“Wait a minute! Isn’t ‘Bangon Pilipinas’ Eddie Villanueva’s political party? Ay, yung sa Globe, ‘Bangon Pinoy’ pala.”

That was the first question in my head when I was invited to the media launch for Bangon Pinoy, Globe Telecom’s program to rebuild communities affected by typhoons Ondoy (Ketsana) and Pepeng (Parma). Its main beneficiaries are Globe subscribers and business partners from those communities. Globe also aims to restore, upgrade, and/or relocate their equipment and installations damaged by flooding.

Globe pegs their affected cellular subscribers at 1.6 million total (prepaid and postpaid), and broadband subscribers at 14,000. That’s a lot of people, and Globe is about to spend approximately 150 million pesos on consumer offers for them. Broadband subscribers are set to get rebates on their service from September 26 until the date service is restored, or they can be migrated to Globe’s WiMax service (wireless broadband) with a 50% discount on their first month. Globe also offers free replacement for damaged modems.

While postpaid cell subscribers get one month free, prepaid cell subscribers will automatically receive one week’s worth of load (amount dependent on how much they usually purchase in a week). I’m not sure exactly how Globe can track all the affected prepaid subscribers. Globe doesn’t have their place of residence on record, so they are doing this with a computer algorithm that determines the last few times where the SIM was last loaded and where the SIM usually is active. But what if you work and shop in Quezon City but go home to Marikina? Hopefully Globe can also address situations like that.

I wasn’t directly affected by the typhoons, but I and many friends in Metro Manila experienced deterioration in Globe cell signal in the days after Ondoy. During the Q&A; portion, I asked why Globe lost service, but other cell providers didn’t. CEO Ernest L. Cu answered my question and said one of their elements was in an area that flooded, which took down 150 cell sites in the Pasig and Cainta area (nationwide, Globe has 6,000 cell sites). According to the chief technical officer, wireless networks are now at 99%, while 92% of wireline facilities (broadband and landline) have been restored.

I may not feel the benefit of any of these programs Globe has unleashed on a select subscriber base, but I am sure that subscriber base will appreciate all the help they get. There are also lots of community building efforts in Metro Manila and Northern Luzon Globe is sticking its pie thumb into, so kudos to them.

Tags: Globe Telecom, Bangon Pinoy, Ondoy

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Yesterday my future brother-in-law got stuck in traffic for an hour due to the first Quezon City International Marathon. The city government and police closed down some major thoroughfares until about 10am, causing massive traffic jams throughout the city.

Today at the gym I caught a woman (a very toned, tanned one) wearing a QCIM singlet. Since we were sharing the same mirror space, I asked her how yesterday’s race was.

Her name is Rose, and it turns out she ran the full marathon (well, about 36 kilometers of it per doctor’s orders) as a tune-up run. I can barely manage 10K without my legs feeling like mush the next day, and here’s a woman who’s serious about marathons! (On a side note, it just irks me when people say they’re running a marathon, and then it turns out they just signed up for the 5K side event at a marathon.) She told me about the Kenyan runners who had come to the Philippines just to race, and their amazing 2-hour time on the marathon. (It takes a normal human being around 4 hours to run 42 kilometers!)

I asked her if the QCIM was a well-organized one because I’d heard about the chaos it brought to the city roads. As far as races go, it seems it was a good one; she was all praises about the entire Quezon City police department that had deployed for traffic and crowd control. The 42K route passed through the La Mesa Dam in some parts, so Army personnel had been deployed there. The downside, according to Rose, is that the 6 kilometers inside La Mesa had no water stops!

She asked me if I ran, and I self-consciously said I only did 10km at most since I got impatient if running took any longer. I had on my running shoes and was clutching my iPod in one hand, about to do 5 kilometers on the gym’s treadmill. I hadn’t run since Ondoy and I was just trying to ease back into running in preparation for this Saturday’s Race for Life and Sunday’s King of the Road. (Yes, I’m running two races this weekend; yes, I know I’m crazy.) She smirked good-naturedly and said, “Parang nag-window shopping ka lang.”

Looks like I’m going to have to increase my mileage in the next few months. Ü

Tags: Running, Marathon

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(Please be forewarned; there’s a bit of a rant in this post.)

