her vocal prowess was Morissette Amon. She has kind of faded in popularity by now.
Thanks for the reality check. Well, maybe leaving the old school of ballads is a first step as even if many people, including me, like them a lot more than pop, the young usually don’t.
BTW, KPop is still a fringe market in Europe, even as a Munich radio moderator who compared BTS with coronavirus got huge flak and had to quit some years ago. I was kinda happy as casual anti-Asian comments have been normal here for way too long.
Could still be that sustained attention to different PPop groups will work for some years and even create a small but loyal US fanbase. The rest may need a PH upgrade as you wrote.
I still listen to Italodisco since that genre defined a part of my childhood. It’s a bit niche though in the US now.
Morissette Amon definitely had such a strong voice. Some Americans had even compared her to a Filipina Mariah Carey, then quickly forgot about her, ha…
One of the strong advantages of the US, Canada, Australia, the only countries I believe where national identity has never been tied to blood, is the ability to constantly accept change, both assimilating new immigrants and integrating the culture immigrants brought into the national culture. It’s a sharp contrast with European cultures that originally were rooted in blood, and have only relatively recently become more open to accepting outsiders. Not to say there isn’t racism here, there is. Increasingly it’s very difficult to be racially insensitive though for the people who haven’t started moving into the future.
I’m not entirely sure if my theory even is valid by the way. I’m just an amateur observer. It seems to me that cultural exports generally happen after economic exports are already stable, with the cultural exports serving to increase positive views of the country to enable even more economic exports and investment. From the current P-pop push, it appears to me to be producers in the Philippines realizing that they can only earn so much money in the Philippines, and are trying to tap into larger markets outside. Since I’m rooting for the Philippines as a whole to succeed, I support them taking that chance. They probably will have a greater chance to succeed though if they have strong winds behind them with a strong Philippines.
There are two things driving PPop nowadays:
1) Yes, producers have noticed the potential market and huge money to make.
2) The still huge need of many Filipinos for external validation through the success of fellow Filipinos or even those with little Filipino identity like Bruno Mars, etc
Even a short and limited success of PPop on the international market can boost Filipino confidence and have side effects that are positive. Because when it comes to other stuff, there is an inferiority complex that leads either to en grande aka trying too much too hard OR jeepney mindset which means stick to basic stuff with “mahirap lang tayo” as in self-limiting beliefs at the back of their heads. So, the route of gradual improvement is not taken. I mentioned elsewhere that 1970s Sarao jeepneys were the same standard of quality as 1950s Japanese cars, the only difference being that the Japanese with their kaizen mindset kept improving, like one moves up belt colors in a dojo as one refines ones martial arts techniques.
https://joeam.com/2023/11/02/learning-from-sb19do/ was about mindset and not necessarily about the boys per se, even as I earned head shaking from intellectuals and probably cringes from the youth for that article which I wrote and Xiao shared on Twitter. I also see music as one of the few crafts not damaged by colonial rule, which made normal Filipinos into laborers and consumers and rich Filipinos into rent-seekers, not innovators or entrepreneurs. BTW I will not write another article about BINI, but I do respect Direk Lauren Dyogi, who created the group for convincing ABS-CBN top management to actually INVEST in talent. Used to be, they just made money from singing contest winners who were sink or swim – even Morissette until she went indie with her own agency and label. At least I try to be optimistic even if I might not be.
During the 1990s to early 2000s there was a big wave of “Asian Pride” among Asian American youth, myself included. Most of us later grew up and realized that phase was bit cringe because we were just grasping at any small recognition of our existence within American popular culture, while not doing anything substantial to cement our imprint on the national conscious. Instead, we later made our mark in the fields of business and civic life. This current generation of Asian American youths are having their own pride moment, but they have a better grasp and better tools (social media) to break through into the mainstream.
It’s interesting that our views largely align. I’ve been a proponent of Filipinos being proud of what they can offer, and to be proud of Filipino culture in its many variations, rather than seek external validation like obsessing over overseas famous people with sometimes tiny amounts of Filipino blood. Unfortunately this attitude is still prevalent in Filipino media where such foreign celebrities are often feted, even if the celebrity probably doesn’t even know where the Philippines is. If anything I would rather the pride be in overseas kabayan who have achieved positions of power and honor such as the multitude of American business people, politicians, professors and researchers who descended from Filipino ancestors.
