NO wonder, most doctors get rich quick (note that we said most, since a vanishing few of them still believe in ‘humanitarian’ medical charges)  because  they bill astronomically and bleed patients mercilessly. More so, if they are a couple – husband and wife—engaged in allied fields of medicine, each complementing the other in terms of patient referrals.

Sometimes, if we were a socialist state, we wish they’ll ban couples from engaging in the same profession especially, medicine. You know what we mean, of course: The poor   patient becomes a milking cow in the hands of both, with neither hardly being   cooperative or attentive to a particular patient’s needs if he doesn’t “patronize” the other.

Now, when did health care become a buy one-take one affair?  Read more

IF there’s still any doubt that retail business is the “in” thing in the economy today, the rise of so many commercial malls even in Dagupan’s urban jungle should dispel it. Nepo Mall, Magic, CSI, they’re all here in our neck of the woods. Soon, even the giant SM or even Shopwise which has taken over much of the pioneering Rustan’s Department Store, could be in the city too.

Even St. Joseph Drugstore has become a chain pharmacy company almost overnight, opening several store branches all over the city like there was no tomorrow. No doubt, as corporate and market think-tanks say it, the retail sector in the Philippines today has never been as vibrant.

This trend however, it seems, only validates the common perception of many analysts, both foreign and domestic, that Pinoys may really be only good at retailing but shy away (dread) going into manufacturing. Read more

CHEAP labor in the Philippines and other developing countries is fueling all those outsourcing ventures and call centers, everyone knows that by now. So many young Pinoy adults, even the fresh-out-of-college, and even some undergrads, are pursuing the dream for a seat at some call center or the other since two years back like it were the Golden Fleece itself. 
Few, if any, of these aspirants mind if, as economists and other labor analysts often say, they are actually gettting a relatively (by international hiring rate standards) lower pay than their call center counterparts in the United States, UK or even Hongkong. Dollar is a dollar is a dollar,no matter how the total pay compares lowly with that paid in the same currency to  others. What they’d do– twist their native

tongue this way and that just to get the perfect American slang or the English tight upper lip inflection and nasal twang right over the phone — to land a job as CC hiree.  Read more

I just had to write this one.

Last night, I watched silently enthralled inside a restaurant (not one of those swanky, fancy dining places but an ordinary but popular one in the city) as a typical laborer’s family ( no offense meant really now, but  it was quite obvious from the outward appearance of the characters) gorged, literally gorged, on the food at a table. No pretenses, no conscious table manner observance, no frills in their dining-out clothes — but definitely with money to burn. For the food ordered, at least. 

I was watching, I mused, one of thousands of poor Pinoy families eking out a living in a nation now flapping its wings at having achieved for the first quarter of the year a 5.5 Gross National Product (GNP), up from something lower for the same period last year, or so the NEDA says. Read more

HOW those LTO (Land Transportation Office) guys love to project authority on the road. Surely they have it, and the number of vehicles they flag down to the roadside for non-fastened seatbelt to non-wearing of the standard blue shirt (for PUJ drivers) and similar violations every now and then proves that. How great the feeling of being able to stop vehicles in motion and order them to the side must be to these agents of the law!

But how many, just how many, of these State Cop-acting LTO teams ever, and I mean, ever, even just randomly check whether any of these vehicles are still using the now banned R12 aircon freon on their vehicles? And there are fairly easy spot checks for this which LTO agents must know. Read more

OKAY, just one post for Mother’s Day, however a day late it may be, and no thanks to the power outage in my place courtesy of typhoon Caloy’s windy passage. Not exactly mine, this, but the Net provided enough good read on the subject I just decided to share it with those who didn’t surf the areas I went to. What exactly does a Mother do or teach the young ‘uns? 

Here are glimpses of Her Lessons (So sorry I can’t remember the exact blogpost I got it from, please holler anyone who recognizes this, to be duly acknowledged):  Read more

THE  moguls of marketing are hard at work promoting the magical properties of the Green Tea like it carried God’s miracle in a bottle or can. As far as I know, it was the Gokongwei’s Robina Food Corporation that started this unprecedented fascination for tea since last year when C2 (for Clear and Clean?)) hit   supermarkets and convenience stores in the country with the force of a blockbuster. 

The “fad” caught on soon enough and Nestle and other bottlers and health drink companies came up with their versions of the great green tea in flavors similar to the C2 line, selling these at cheaper price to gradually chip away at C2′s market lead. The drink madness recalls the storm generated by the Noni Juce some years back when health Read more

WITH technology exploding like nobody’s business today and governments becoming more and more predisposed to monitoring their own people for “national security” purposes, and for whatever other reasons, sometimes you wonder how things would be like, say, 10to 15 years from now. 

Jasonpickles provides us a ‘typical’ fast-forward scenario of how a simple activity like ordering a pizza from your favorite store would run, circa 2020. 

But other than that, one can just understand how a national ID system as being espoused by our leaders is met with some grave reservations (mainly arising, we believe, from having watched or read about the Big-Brother-is-watching syndrome) by some sectors.

As every human being cannot avoid becoming a buyer one time or the other or needing  customer service sometime, once tagged through a national ID, he remains tagged till death. Of course one can always go the mountains and live the life of Ka Roger, incommunicado for the most part outside of the trusty cellphone, but that’s a rather abnormal life. I seriously doubt many people would want that.

And so, to live or not to live with a national ID, that is the question?

Send your comments here.  

GOOD news for the tobacco industry: A French paper manufacturer is keenly interested in buying tobacco pulp from the Philippines to sustain its annual requirements for paper-making.

No less than National Tobacco Administrator Carlitos S. Encarnacion made the announcement. Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc., a paper company based in Quimperle, France is negotiating for importation of tobacco pulp from Manila after their sample tests showed that NTA’s tobacco pulp is of good quality.

NTA has been producing pulp from tobacco stalks as main component in its research and development program on other uses of the tobaco pulp. Now it seems its modest efforts have paid off and Philippine tobacco has been noticed — definitely a ray of sunshine once again on what some have labelled (because of the scientific warnings on health risks in smoking) a sunset industry.

With the French buying our tobacco pulp, more jobs and investment oportunities are there for the grabbing. Here’s hoping the deal is a done one. Schweitze-Mauduit is known as a “diversified producer of premium specialty paper” and is also among the world’s largest supplier of fine paper.  

RATHER quite late for Valentine’s but certainly not for this Season of Love and Sacrifice, we lifted this one from a post at a site we (pardon us dear blogger, please holler if you read this piece of yours here to be acknowledged) failed to mark.

So simply written, so greaty conveyed was the message. we thought we’d share you this one — maybe not consumer issue-related but just to ponder on as we go thru life. The blogger is some kind of doctor.

It was a busy morning, approximately 8.30am, when an elderly gentleman, in his 80′s, arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He stated that he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9am. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On examination, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redressed his wound. Read more