We beg to differ.
While I find a bit justified the whole stink being raised around the way the Torre de Manila highrise condominiums being constructed in Manila by developer DMCI Homes is supposedly “ruining” the view of the Rizal Monument, I think we are missing the bigger picture. Metro Manila is an ugly city. And that ugliness did…
Coming up with a great product — an innovative one even — is just 20 percent of the job. You also need to develop systems to produce it and market it. That system is also known as the business enterprise. An example of a failure to complete the remaining 80 percent of the job is…
Read More “Jeepneys remain a stark symbol of the Philippines’ utter failure to prosper” »
The following is a copy of the Foreword I wrote for my friend Ben Kritz’s new book Same Planet, Different World: An Outsider’s Inside View of the Philippines. You can download the book from Amazon here onto Kindle or any of a variety of apps also supported by Amazon. We in our clique of the…
Read More “The country we’ve made for ourselves: why we need an outsider’s perspective” »
And so here we are, helplessly facing a future of traffic hell as all these road constructions start. To think we all raised a royal tantrum over Dan Brown’s describing Manila as the “gates of hell” in his book Inferno. What have Metro Manila’s residents done to deserve this? Well, quite simply nothing. They did…
Hmmm… now I’m confused. Do I side with the jeepney driver? Or do I side with the Congressman’s son? Tough decision considering both types of people aren’t really in my top ten sorts of people to sympathize with. But here’s the context behind this personal dilemma of mine… A cellphone video earlier showed [King George…
Read More “Who do we hate more: jeepney drivers or Congressmens’ sons?” »
I think the pork barrel should be abolished. Some people think some people have benefited from pork barrel money and that abolishing it will be like throwing the baby out along with the bath water. Perhaps. But that is really the sort of Robin Hood mentality that has no place in a modern 21st Century…
Read More “PDAF and the jeepney: Why the pork barrel should be abolished” »
From a macro collective perspective, the Manila traffic situation is really a simple issue. What we call the “mess” that is Manila traffic is no more than an emergent property; a collective outcome of the idiotic behaviour of the system’s individual elements — Idiotic Filipino Drivers. Tell-tale signs of a truly idiotic driver is a…
Read More “Overcoming idiotic Filipino drivers: Three tips for navigating Manila traffic” »
If you are a regular visitor to the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines, you are no doubt aware of the almost-completed construction of the Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) test project, a joint venture of UP and the Department of Science and Technology. For those who have not seen it, the AGT (not…
Read More “Technical Achievement at Risk of Being Undone by PAP” »