I’ll be glad if P-Pop breaks through of course, even if it’s not my taste in music. It’s my belief that Filipinos should learn to be proud of themselves and their culture, I shake my head a bit at P-Pop since it mostly apes the Korean method, which in turn the Koreans had aped from American culture. Music is a form of personal and cultural expression, and I’ve been continually impressed by the music scene in Cebu by local Cebuano (and Visayan) artists. Since I’m older, TJ Monterde is more of my style, but a few years ago there’s a young Cebuano artist called Shoti who has a unique style of blending Bisaya and English that became popular on TikTok stitches even among foreign teens.
PPop is Filipinizing as the years go by. It took longer for rock to Filipinize, with Eddie Mesa very cringe as the Filipino Elvis, the heavily stoned Pepe Smith as a pioneer in 1970s Filipino rock, and finally Eraserheads, Rivermaya, etc.
If I look at SB19; Alab and Go Up were totally KPop in style, even as Go Up already had some elements of aggressive Tagalog rap.. Gento is something already very Filipino..
‘Di ko na kailangan lumunok ng bato
Hindi mala-darna ‘to aandar ang makina ko
Tanging mekaniko ay ako ‘la nang moni moniko
Sa daming pinagdaanan nagpatong na’ng istori ko
Or take Lagi from BINI which is vocally expressive beyond most KPop, and the lyrics (OST in the movie An Inconvenient Love starring Donnie Pangilinan and Belle Mariano so no wonder) are cheesily romantic stuff Filipinos love, no wonder audiences scream with kilig at that song..
Lagi nang umaawit
Umaawit mula kusina hanggang sa sala
Lagi lagi
Lagi nang napapasabing
Mahal kita mula umaga mukhang malala na
Hanggang gabi pauwi at bago matulog nang mahimbing
Some American YT reactors described the Tagalog language as one that can be very romantic when sung but totally in attack mode when rapped..
There are also BTW R&B tracks in PPop, especially for Alamat as their songwriter Thyro is a master of Filipino R&B, but also I Want You by SB19 which is like 90s R&B and goes far beyond prudish KPop norms in its video and choreo, but without actually going bastos.
Philippine culture is certainly one of the most blended in Asia. That does make it unique and maybe more interesting. TJ Monterde is the husband of KZ Tandingan BTW, one of the most creative Filipino musicians. Her own version of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep is classic.
A song with Shoti just dropped on Wish Bus, and I saw it thanks to the YT algorithm:
There is a wave of new Filipino sounds outside PPop that includes the likes of Lola Amour (which echoes 1970s Manila sound in It’s Raining in Manila), yes TJ Monterde, Juan Karlos etc etc
Some sounds thought forgotten are returning just like the above Filipino R&B number which shot up to the Top 10 Philippines due to a music video including.. a BINI member. The live venue Cozy Cove is in Baguio and has had, for instance, Morissette and Ferdinand Aragon perform “Ang Paghuwat.” Indie groups like Maki or Cup of Joe, or even more mainstream sounds like Jeremy G are also gaining renewed attention, all that one has to do nowadays it seems is have a BINI member in one’s video.. while SB19 tends to collab more, for instance, a lot of foreigners have found out about Ben and Ben, thanks to their MAPA collab with SB19. Filipino music is a continuum, and I have seen foreign reactors discover BINI then SB19, then Morissette.. the Filipino music niche on social media grows, and I remain optimistic..
Shoti is really good. I am very impressed with his music videos which had ample amounts of creativity and a high budget feel despite the obvious low budget constraints (his music videos are mostly shot on mobile phone). His musical style also can translate well to a Western audience since it has a solid “Gen Z” vibe to it. Kid has nice style too. I feel that Visayan music is going to be the “next big thing” in the domestic Philippines market. Visayan poetry and music really capture human emotion well, perhaps due to the natural nature of Bisaya people to be expressive.
I’ll be the biggest Gigi de Lana fanboy ever though. Absolutely love her and have attended a few of her concerts.
