Things that make us proud as a Filipino . . .

Too often majority of us get stuck on the negative side. The bombast that we see on TV, read in the dailies, hear on the radio day in and day out have fallen us prey to this negativism and led many to believe that there's no hope for this country.

One Pinoy manager of a Intel has this piece of advice: "Let us all help our country by balancing the negative with the positive especially when we talk to foreigners, whether based here or abroad. Looking back and comparing the Philippines today and 1995, I was struck by how much our country has progressed physically".

He went on to enumerate some of the significant developments that have befall our country that could reverse the tide of negativism.

1. INTEL has been in the Philippines for 28 years. The Philippines plant is where Intel's most advanced products are launched, including the Pentium IV. By the end of 2002, Philippine operations became Intel's biggest assembly and testing operations worldwide.

2. TEXAS INSTRUMENTS has been operating in Baguio for over 20 years. The Baguio plant is the largest producer of DSP chips in the world. DSP chips are the brains behind cellphones. TI's Baguio plant produces the chip that powers 100% of all NOKIA cellphones and 80% of Erickson cellphones in the world.

3. TOSHIBA laptops are produced in Santa Rosa, Laguna.

4. If you drive a BENZ, BMW, or a VOLVO, there is a good chance that the ABS system in your car was made in the Philippines .

5. TREND-MICRO, makers of one of the top anti virus software PC-Cillin develops its "cures" for viruses right here in Eastwood Libis, Quezon City . When a virus breaks in any computer system in the world, they try to find a solution within 45 minutes of finding the virus.

6. Today a majority of the top ten U.S. Call Center firms in the U.S. have set up operations in the Philippines . This is one area in which I believe we are the best in the world in terms of value for money.

7. America Online (AOL) has 1,000 people in Clark answering 90% of AOL's global e-mail inquiries.

8. PROCTOR & GAMBLE has over 400 people right here in Makati (average age 23 years) doing back-up office work to their Asian operations including finance, accounting, Human Resources and payments processing.

9. Among many other things it does for its regional operations network in the Asia-Pacific region here in Manila, CITIBANK also does its global ATM programming locally.

10. This is the first year ever that the Philippines will be exporting cars in quantity courtesy of FORD Philippines.

11. The government is shedding off graft and corruption slowly but surely. This is the first time in our history that a former president is in jail and facing charges of plunder. Despite all odds, we are still pursuing the ill-gotten wealth of Marcos now enjoyed by his unrepentant heirs.

I'm sharing this information to all pinoys out there who still believe that there's hope for this country.

Murdering productivity.

One of the advantages of getting into the net is that knowledge sharing is further enhanced, and opening your email at the start of the day can be very exciting with the prospect of acquiring new bits of information about anything under the sun. Here's one forwarded by a friend:

Top 10 Ways To Murder Creativity
1. Always pretend to know more than everybody around you.
2. Get employees to fill in time sheets.
3. Run daily checks on progress of everyone's work.
4. Ensure that highly qualified people do mundane work for long periods.
5. Put barriers up between departments.
6. Don't speak personally to employees, except when announcing increased targets, shortened deadlines and tightened cost restraints.
7. Ask for a 200-page document to justify every new idea.
8. Call lots of meetings.
9. Place the biggest emphasis on the budget.
10. Kill any idea that is not your own

Blog for protection of marine resources.

A friend sent me this link to a blog: www.oneocean.org/fishblog. The site was developed for the "Fishes Feed Us" international forum, a project of the Arts and Science Collaborations, Inc. based in New York.

The blog site is an online youth dialogue whose purpose is to put a human face on the destruction of marine fisheries and ecosystems, resulting in the decline in fish supply. What so special about the site is that four high school students from Masbate National High School, Philippines participated in the online dialogue along with students from Malaysia, India and USA. The blog entries of the two students from Masbate, Philip Joseph Alarcon and Kristine Yentyl Esber were chosen as monologues that were presented at the United Nations Plaza in New York City last June 5 for the World Environment Day celebration. It's very encouraging to know our own youths breaking the digital divide to participate in this worthy undertaking.