Shaun T. Dy's Business & Economics Perspective Blog

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...

Looking at the IBON Foundation's page can be laughable . One may notice Atty. Neri Colmenares, someone who fortunately lost the senatorial race twice . I remember arguing about people who'd believe in the lies that Colmenares would propagate about FDIs. There's the call to stop water privatization (the call for the nationalization of the water industry) and the constant opposition to allowing foreigners to own 100%. Do they even get that 100% FDI ownership is all about share ownership and not land ownership ? As the summer heat intensifies due to the El Niño, I decided to write this entry. A good question to ask now is, "Would you rather die of thirst or a heatstroke than accept quality water and electricity services from MNCs?"  What organizations like the IBON Foundation and Migrante International insist is on national industrialization over the acceptance of FDIs. The question is how do they expect to industrialize the nation based on doing everything on their ...

There's the statement that  some  honor students didn't do well later in life. I don't blame  their  being honor students as to why they failed in  real life .  The late John Gokongwei graduated as an honor student . Just reading this can explain why some honor students are still doing well in real life:  Mr. John didn’t resume his studies until nearly five decades later. By then, he had already founded JG Summit, built his business empire, and made a name for himself in various industries.  Despite his success, he still went back to school and proved that learning truly is a lifelong process .  Apart from pursuing a master’s degree in business administration from De La Salle University, Mr. John also completed a 14-week Advanced Management Course at Harvard University.  “ It took me four years since I was a working student. When I got my diploma, it was one of the proudest moments of my life, ” he previously shared during his alma mater...

I ran into DNews where I got the video (above) to share. The interesting fact is that flies can get a bad name. In business, there's the term that the place is simply visited only by flies, to show that business is bad . Flies love dirty places and they're carriers of germs. However, I was soon amazed to learn about maggot therapy a few years back. Maggot therapy is using disinfected larvae of flies that only lay their eggs on decaying tissue. These tiny maggots begin as much decaying tissue as possible. With that in mind, I even feel like if one day I ever get diabetic or have a slow-healing wound, I would certainly want that procedure! I would choose to have disinfected maggots on my wound, even if the idea sounds cross. That would be better than losing my foot! After showing interest in maggot therapy, I certainly find this procedure amazing! An interesting concept from Singapore that I wish I knew existed Singapore may be a first-world country but you can't get rid of w...

Back in high school and after college, I had a sedentary lifestyle. I would play countless hours of video games and watch TV almost non-stop. Exercise tends to sound so complicated. Fortunately, it doesn't have to sound very complicated since exercise shouldn't always sound like being athletic. The moment I got a Xiaomi MiBand--I soon installed Google Fit aside from the official Xiaomi app (which gets really buggy) and the Notify for MiBand app. I started off rather fat in 2013 and I'm happy to say I've lost a lot of weight. A fitness band would be used to count steps. At first, I aimed for 6,000 steps a day but I wanted to beat that record. 6,000 steps was my bare minimum . There were times when an exercise would barely give me the steps I wanted. I could do some cardio boxing, feel very tired, and still not get the steps I wanted. Fortunately, fitness devices can be used in workout mode. With my MiBand, one of the things I did was to set it up to workout mode. I could...

As I've sipped two glasses of Tealive's Aren Caramel (read here )--I was tempted to research more on palm sugar from the Arenga tree. Arenga bears the fruit that Filipinos call kaong and Indonesians call kolang kaling. As a Filipino, I prefer to call it the Kaong Tree or Punuan ng Kaong. This video is from Masarang, Indonesia. Masarang in Tagalog means strong. If the Indonesian word means strong as well--this is a very strong foundation. The research on palm sugar landed me in the organization called Yayasan Masarang or Masarang Foundation. The video I just shared shows the struggle of palm tappers and how FDI can help in learning environmentally-friendly practices.  The late Lee Kuan Yew even published in his book From Third World to First about greening Singapore. The pernicious myth that's spread around is that Singapore supposedly only opened to FDI due to lack of natural resources . However, other countries rich in natural resources like Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Chi...

Is it me or are Philippine politicians that fond of band-aid solutions? A few days ago, I ended up reading from The Philippine Star where Senator Jose Pimentel Ejercito Jr. aka Jinggoy Estrada proposed yet another band-aid solution. Here's an excerpt from what Estrada wants to do: It seeks to amend Section 20 of the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines to include a provision mandating refund credit to a customer who experienced a service outage and disruption for an aggregate period of 24 hours or more within a month. Under the proposed measure, the refund credit shall be also granted to customers subscribing to a service on a prepaid basis. “Why should we pay for a service that we have not benefited from? And at a time when almost everything depends on gadgets and digital devices, it is important to have a fast, accessible and reliable connection,” Estrada said in Filipino. “Genuine accessibility can only be achieved if the connection services are regular, reli...

It's the New Year (but not yet the Chinese New Year). I could remember people whining about the prices of onions skyrocketing depending on the area. We need to do a supply chain analysis instead of demanding the government to make "magic solutions". I did write an article some time ago pointing out how FDIs can help the local Philippine agriculture (read here ).  Instead, we have a lot of naysayers over social media who keep insisting on the age-old lie that the late Lee Kuan Yew and Kishore Mahbubani keep hearing. It's all about how MNCs are just there to rape and plunder the country's natural resources. These fools would just say stuff like, "But Singapore opened up to FDI because of its lack of natural resources." Guess what? Vietnam, a country rich in natural resources, was once poorer than Singapore and the Philippines , and opened to FDI. The late Nguyen Duy Cong aka Do Muoi imitated Singapore in some say and guess where Vietnam is now. A lot of co...

This is the problem when one's stingy with health. Health is also wealth. If the only thing one thinks about is money then they're missing the point. If one only thinks about financial wealth then one hasn't truly seen another depth of wealth which is health. I've seen some people who have had their stupidity with generational stinginess (read here) . If I'm not wrong, the boomers (1946-1964) tend to suffer from a lack of flexibility to change. Some people have even dismissed insurance calling it useless . However, what they don't see is that insurance could've covered problems like temporary relief for their loved ones or reduced the costs of hospitalization bills in the long run.  It's one thing when people have contingency savings. It's good to set money aside for emergencies. Buying insurance and paying it monthly or annually is part of the plan. However, some people just hold on too much to their money. Some older generation people refused to ev...

One of the corniest (and for me, rather offensive ) jokes is, "Bitter? Just add sugar!" I'm told to ease down because it's just a joke like if someone calls me stupid and I should learn to just "laugh it off". However, I feel that the problem with the mindset that says, "If it's bitter, just add sugar!" is how often it goes from just a joke to a bad mindset . Sugar isn't entirely bad since we do take sugar when we eat fruits. The problem is too much sugar . With Christmas around the corner, it's very easy to think of high sugar consumption. Christmas songs tend to sing a lot about sweets . A Filipino cover of "Frosty the Snowman" sings about two sweets named puto and suman which are two kinds of rice cakes. There's also the serving of puto bumbong which is made from purple rice served with butter. Christmas tends to be associated with sweets as well.  Now, this isn't a post to completely discourage the consumption of s...