I feel cautious about P-Pop adopting a K-Pop template though, because most Westerners that follow K-Pop don’t understand Korean, so they like the songs more for the musical beat and the dance routines. I’ve yet to meet an American K-Pop fan that understands more Korean than my very basic Korean essentials I picked up when working in Seoul. My fear is if the audience doesn’t appreciate the language, then the episode might just be a fad that goes away after a while. For example, I used to watch K-Dramas years ago due to the novelty, but every time I attempt to watch a new series every K-Drama feels very formulaic and dull. I find Filipino teleserye to often be the same with old themes and tropes being rehashed over and over until it’s tiring.
I wonder what Filipinos will feel about, if P-Pop instead minimizes the use of Tagalog and goes mostly English, but with a Filipino style and theme? I think that could maybe greatly increase chances of popularization because doing so would more easily reach the large English-speaking audience globally. Who knows, it might encourage Filipino kids to brush up on their English too (which I noticed the education system has been failing to teach well, with a noticeable decline in proficiency over the last 2 decades), which would increase their competitiveness once they enter the workforce, opening up opportunities almost anywhere in the world.
Gigi is great in covering nearly anything, and I admire her grit and diskarte as her perfect English in songs hides the school of hard knocks she came from. In case you haven’t seen it yet, there is a video Homecoming that illustrates that background a bit.
BINI did do well with its recent English only release Cherry on Top, which was composed by international hitmakers who also write for Ariana Grande and some KPop groups, with some feedback from the two main vocalists of BINI who also have a bit of songwriting skills. Seems ABS-CBN is planning one international and one local BINI album and that the next song they will release shall be similar to something from Sabrina Carpenter. Let’s see how that flies.
SB19 Stell recently brought out Room, a Bruno Mars and Michael Jackson inspired song written by SB19 leader and songwriter Pablo, but it only has 1.2 million YT views after two months and it IS fully in English like two other SB19 international collabs titled Moonlight and Ready. BTW BINI also failed to market its two first songs, Born to Win and Golden Arrow – both all-English – three years ago. All this shows how hard it is to break into the international market.
Re K-dramas, yes, they are also cheesy, but they manage to pull it off through good writing. Delaying the return of the Sokor heiress in Crash Landing on You from Nokor 3 times was done in a way that didn’t seem contrived. Similar stuff in P-dramas often insults the intelligence.
Character conflicts are handled better, such as the North Korean officer vs the state security type in CLOY, man of honor versus villain, while a similar conflict between Joel Torre and John Arcilla in Dirty Linen which could have had a finale like the end of the movie Heat with Al Pacino – Robert De Niro ended in a way that made me groan. The good cop Lemuel is underutilized in Dirty Linen while the Sokor national security types in CLOY are given room to shine. Etc etc
P.S. Re Visayans, the one Bisdak SB19 Felip has a rock song in Visayan, Kanako.
What is interesting about Visayans is that they often seem to get guitars as gifts just after birth. SB19 Felip, BINI Colet (Boholana) and Morissette Amon all play the guitar..
Do they still make some of the best guitars in Cebu? I bought the only guitar I ever owned there. Weirdly, I did learn to play piano well and can sing a bit, but zero talent for guitar..
I’ve seen that video last year, and it reminds me of a lot of Filipinos I’ve met. A lot even had talent in various fields, teaching themselves English, Japanese, Korean without a Filipino accent, yet didn’t have the courage to go towards their dreams. It’s a shame.
I think SB19’s main problem is most of their members still have a bit of an accent in an audience that expects to hear neutral-English (the Californian dialect of American English). Their lyrics and dance choreography is also a bit strained, with the OA prevalent in Filipino media, which is probably why I quickly lost interest in them. I’m generally forgiving since I’m exposed to many cultures, but I honestly could not finish listening to Stell’s Room when a friend forwarded a YT link a while back; it was that cringe to me. Even pulling in a Fil-Am artist like Apl.de.Ap who had won multiple Grammys and has a lot of clout in the US market didn’t help remove the “mais.” BINI was the same, though Cherry on Top is much better. For international markets it’s probably best to stick to simple, catchy bops rather than trying to do everything at once. I think the ticket to success is to have a potential listener not know the group is Filipino at all, and only find that out later once they have had the song on repeat a few times. That’s a gateway to being more interested in the group’s Filipino background, and by extension the Philippines.
