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A well-known international company here in Makati has required all their employees to take exams. If an employee fails that will give the firm reason to lay off that employee. Some clients of outsourcing companies have terminated or not renewed their contracts.
If companies are bankrupt or don’t have the budget , then for certain, even if the outsourced service is cheap, they will discontinue it. If companies are cutting costs but still have the budget (and of course are not bankrupt), then they might have to consider outsourcing.
Outsourcing is just one option of trimming the fat from the budget. Laying-off is the cheapest and quicket way to cut costs. Salary cuts are also a quick easy fix. Having a one person do multiple tasks that had been done by several people before at even a lower salary is another way to save money. These are propositions accepted by US and European employees due to the dearth of options. For outsourcing to be a viable option, it has to be significantly cheaper and has to produce, right away, with a fast and cost-effective transition.
The fraud perpetrated by Satyam, India’s 4th largest outsourcing company, when it inflated their earnings report, will in near-term cause an operational and contractual mess that will affect other outsourcing companies but I believe, it will not affect the viability of the outsourcing business model. The differences in foreign exchange rate and coutry cost of living coupled with the accelerating technology is an economic reality companies cannot ignore. Some good may come out of the Satyam fiasco. This incident tells governments to exercise better controls and put more effort in the outsourcing industry.
In this growing globalized landscape, with cost cutting foremost on the agenda because of the financial crisis, there are more, new, different opportunities for outsourcing companies. But in this increasingly competitive economy, outsourcing companies also have to be on the look -out for new markets and new services to offer. Medical transcription, affliate marketing and knowledge-based outsourcing are just some new trends to emerge. Government support should be palpable. Training for professionals in the industry should be intensive. Information and communications technology should be continuously developed and improved.
There are a lot of “ifs”, “buts” and “to-dos” for the outsorucing industry especially in this financial crisis. But I believe this is not something the industry cannot overcome.
I don’t even call them “Corruption Scandals” anymore. With corruption being in the news everyday, I don’t feel as outraged as I did, say 5 years ago.
These are some stories that, if true, would make you want to say to the perpetrators — ”Please, cover your tracks a little bit better.”
Hot elections cause COMELEC building to burn?
Three days before the May 14, 2007 elections, a Commission on Elections building where important election records were stored was burned.
Wasn’t it suspicious that the guard in charge at that time was conveniently out of the building? There was a fire station one block away from the burning building but firemen came only when the fire was out of control.
Talk about timing.
Divisoria shopping in Moscow
Retired PNP comptroller , Eliseo de la Paz was caught by the Moscow immigration with Php6.9 million pesos (in euros) in a bag. The retired chief told the press that it was for travel expenses. Then later they said the money was for travel contigency. Then again they said the money was intended for buying intelligence equipment.
Okay, okay so buying equiptment it is. Well, buying intelligence eqiuptment in Moscow must be like shopping in Divisoria. You bring a wad of cash, choose what you like, and buy right away. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Using Fertilizer money to harvest votes?
Jocjoc Bolante was appointed by our good president as the Department of Agriculture Undersecretary . As such official, he had the authority to disburse funds to buy fertilizers. He gave funds to more than 100 congressmen near election time totaling to 728 million pesos. He can do that, right?
But, umm, some questions. Question 1: Why give money to buy fertilizer to places such as Quezon City. I haven’t seen any rice field along Cubao. Question 2: Bolante gave the money to the congressmen during harvest season. Why buy fertilizers during harvest season? Aren’t you supposed to use fertilizers during planting season?
The financial crisis seems so far away for many Filipinos. With reassuring headlines that say RP is “a sea of calm” in this turmoil, some might say that the Philippines wouldn’t be as affected as the other nations because we aren’t so exposed to those toxic securities that are dragging the big banks down. Unfortunately, the crisis has spread beyond those esoteric financial instruments and is posing a systemic risk for world economies.
Even if these big banks and institutions are oceans away from us, since they are so vital to the economy, they drag their clients, customers and investors down with them. These clients and investors may be your average Joe, you average small business, big businesses, titans of industries and even countries.
Because of this crisis, banks and businesses are hoarding cash ,and credit is hard to come by. What does this mean? Small businesses will not get the bank loan it needs to expand, big businesses may be forced to cut their spending, banks will not lend to other banks because they need cash to maintain their operations and pay their debt. This will mean lost confidence in the economy, dwindling pension funds, layoffs……..
Can the Philippines weather this storm?
This depends on how dependent we are on foreign injections of capital. This capital source may be from our OFW remittances and direct foreign investments. If a call center’s clients include foreign business hard hit by the credit crisis, that account may be in jeopardy. If an OFW’s contract will be terminated because his company has been laying off, then there will be no remittance. If another country is in recession, our exports to that country will decline.