The Philippines is the text messaging capital of Asia, and a lot of vital information useful for the flow of business and commerce passes through those SMS gates. Even more so, a lot of person-to-person interaction occurs in those 160 characters.

What’s missing in texting is nonverbal communication — the tone of voice, the look in a person’s eye, facial expression, body language. I’m sure expats who live in the Philippines will agree that this is a culture with an indirect way of talking. Around here, it’s not what you have to say, but how you say it, that matters to people. Filipinos are an emotional lot, too; if you can rouse emotions, even if what you say is unimportant people will remember you for how you made them feel. Because smileys are so inadequate at getting that sort of information through, people reading text messages just fill in the blanks.

Imagine the many ways that can go wrong.

Imagine a corporate setting when there is a snafu. Person A, upset, sends a text to Person B trying to get to the root of the problem. B construes it as being angry and directed at him. (B has been involved in previous snafus.) Problem is resolved when B explains what happened to A, yes? B also tells A to be careful with his tone — despite there actually being no vocal tone to a text message.

Unfortunately, culture plays deeper into it. In an informal setting, B discusses A’s behavior with C and D, interpreting it as rude. C and D, who do not normally interact with A anyway, discuss this with E and F and G and so on. Notice that poor A has no idea what is going on, and that the entire alphabet has started to label A as an A-hole.

So when A gets in touch with L regarding a collaboration L is backing out of, and texts something without smileys, L is more likely to read this as having an aggressive tone. L tells A to be careful with his tone, once again, and warns A that other people have noticed this. “You have a point, but you are rough and rude in speech.” All that reading from a text message, despite A not even being physically present to be rough and rude in actual speech.

How could A have phrased his text messages better? Should he maybe have written in textese (“hellur powh”) so that there would be less emotional impact to his words than fully-spelled out direct questions?

The lesson to be learned here is not to conduct serious discussions over text media. (In that case, even email is suspect.) Never, if you want people to know exactly what you mean by how you are saying it. So if they say you are an A-hole, at least you know you really are one, rather than just being thought to be one. At least you can insult them deliberately rather than unintentionally.

Tags: Rant, Cultural Communication, Philippines, SMS

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When disaster strikes, you start seeing a person’s true mettle. When Typhoon Ondoy struck, I saw people from all walks and ways of life come together in their own ways to help those most severely affected.

I didn’t realize the extent of the damage all over the metro until I logged onto Plurk and found a lot of my online friends checking to make sure everyone they knew was safe. Some we couldn’t get in touch with, and I started to get worried. Despite comparisons with Hurricane Katrina in the US, Typhoon Ondoy (international name “Kestana”) dumped more than double Katrina’s amount of rainfall in 6 hours. It’s that bad.

I woke up the next morning to news about widespread flooding in Marikina, Pasig, and Cainta, among other places. Most of the people who go to my church, Victory Ortigas, come from those places. Instead of holding church services on Sunday, ministry workers and volunteers began rescue and relief operations that lasted round-the-clock starting early Sunday morning. I took on the night shift from 11pm to 8am and disseminated news about our aid efforts, solicited prayers for our rescue workers, and repacked goods for distribution to those in need.

Meanwhile, other friends of mine in the blogosphere got busy. Mike Villar (NOT the Senator, whose name is Manny) set up a website to gather donations for the Philippine National Red Cross through ChipIn/Paypal. The Philippines needs your help. If you’re overseas, please do see if you can contribute financially this way.

Everyone else (like thegreatest and dementia) has been posting, tweeting, plurking news they come across. In this instance, citizen journalism through microblogging and social networks trumped mainstream journalism sources, which resorted to reporting about the news on the microblogging platforms, like Twitter. People whose internet connections remained stable got their news about how to help out mostly from the tweets of people near relief centers. Some people who lived in the affected areas, like Provident Village, were able to upload photos and video of the aftermath.

Today is day three of our relief and rescue efforts. I don’t have work later because two of the gyms I teach at (Eastwood and Metro East) were affected by the flooding. I’m going to use my time instead to volunteer. I may not have much to donate, but my hands and feet are at disposal.

UPDATE: You can now donate directly to the Philippine National Red Cross using Paypal.

http://widget.chipin.com/widget/id/f4bd446ae9ea2ec5

Tags: Typhoon Ondoy, Kestana, Relief Efforts

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