Have you watched Wildflower? That was probably one of the most cheesy, OA acting I’ve seen in a Filipino series, especially the scene where everyone including the titos, titas, even the lolo pulls guns on each other in a group standoff. Or when the mother was discovered murdered by the local dynasty’s henchman at the beginning. There’s a joke that Fil-Ams have here, that if their failed but good looking son/daughter wants to make it big, they’ll be sent back to the Philippines to enter Filipino showbiz. I can’t deny that most of the actors and actresses are very good looking, though if every character is like that it can quickly feel plastik as well.
I’m not a huge fan of Bisrock. The scene is quite toxic and angry, even if I can’t deny there’s talent in bounds. I don’t know if Felip has done a lot of Bisrock before SB19, but I mean come on, can’t have rock music with a pretty boy as the front man… that’s just a bit strange since rock is more grungy and raw. It’s just as strange as K-Pop stars trying to rap while having a perfect face. There are a ton of great Bisrock groups in Cebu (and a few in Mindanao), but I guess they won’t make it on the international stage since they aren’t that good looking.
You’re right, there’s usually a guitar in most Visayan households and kids pick up the guitar from their father or titos at an early age. It’s relatively common for young boys to serenade during courtship, even if not all are talented. There are still a lot of handcrafters making Visayan guitars, but the main handcrafters that I know of are Ferangeli, Susing, Alegre, Inday Celia. Weird connection, as my father is a guitar player since his youth. When he was a captain in the ARVN LLDB (South Vietnamese Special Forces), they would sometimes do cross-training exercises located in the Philippines which is where he learned Tagalog. He had a Cebuano colleague who gifted him a Ferangeli which was lost in the aftermath of the war. On one of my early trips to Cebu, I mentioned to my father that I passed by the Ferangeli handcrafters guitar shop along Abuno Road in Pajac, Lapu-Lapu, and he remembered the name so I brought home a guitar for him. He still plays it to this day.
Gone are the days when the so-called “Transatlantic accent” was the peg for Hollywood, as the East Coast as well as English and European emigres were considered higher class back in the 1950s. Guess soft power indeed parallels how rich a country or a region is – I knew an old Californian who had moved to Germany as was a GI and married a German, he told me how upstart Socal was in his young days post-WW2. I live in Bavaria, and the accent is considered sexy, but until before WW2, when this was still a poor place, it was considered hillbilly.
I guess even Billy Joel with his strong New Yawk accent would struggle nowadays, and no wonder Robbie Williams is famous in Europe but can live without being recognized in the US.
Stell actually starts off Room a lot like Michael Jackson in “Remember The Time” which plays in fake Egypt with Eddie Murphy playing the Pharaoh. My brother and me laughed when that video came on MTV, but I guess what is considered cringe depends on who does it as well.
It will, I guess, take time before someone who says one fourth as wamport is considered sexy. There was a cartoon about that some years ago, which Filipino circles all found amusing. Wildflower I only have seen clips of. Old Korean revenge movies like Old Boy come to mind. A good director can make corny enjoyable. Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman was full of typical Asian tropes but wasn’t cringe like Chicken and Duck Talk from HK, 1988.
There are a quite a number of American Latinos BTW who like PPop, I guess the accent isn’t that big an issue for them, in fact some love hearing the Spanish words in Tagalog lyrics.
But well, the American market dominates, and Europe is hard to penetrate unless you are global or also European, so I also get the PPop strategy of also checking out China recently, and Sokor also including a Wish Bus there. Reggaeton and Afrobeats BTW rode on the strong support of Latino and African migrants in many parts of the West recently but they don’t have the Filipino issue of seeing themselves and their ways and accents as cringe. Swedes do manage to score hits internationally – they don’t care about their accent in perfect English.
So Filipino soft power will only grow with a mixture of adaptation, not caring as much about international validation anymore, upping the game, and ramping up the country otherwise.
The examples of Sokor and Japan also went by that mix but never cared about validation.
I understand when in Rome, but changing your accent???? That is OA.
Arnold Schwarzenegger never completely lost his Styrian accent. Styria is the Austrian state he comes from. After a certain age, adjustment gets harder. Women do manage to adjust better and have a higher linguistic aptitude on average, also more female translators and interpreters.
