Pouring Rain
Rain poured yesterday, an eventful and welcomed respite after a sleepless night of hot, humid weather. Weather forecasts indicates the rainy season is almost upon us, I’ll have to put back the umbrella on bag again and be ready. Singapore has a sophisticated and very well planned flooding system, although last year there was flooding in Bukit Timah, I think it was the 1% out of 100% effectivity, which leaves us with 99% probability of no flooding. Which is leaps and bounds from what we have in the Philippines, no one is thinking long term, the cisterns are small and constantly flooded, the people are not disciplined enough to know that littering will clog up the drainage and they will ultimately suffer from the flooding.Starcraft 2 is already among us, July 27 is the international release but visitors of the license2play gaming convention had the privilege to play the very highly anticipated sequel to the very popular game. I myself am eagerly awaiting this, I feel Starcraft is the only game I was a little bit good at and genuinely enjoyed playing. I am not into gaming and I do not enjoy such except for Starcraft and Counter-Strike, which I only play together with friends. From the initial screenshots, video captures of the new Starcraft, I am excited to get my hands on it.
A quick round-up of the things I am monitoring. Prudential and AIG seems to be in talks again with Prudential looking at lowering the buying price to appease shareholders. Hong Kong has temporarily halted trading of Prudential due to this.
China has declared it will not protect whomever sank the South Korean ship, which is a very careful and significant response, it’s a bit hard for them with North Korea being an ally but they cannot let that get in their way towards their full steam ahead plan to dominate the world economically. Another war might have been expected had China not declared such. I’m hoping for a peacefull end to this crisis, although I respect other peoples choice of government, it does seem like the North needs to open a little and improve the circumstance of its people. But I believe it is in the peoples hands as no one is best suited to help oneself than oneself helping your own first, others can merely support lest they start first and be judged as meddling, worst, jumping into the pool uninvited.
Canvassing for Presidential and Vice-Presidential votes in the Philippines is moving slowly, I think the election automation law missed updating this part of the process. Although the election process has been improved the canvassing of the top two post by the congress can be called the bottle neck. This has to be updated. The canvassing is already slow enough, to add insult to injury, some technology challenged lawmakers are finding it hard to relate, understand and effectively question comprehend the new electoral process. A very in-depth technology briefing and information absorption session could have been conducted by Comelec and Smartmatic for the lawmakers and the everybody involved in the whole election process. But as with all endeavors, one step forward is still moving forward compared to not moving at all. We can table and all of these issues, resolve them and prepare and improve on the next.
Mayor Mike Rama has signified his intent to renovate parts of City Hall and some more historically significant places. Kudos to these endeavors but I hope improvement of social services are not compromised and will not take the back seat. If the city could just create one big enclosed and air-conditioned structure, then put all the city agencies, national agencies which have frontline public services, that could very much help ease the congestion and the hassle for all citizens who needs to transact. Currently, if you are transacting from City Hall, you go to one department and get’s passed to another, if you are lucky they are all in the same building, if you are marked to be jinxed, the other department will be way accross town. The term lets bring our head together should be literally understood and they should all come together in one place. I believe this would reduce the number of people going to the offices while improving the transaction time and efficiency. These same institutions should improve their back-office procedures so as a citizen will only transact with one representative and the back-office procedure will already take care of it, while at it, the less point in the process that can be removed the better, the less people who come in contact with reduces chances for corruption. WE only need political will to do this!
The ipad is already available outside the US, lines have formed prior to Apple store openings. The sad part is, Singapore is not part of the frenzy, we don’t even have an apple store?? Anybody from apple reading this? what gives?
I’m looking at the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, I don’t have the complete details yet but it does seem to be a very positive engagement which will bring about progress to all involved. I personally am looking at how this will trickle down to my level and how I can somehow leverage on it. We’ll see, but I have been eyeing the dairy industry for a while now, goat dairy products specifically as goats are endemic to the Philippines, do not require high cost to maintain and are plenty in the area. The technology, process and land required are missing in my equation, most importantly the financing, but I’m sure to come to that in due time.
It was Vesak Day yesterday and it’s Memorial Day in the US and it’s Spring bank holiday in the UK on Monday, everyone get’s a long weekend. Have a great weekend everyone!