The effect of this crisis will also depend on the strength of our domestic economy. Do we have enough goods and services produced and a big enough domestic market? For all our sakes, I hope our country’s balance sheet is strong enough to cushion us from this global economic blow.
My boss has told us early this year that we are seeing a Street regime change stemming from the August 2007 debacle brought about by the subprime mess.
And indeed we are. Today, I cannot keep my eyes off the online Wall St. Journal. Not 1, not 2 but 3 huge companies are either selling off assets, being taken over or is in the brink of bankruptcy.
It has been a week of seesawing sentiments. After breathing a sigh of relief when Big Powerful Uncle Sam took over Fannie and Freddie, we are again waiting in bated breaths what Uncle Sam will do for another Wall St. giant – Lehman Brothers. Will it let it sink or will it save it yet again? And yeah, the formerly called “ultimate NYC company” Merrill Lynch is bye-bye after being acquired by the Bank of America. Wow. AIG, the biggest insurer is selling off its profitable assests just to keep afloat.
With no Bear Stearns, Lehman and Merrill and the emergence of Bank of America, JP Morgan… Wall St. is changing its face. Who is next? What is next?
With a wife looking like a stylish and classy aristocrat and a hot blonde as a daughter McCain added another beauty to his presendential campaign. McCain selected a former beauty queen , now Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
wife daughter
Sometimes referred to as US hottest governor, the former Miss Wasilly eloped with her highschool boyfriend when she was 24. She then became an accomplished government executive being a mayor then a governor and is now one of the Repulican Party’s shining stars. Oh and aside from running the state of Alaska with a high approval rating no less, she also runs marathons, hunts, and is a self-proclaimed hockey mom.
Sarah Palin as 1984 Miss Wasilly …… and 20+ years later
Remember the movie, “The American President” with Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. This was a comedy-drama about a widowed US president and a lobbyist who fell in love. It just is a romantic story.
We see the Presidency as an office. We very seldom see the President as a mere mortal like us, falling in and out of love. The movie’s tagline summed it up: Why can’t the most powerful man in the world have the one thing he wants most?Indeed. Why not?
The French Version
the ex the prez the gf
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has the distinction of being the French President to have his wife leave him while in office, well, since Napoleon. But the divorced French Prez didn’t remain single long. He is now dating supermodel-turned-singer girlfriend Carla Bruni. Sarkozy and Bruni first surfaced as a couple earlier this month in French media on a visit to Disneyland Paris two months after the French president’s divorce from his wife of 11 years, Cecilia, who happens to be, yes, you guessed it, an ex-model. The longtime model Bruni, 39 an Italian-born French citizen has also dated a range of famous men, including Mick Jagger and Donald Trump, and has also reportedly been linked to singer Eric Clapton and actor Vincent Perez.
Yep, yep. Presidents are still human after all.
I live very near Glorietta, a mall right in the heart of the financial district of the nation’s capital. Glorietta is just a ten minute walk from where I live. I go to Glorietta almost every day. At 12 noon, I was supposed to go check out some stuff in Terranova, a shop in the ground floor of Glorietta 3. But I was overcome by sleepiness since I did not have a decent night’s sleep for the past 3 days. And so I decided to shop a bit later after my nap. I was roused by the incessant ringing of my phone at 2pm. My friends were checking up on me and other were texting me. There was an explosion in Glorietta.
I went out of bed and when I went to the office. I saw my friend Rajah with grey debris on his hair. He was there in Glorietta when it happened. He was in Toby’s near Landmark when they heard a loud explosion. Then the lights went out. After a few minutes, the guards led the people out of the mall. Good thing that the people in that section of the mall did not panic.
I did not realize how serious the situation was. The intial reports said that it was caused by an LPG in Leuk Yeun Restaurant. It was an unfortunate accident, I thought. But at least it was not a bomb. So we went back to Greenbelt, had some ice cream. Instead of watching a movie in Greenbelt, my son and I decided to watch a movie in Powerplant instead.
Then my mom called me telling me that it might have been an intentional attack. They were very worried because I live right in this area. This is not the first threat in this area. There was a hostage situation in Oakwood and a bomb in a bus in the Ayala area as well in the past years. I told them that there was no need to worry because it was just caused by an LPG.
When I read the news that the authorities have confirmed that the explosion was indeed caused by a bomb, I was scared. As of this time, there are 8 reported dead and 129 people injured. Police had described the explosion to be a most likely deliberate attack.
Mar Roxas has said that this is a major setback for our economy and will greatly affect our image as a progressive and stable country. I could not agree more. I was feeling pretty optimistic about our country’s economy these past quarters. The peso is rising, we are having a real state boom, the market is up and you see people with increased purchasing power (well, as far as I can observe) and now we have this bomb.