Flashback to a Filipino basketball tournament in Bonn, Germany, back in 1986. We were, of course, annoyed at the cockiness of the Pinoy GIs from Frankfurt, way better trained than even our youth team. The exaggerated US accents of their wives and girlfriends were comedic. Well, in spite of all annoyance with the Amboys, what happened later in the day after some Pinoy groups refused to recognize decisions of German referees and we had to get Pinoy co-referees they respected (we because I was the leader of one of the organizations holding the tournament) was that it nearly came to a brawl between a Tagalog and a Kapampangan team. Fortunately, the Ilokano Manong and co-referee (and a resident of poor Makati as well) was able to get the two groups to stop. Hehe that day was a microcosm of many Pinoy interactions.
I am a call center veteran. You still need to practice, you can’t just fake it in order to make it.
I am curious because I saw a feature about Filipina call center ladies who were assigned to mimic various US accents and pretend to have American names. And of course, the story of a UP prof whose daughter came home crying after a customer in the USA had called her a b..
Do all call centers demand that you fully adjust to a US accent, or is comprehensible English enough? SB19 Josh and Pablo worked in call centers. Sure, it is easier while younger, I know that from experience moving around. What I did notice about modern Filipinos is that the strong accents of old are less. I mean, NONE of SB19 speak English like Yoyoy Villame. This is probably because of constant exposure to social media, like the Dutch had better sounding English than Germans before due to movies with subtitles, not dubbed like in Germany.
Some accounts during my time require you to adjust the accent, but some a neutral accent would do.
But now it is no longer secret unlike it was fifteen to twenty years before so
what is the use of use of pretending you are a native of wherever the account’s country of origin is.
Any one can correct me here.
Some of my clients are companies with BPO contracts in the Philippines, and of course I interact with Filipino call center agents regularly for various customer service needs. These are just my observations.
Some call centers seem to still insist on having a neutral accent (General American English aka California English), but it’s not necessary for most agents. American customers know that most CSA are foreigners now. Since most Americans are regularly exposed to various accents and varying commands of English, most will be patient with this aspect; these are not the major issue most American customers have.
The issues I’ve seen or experienced is the lower quality of CSA training/experience as time goes on due to lower hiring standards at some BPO operations, the insistence to stick to scripts even if the problem goes in circles vs American tendency to think outside of the box when solving problems, BPO clients not giving the BPO worker the appropriate toolkit to solve problems even if the CSA wants to help.
On lower quality: I know of some CSA who don’t have a high command of English, some even being SHS students who are working in BPO somehow. Then again, there are also BPO workers who taught themselves better English and cultural norms even if they’re from a poor family. Some other low quality CSA shift between companies because they are not very serious at their job.
Insistence on scripts: Of course scripts are helpful to guide troubleshooting, but there is an American/Western expectation to solve problems by thinking outside the box with creative solutions which is foreign to most CSA and can cause a big friction point. It’s a difference in culture basically, but agents should try to learn the culture of the customer… this is mainly the fault of the BPO management who are not preparing the CSA properly. I’m actually shocked at some of the hiring/training practices.
Lack of toolkit options: This is mainly the fault of both the BPO client and the BPO company. BPO client because they didn’t bother to provide the proper tools to give CSA options to help. BPO company because they don’t properly train the CSA to be prepared if a customer is irate when there aren’t any solutions available.
As a customer I try to be understanding. I often can connect with the CSA sharing a connection about PH, which helps. Some CSA have very good English with barely an accent that would be very hard for any American to detect, but sometimes they forget grammatical construction which is where I’ll know they’re a Filipino. A bachelors in English and Linguistics helps me here. We’ll just have a laugh about it and share some experiences while waiting for the tools to catch up.
Thanks or sharing your experiences though I stand my ground of fans expecting too much from the performer’s performance even off stage where They judge just to get disappointed. That is our judgmental world of today. The world had been harsh ever since, but today harshness is already digital good thing or not so is karma.
It’s time for a corny and OA intermission!
Seriously, budots is trending on Tiktok worldwide.
It is one of the craziest contributions of Davao to music.
I first encountered budots in 2010s Davao before it spread out to other Bisaya-speaking provinces. Never thought the genre would go this far. Amazing.
This international reaction to budots dropped today.
BTW, the following video of TJ Monterde has SB19 Justin directing it and starring.
Justin also directed the video Misteryoso by Cup of Joe, featuring BINI Jhoanna.
Cross-genre, the Filipino music industry is one big barangay.
TJ’s wife, KZ Tandingan, also mentored the PPop girl group G22 BTW.
