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This article originally appeared in NOW Magazine, which retains all rights.
Follow the author at www.twitter.com/strukhoff or
www.nowmagazineblog.blogspot.com
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This reporter ran into counter-cultural techies early in his career, during
his mid-80s stint as managing editor of UNIX Review.
Trade shows were glorious fun in those days, with entrepreneurs in roller
skates, companies with names like mt xinu (read it backwards) and the Canta
Afforda Computer Lab, and a young Bill Joy cutting a hip figure in his black
leather jacket and trademark genius-speak. It is from these roots that
today’s forest of open-source advocates, idealists, and companies grew.
Discussions about open source revolve around the perception that open ... (more)
I was lucky that Typhoon Ondoy did not affect my apartment. We are out in
Pampanga two hours from Manila but we did not have a flood in my little
neighborhood.
But so many people died in this typhoon, and now the world knows what can
happen in the Philippines. We get more than 20 typhoons each year and they
cause many problems.
Typhoon Feria back there in June damaged many houses in Samar Province where
I am from. I was visiting then and it was very scary. You know we don't have
a radio there or any way to know when a typhoon is coming. We just hope for
the best and we know that no one will help us.
Two other typhoons in August and September gave us rain for more than one
week. A lot of floods and some people died then, too.
But I think that nobody outside of the Philippines knows about these things
unless they are very, very bad.
As I said, my family and friends ... (more)
The Philippines on Ulitzer
I have received so many visitors to my post about Ondoy. So I want to talk a
little more about the calamities in the Philippines.
First, here are places you can go to help:
www.philippineaid.org - I mentioned this one before.
www.inquirer.net - This is a newspaper website. They have a lot of
information about the Ondoy Relief Drive.
www.redcross.org.ph - Yes, they are very active here just like in the US and
other places.
I want to let everyone know again that this is not the only time that we have
trouble in the Philippines. We have so many typhoons every year. Many people
die each time we have a bad typhoon. Houses fall into the rivers. Children
and old people drown. Little boats sink in the ocean.
This happens so many times each year in the Philippines talaga. You can see
in my blog here that I wrote a story about Typhoon Feria back in Ju... (more)
The Philippines on Ulitzer
There's been an outpouring of concern and aid from many people in the US and
elsewhere to help victims of the flooding caused by Typhoon Ondoy in the
Philippines.
One place to send aid--an organization that's not as well-known as it should
be--is the Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary.
http://www.pcgaux.org/
The Auxiliary is not part of the Philippine government. Rather, it is a group
of seaworthy, dedicated volunteers who assist the Philippine Coast Guard in
many areas: search and rescue, public education, environmental protection,
and several other civic-minded functions. I spent several years with the U.S.
Coast Guard Auxiliary and got to know many people around the world who
volunteer for similar organizations in their countries.
One of the great people I met along the way is Commodore Harold Wolf of the
Philippine auxiliary. I've just been... (more)
http://twitter.com/fuatkircaali
Yesterday morning I checked the Ulitzer home page on my iPhone on my way to
the office and I realized two of the top three stories were about "Typhoon
Ondoy" in Philippines.
Thirty-six hours later we still have three stories filed from Manila on
Ulitzer's home page. Top Ulitzer stories on Ulitzer from around the 25
distinct subject categories it covers are processed every 60 minutes and
displayed by an algorithm which we believe is more sophisticated than, say,
Google News algorithms.
Early this year, seasoned news man Roger Strukhoff, whose family owned and
published their town newspaper in Wisconsin, launched the Ulitzer topic
Philippines Online Journal. Strukhoff logged close to three million Ulitzer
page views with his articles.
Inday Vinas is a struggling young writer who grew up in a very poor area of
the Philippines. She sta... (more)
The images were beamed to a worldwide audience: a big typhoon had hit the
Philippines, several hundred people drowned, and floods covered much of the
nation's capital, Manila. "Ketsama" (or "Ondoy" as it was known locally) had
dumped a month's worth of rain in about 12 hours. In a country that is hit by
about 20 typhoons each year, this one caused the most destruction seen in
decades.
