Business & Economics Perspective Blogger

It's really annoying when people keep up with their #SahodItaasPresyoIbaba economics. It's easy to ridicule me because I'm not using a domain, unlike sites like the IBON Foundation. However, they may be very beholden to the WordPress blog of Teodoro "Teddy" A. Casiño, which is a free domain just like BlogSpot. Now, I'm going to write another post on the job market. Since I'm being belittled because of my lack of degrees like the Monsod couple (I'm neither a lawyer nor an economist) or the people at IBON, I'm going to quote other sources.  Graph taken from CFI I came across the Corporate Finance Institute   (where I got the graph above) where I found a useful article on the job market. This would be to help me understand why salaries just shouldn't be increased (or decreased) at a whim . This would also help understand how allowing more MNCs to invest in the Philippines, may actually push the salaries up. Here's an excerpt that one needs to ...

I could remember how useless the Chinese classes were, not because Chinese is a useless language (there are actually over a billion speakers worldwide), not because the Chinese teachers were stereotypically very strict (Grade 2 was strict, Grade 3 was even stricter than Grade 2, Grade 6 was said to be the strictest ), but because of the way Chinese was to be taught. That's why I got encouraged to write about learning Chinese through meaningful conversations, not parroting . Fortunately, those old Sinjiang textbooks are no longer available except for museum purposes (read here ).  Just looking at this question and answer sweet from Ling Ling Mandarin's Instagram account--I remember what my Grade 4 Chinese teacher said, "If you want only one bon toi (question and answer), go back to Grade 1. But I don't think Grade 1 only has one bon toi." The problem with the old class was that we had to learn Hokkien before learning Mandarin. I confess my Hokkien is really bad. Th...

The Express Tribune The recent Microsoft Global Outage was caused by Crowdstrike. Since I'm no IT or CS expert--it's better if I let them talk in the news. From BBC News , here's a detail from Crowdstrike that reveals the root cause of the problem has been systemic with an update: This is still a little unclear. CrowdStrike is known for producing antivirus software, intended to prevent hackers from causing this very type of disruption. According to CrowdStrike boss George Kurtz, the issues are only impacting Windows PCs and no other operating systems, and were caused by a defect in a recent update . "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," he said. "This is not a security incident or cyber-attack." What exactly was wrong with the update is yet to be revealed, but as a potential fix involves deleting a single file, it is possible that just one rogue file could be at the root of all the mayhem. Thankfully, those who created th...

  Last time, I wrote about Jollibee purchasing 70% shares ownership of Compose Coffee . It's easy to shout, "Pinoy Pride! The Philippines has conquered South Korea." I mentioned in that same article about one of my favorite tea franchises--Gong Cha. Gong Cha Korea currently owns 70% of the shares while Gong Cha Global owns only 30%. The big question is did South Korea just "conquer" Taiwan in what it did?  Pinoy Pride Economics (read about its socio-economic costs here ) might say yes to that. They might use Gong Cha as an example saying, "Are you crazy? Look at what happened to Taiwan! South Korea just checkmated it as Gong Cha Korea now owns 70%!" A good question to ask is, "If that's so why does Taiwan still remain a sovereign state and not bought by South Korea?"  Pinoy Pride Economics would rejoice with Jollibee growing worldwide but not in MNCs investing in the Philippines. Did they really think the Philippines checkmated South Kore...

Yes, you read it right--Jollibee is set to acquire 70% of the shares of South Korean coffee brand Compose Coffee. This is an excerpt from the Philippine Star Global : JFC’s wholly owned subsidiary Jollibee Worldwide Pte. Ltd. (JWPL) is set to acquire majority shareholding of 70 percent in Compose Coffee Co. Ltd. and JMCF Co. Ltd., collectively called Compose Coffee, for approximately $340 million . Titan Dining II LP and Elevation Equity Partners Korea Limited will hold the remaining shareholdings in Compose Coffee with effective interest of five percent and 25 percent, respectively. Through JWPL, JFC has a 90 percent participating interest in Titan Fund II , which is focused on strategic investments in food and beverage concepts with the objective to further grow in Asia Pacific food service brands and bring strong global food service brands to the region. It's effortless to start the cheer and dance when a Filipino company opens abroad. This is a meme by the CoRRECT Movement on F...

There are times when people just have short attention spans. Sure, I'd like to sit down in a chemistry discussion about how Chaindrite Foam works effectively. However, commercials are most likely meant to carry some form of hyperbole--such as making mozzarella stretchier than it truly is or doing some crazy stunts with a disclaimer. This Thai insecticide commercial gets really funny. What I love about these commercials is the cartoony effect. I assume the foam used in the commercial is either shaving cream or whipped cream. It's because spraying the actors with the actual foam playing the giant pests would be dangerous. The actors playing the pests are made to dress up like mascots for a school presentation. Seeing the actors play the pests dying is rather entertaining.  I believe that the purpose of giant pests isn't just for laughs. It's also to address that the problem can be that huge. Pest problems can cause so much trouble. It may be a good attempt to raise aware...

  As a person who once hated his Chinese heritage, I blame it on the way Chinese was taught in Chinese Filipino schools. It didn't matter if you were in this or that school--it was the same banana . Maybe, I can say that I hated how mathematics was taught instead of mathematics itself. The books above were the old Chinese textbooks that required people to learn Chinese first before they entered the class. Today, I heard from one of my old Chinese language teachers that Hokkien is no longer used in schools. It was very unlike several years ago when teachers would get their pointing stick and say, "Speak Chinese!" in Hokkien, when someone speaks another language. Even worse, some people graduate to the next level without learning to speak Chinese. In Chinese Filipino schools, there would be the English singing contest and the Chinese singing contest . The Chinese singing contests were spoken in Mandarin. That meant contestants were called in Mandarin. If the person was numb...

Some time ago, I wrote about the importance of learning Pinyin (read here ). Here's an interesting chart featuring different fruit types. Of course, without learning Pinyin, one would be reading everything at face value instead of the proper reading. That's why we weren't allowed to use self-romanization and use the Zhuyin. With the  Pinyin taught, the more self-romanization isn't allowed. Instead, one had to follow the Pinyin.  One of the best ways to teach Mandarin Chinese is through the different types of fruit (水果, Shuǐguǒ). It would be a fun topic to teach it this way. For example, 多吃新鮮水果和蔬菜 (Duō chī xīnxiān shuǐguǒ hé shūcài) means "Eat more fruits and vegetables." I would imagine how fun it would be to teach vocabulary and conversations (read here ) in Chinese through fruits. For Chinese Filipinos from the millennials and backward, one may remember the dreaded bon toi items (question and answer). However, with the way Chinese is taught now--learning Hok...