Yes, I agree with you. Unfortunately, that’s how the entertainment industry has always worked though with performers catering to the fans’ expectations becoming successful while those who do not often fail. A sad reality.
bini fans are mostly young and many are complaining the tickets to biniverse concert cost them ten thousand pesos!
Oh, there have been more issues, and it might be ABS-CBN is playing catch-up. Merch quality, the members’ exclusive website, etc. Re the Grand Biniverse, it is literally ABS-CBN’s business if they overprice and don’t sell out, much like I have seen lots of Filipino restaurants abroad overprice and lose to.. Vietnamese, for instance, or Thais, though the Vietnamese are determined as hell and their value for price is the highest.. ABS-CBN still sometimes acts like they are the only game in town, which in the Philippines they almost are.
There was a Morissette (and Darren Espanto) concert in Frankfurt, Germany, this May 9th by TFC, and the publicity as well as the ticket selling was amateurish. A British fan had to go to great lengths to get a ticket and found out about the concert only through some Filipino fans. So I am not surprised having read feedback of how the BINI concert in Toronto had a great performance by the 8 girls but the local organizer Tala Entertainment simply sucked, what I read sounded like some Filipino association party abroad, not like a professional concert. That is why I am optimistic that Filipino music can break through (maybe just in a small way). IF NO MAJOR MISTAKES ARE MADE.. Western audiences are less forgiving of amateurism, except for the poor fellas who are married to Filipinas and are therefore captive audiences as well. 😉
There’s an older gentleman married to a young Filipina who frequents the small cafe I usually unwind at after a day’s work. He keeps trying to introduce me to his wife’s younger sister which I kindly decline due to age gap. That man doesn’t know what he got himself into, haha.
oh, I got that quite a lot, older gentlemen asking me where I came from. the moment I said I’m from cebu, philippines, their eyes immediately travel all over me, appreciatively at times that maybe they think I’m a sexual gymnast! good lord, I hated sitting alone at airports waiting from my flight and unwittingly making meself magnet for unwanted attention. and I become quite good at deflection. and yes, music is really language of the soul, and most often, over eager older gentlemen got re-routed to dame very lynn’s song, we’ll meet again, and have a sing song with me. I supposed they are just lonely and maybe want someone to talk to. I cannot offer companionship, I am friendly though but not a friend.
I’ve deleted two of your posts, finding them tasteless as you treat the blog as a place to slap up your prurient thoughts is if a 14 year old dreaming of cheerleaders. I really don’t want to trouble you or me with moderation, so I’ll simply ask you to restrain your commentary.
sorry about that , Joe. i just got carried away imagining all the possibilities. I assure you the talk of what’s plentiful and scarce in heaven, thus reasons for leaving it, was not at all connected to the kitten and Taylor Swift comment. though I can understand now how it could be construed as such. but those were separate ideas. kb took an interest and I felt like a nuanced metaphysical account albeit wrong metaphors used (this am sorry for) was called for.
Yes, that’s why in my mentoring for young Filipinos my recommendation is to get into the medical field if they can handle the work style. If a young Filipino didn’t have the financials to go directly to a BSN program, then I’d recommend BPO to build up some savings then head towards a BSN. Nursing is much more achievable than becoming a doctor. Someone can also go towards the technician route but the likelihood of them being able to obtain a work visa to the US is much lower (most technicians seem to be heading to the Middle East or small European countries with an aging population).
Sari-sari is probably the worst business to get into, mostly because a majority of Filipinos don’t have any sense of business (not because of lack of smarts, but lack of education and mentorship), therefore they will start giving into letting friends and neighbors buy items on credit, or they might price items badly, either way I’ve seen a lot of sari-sari fail. It also doesn’t help that quite a few sari-sari attempts are started with capital from overseas relatives who are tired of sending monthly remittance and want their relatives back home to provide for their own. Well that doesn’t work when someone is given free money (capital) with no strings attached.
The Vispop and Visrock scene in Cebu is great. I listen to Vispop and Maoy ballads all the time. Bisaya are very artistic, creative and expressive people. The problem is it’s mostly younger people who are in this scene, and by the time they have families it’s harder to be a creative. A lot of the artists and creatives moved on to VA work (virtual assistant) while continuing their hobbies on the side.