In addition to tremendous loss of life and property, the storm and its
aftermath have caused, and continue to cause, a very serious loss of
credibility to the presidential administration of Gloria Magapacal-Arroyo.
GMA, as she is known, had already been facing relentless, severe criticism
for years, fueled by allegations of massive corruption, a travel budget that
includes serial travel to all corners of the world for purposes that often
seem opaque, and a fecklessness that makes her ... (more)
The volunteer members of the Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary continued to do
their work after the headlines faded in the wake of the dual typhoons that
the Philippines in September. A more recent storm approached the northern tip
of the country, dithered, then moved northeast toward Japan without making
landfall in the Philippines.
The latest potential typhoon is brewing as I am writing this article. Current
projections show that it may head for the country's mid-section, where rains
occur regularly throughout the year, in contrast to the traditional six-month
rainy season (May to October) on the northern island of Luzon, the island
on which the capital city of Manila is located.
Commodore Harold Wolf sent along the numerous pictures attached here. He also
referenced a stirring article that was written by Commodore Daniel G.
Cabalde, District Director for the regi... (more)
It's a lovely evening here in Pampanga. The dewpoint has been down the past
few days, as relatively dry air has been pouring in from the South China Sea
to the west of here. This air also drove the latest typhoon, Lupit (known
locally as Ramil) away from the Philippines before it could make landfall
here, and toward Japan. The next potential typhoon sits out there near Guam
somewhere; we should know in a few days whether it will cause a problem here.
Just as you can't sit around in California thinking about earthquakes all day
long, or sit in my native Illinois and think about tornadoes, you can't
obsess about typhoons in the Philippines.
Human nature has many quirks, one of them being a continuous alternation
between apathy and over-reaction. I attribute it to the fight-or-flight
reaction that's still wired into our lizard brains and which drives so much
of our beh... (more)
Christmas lights have been up in the Philippines since early October.
Commercials for Pasko, as the holiday is called, have appeared on TV, and the
malls are full of people getting a head start on their shopping.
There's a particular form of lighted star (known as a parol) that's
ubiquitous, in many variations, and for sale at innumerable roadside stands
along the major roads here in Pampanga. The large Christmas trees found in
most American homes are a luxury here, and not as critical to the tradition
as the parols and the creches (called belens) and, as always with the
Philippines, the family.
Pasko is also centered around the Catholic Church, a series of Masses and
feasts in the days leading to Christmas Day; the celebration continues
through the Epiphany (you know, The Three Magi) in early January. Verily, the
Twelve Days of Christmas (and more) are celebrated h... (more)
Cyber City Teleservices (www.cctll.com) is the most venerable of the CRM
call-center firms in the Philippines. Dating back to 1999, it was co-founded
by longtime industry executive Jonathan Rosenberg, who spent two decades in
the US in the direct response industry.
"The first thing I want to be clear about is that we don't view ourselves as
a solution for companies to reduce costs," he told me in a recent interview
at CCT's headquarters in the Clark Special Economic Zone, a couple hours
north of Manila in the state of Pampanga. "The most important issue for
business executives is driving topline revenue, and we help our clients do
that."
I met Jonathan during an event called Convergence 2009, part of a convention
at Clark that was sponsored by the Philippine government. The event attracted
local business leaders and foreign executives, as well as students eager to ... (more)
Datuk Badlisham Ghazali is the CEO of Malaysia’s Multimedia Development
Corporation (MDeC). (“Datuk” is an honorific term in Malaysian society
that can be used as a rough approximation of “Sir” in the UK.)
MdeC is responsible for the country’s MSC, or Multimedia Super Corridor, as
it was known when it was conceived in 1996.
The MSC covers an area of about 175,000 acres, stretching approximately 30
miles from the famed Petronas Towers in the center of Kuala Lumpur, through a
planned “Silicon Valley” region that encompasses the district of Sepang
(and the palnned cities of Cyberjaya and Putrajaya), to the Kuala Lumpur
International Airport.
A comprehensive story about the MSC would require at least one book. For now,
we just decided to focus on getting some initial thoughts from Mr. Ghazali.
With a renewed, recent focus on the potential of Southeast Asia as a major
... (more)
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