Attacks like these are scary because they strike in places we normally feel safe in. It is scary because of its randomness. We don’t know when, where or who it will kill or injure. And now this kind of attack has resurrected in the immediate neighborhood where my son and I both live. It could have been us who were there in Glorietta 2.
Metro Manila is under red alert. PNP Chief is saying that we should go about our business as usual. I guess this is the time that we should trust our police and government to do their job and protect the people.
I hope they will.
Sergey Brin(33), the richest eligible bachelor in the U.S. weds his long-time girlfriend Anne Wojcicki, a biotech entrepreneur. Ms. Wojcicky (pronounced woe-JIT-ski) , widely known as Woj, earned a degree in biology from Yale University. She did molecular biology research at the National Institutes of Health and University of California-San Diego before working as a health care consultant for Passport Capital, a San Francisco investment fund. She then co-founded biotech company, 23andMe, to develop ways “to help you make sense of your own genetic information”.
This is quoted from Valleywag:
Just how romantic is Sergey Brin? He falls for girl next door, well, from the house next to the garage where the Google founder, with Larry Page, first worked on the search engine. Brin resisted the temptations of models and airheads: even though, shockingly, girlfriend Anne Wojcicki was older than he; even after the Russian-born computer engineer, as the world’s most eligible billionaire bachelor, became a magnet for gold-diggers; and even though tycoons are expected to abuse their status. The couple were wed, in their swimsuits, under a huppah. Cute. But here’s the clinching evidence of true love: we hear that, though California presumes equal division of common property in the case of a divorce, Brin didn’t require a pre-nup. Aah.
Mr. Brin, you are a indeed a perceptive, intelligent, honorable and humble man who knows how to recognize a woman of substance. Kudos to you and your lovely wife!
My boss, who is American sent me this article to read:
From the webpage ..
It was against this background of repression and prurience that Kinsey asserted the right of science to speak about sexual behavior. As a scientist, Kinsey spoke and wrote plainly, using language about sexuality that was rarely heard or read at the time.
A proper historical understanding of Kinsey’s purposes should focus on his explicit desire to understand sexuality by using objective tools of science and on his scarcely concealed desire to reform what he saw as the repressive character of sexual life.
A proper historical understanding of Kinsey’s purposes should focus on his explicit desire to understand sexuality by using objective tools of science and on his scarcely concealed desire to reform what he saw as the repressive character of sexual life .
The findings from Kinsey’s work and the attitudes the work expressed quickly filtered into reformist groups that strove to change laws about sexual behavior, to free public speech about sexuality, to advance family planning through birth control, to promote sex education, and to reduce what they saw as hypocrisy about sexuality.
Here in the Philippines many relationships have been compromised because of the inability to know and accept each other’s sexuality and sexual behavior. We have teenage pregnancies that more often than not continue or start the cycle of poverty. We have a proliferation of STDs and ill-performed abortions. We resort to lies and deceit to cover our infidelity.
Reports like Kinsey’s is the first step in recognizing our sexual behavior. When we have identified as a society our pervading sexual behavior, then we can take steps in dealing with it. When we deal with sexual behavior we don’t mean sweeping it under a rug and pretending we never do it. Nor do we mean condemning these actions nor labeling it as wrong right away. Dealing with it means that we have an honest dialog with our partners and we take concrete actions on how to avoid adverse effects of such behavior to ourselves and our families.
An open-mind and a great deal of honesty can go a long, long way.
I have been working with our own Alice chatbot for a month now based on Dr. Wallace’s Original Alice Software. Our Alice is written in LISP and has additional features that include:
- Implementation of AIML includes enhancements such as the following new tags: <arg> , <rule> , <lex> , <lisp> , <token> and <fact> .
- The <pattern> tag supports additional wild cards matching, word matching by feature, and embedded Lisp conditionals.
- Conversion of the Alice Graphmaster parsed input from a sequence of words into a sequence of feature based tokens, fills working memory with a set of tuples.
- Allowing Alice full access to the Internet and web searches via Agent Information Server.
Because of the additional feature-based tags and wildcards our Alice can do math. You can ask mathematical questions in symbols or words and she can answer them. For instance: What is the logarithm of 1023? Or you can type “934 + 23 / 2″ and she can give you the correct answer. Since our Alice runs in our proprietary environment and is coded in our own version of LISP, I cannot share our chatbot technology to the public.
That doesn’t stop me however from fiddling with the free chatterbots in pandora bots.. I have created Pedro, a chatbot based on Dr. Wallace’s Alice. I am training him to be a Filipino chatbot. So I am filling his database with Filipino answers.
Example: Where do you live? Makati
What is your favorite food? Kaldereta
Visitors can help train Pedro by suggesting questions and answers that are uniquely Filipino.
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