Shaun T. Dy's Business & Economics Perspective Blog

Back then, I wrote an article where I discussed the stupidity of the "If it's bitter, just add sugar." mindset . In Cebuano, it's, "Kung pait, butangi lang ug asukal". The mentality itself has kept many people poor. It would go with how people just want to have a good time. It can be observed in how people deal with their salary hence explaining their financial situation (read here ). With Christmas just around the corner (read here ), it's very easy to land into the dreaded Holiday Debt Trap (read here ). What's next? Would those members of the labor union blame the government and entrepreneurs for the bad decisions they made themselves?  What's with the typical Filipino mindset about money (and sugar)?  Please note that I'm not attacking every single Filipino  there are Filipinos who are mindful of their money. Instead, I'm tackling the predominant mindset brought about by the "Kung pait, butangi lang ug asukal" mindset. It se

When I eat at Shawarma Gourmet located in Escario Mall, Cebu City (read my first review here ), I usually go for the Shawarma. This time, I decided to try this new huge meal platter which is around PHP 549.00. As a beef eater, I went for the beef (mixed with mutton) kebab meal. The meal comes with some Arabic rice, some kind of salad with grilled cheese, falafel, hummus, garlic sauce, and some smaller versions of pita bread. The iced tea goes along with it as well. Maybe, I was expecting too much when I wanted cardamom iced tea instead of the usual iced tea.  It was kind of expensive due to the amount of delicious food on the platter. I can say it was worth it with four pieces of fresh pita bread, I got to taste some Middle Eastern salad, their own hummus, and some falafels. I get a lot of my favorites in one dis. It might be considered expensive based on its cost. However, I'd consider the price reasonable because of how many types of food I get to eat at once. It was delicious to

I guess those fools of the Philippine Anti-Fascist League (and many of its deluded supporters) either refuse to get it or are blatantly lying. Almost every rally held by what many believe are CPP-NPA legal fronts also confuses foreign investors for foreign invasion or even foreign imperialism . Once again, do I need to say that 100% FDI ownership is all about the shares and not land ownership ? What makes it even more hypocritical is that they are actually recording these things on imported media . They're sharing their anti-FDI rants using imported devices, imported platforms, and imported social media (read here ). When I do ask them on Facebook, they say how can they take them seriously and that they're "simply forced to participate in capitalism". Did anybody (especially those they call "evil capitalists") force them to buy the expensive Apple equipment when they could've settled for Xiaomi or Huawei?  A simple research on the dictionary will tell us

It's funny how I look at Facebook and find several ironic things. A few years back, there was a Facebook page that I think was called Heneral Luna (General Luna) . It had a meme that mentioned that the first world countries didn't become industrialized by accepting FDIs but through a land reform where the small businesses were protected from foreigners. It was claimed that's where the first-world countries reformed. My answer to that is baloney . The meme above this paragraph was from the 1987 Philippine Consh*tution page. Note that I decided to do some censoring because a bad word is being used. Yet, I can't help but use the page to illustrate a point. This "Heneral Luna" page on Facebook (now even called Heneral Lunatic since the ideas spelled are lunacy at their finest ) can be easily debunked with proper research. We also have the Philippine Anti-Fascist League (PAFL) with its idiotic leftist memes and support for the late terrorist Jose Maria Sison. I cou

Keats School Blog   I wrote about why those old Chinese textbooks will not help achieve the HSK level needed . HSK means 汉语水平考试 (Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì) or Chinese proficiency test. I really remember a lot of bad memories that some people laugh at today. Some say they were crying at the tutorial classes. Sometimes, there are good reasons that a child can end up crying. Memorization is useless when understanding is hardly incorporated. That's why I flunked Grade 2 Chinese back and I always had problems with my grades. As a student, I realized that I wasn't really just wanting to learn but wanting to learn how it's applied. The same goes for how mathematics and sciences are taught. Both are important subjects but the way teachers are forced to teach them isn't really making people learn.  HSK is defined by the Chinese Learning Center as: HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) or the Chinese Proficiency Test is an international standardized exam which tests and rates Chinese language

Bahay Tsinoy, museum of Chinese life in the Philippines I must admit that there's really a lot of cavemen out there. Some would argue that Pinyin is making things too easy, never mind that Mainland China has been the first to make the move to abolish Zhuyin. I was looking at the comments on the Bahay Tsinoy Facebook page and I'm not surprised by the comments. I try to talk about Pinyin and even ask, "Can you get your business permit with Zhuyin?" I guess I was being too blunt in what I did or not. Those old books above were useless . It's because they required people to learn Chinese first and an overdose of memorization . Memorization helps but without understanding, it doesn't help. Besides, you can't even use those textbooks above to teach Mandarin in the language centers (read why here ). People who graduated from Chinese schools talk about their experiences. Some of them even said, "We just memorized so we don't get whacked at the ruler by th

I was looking for a song in relation to the BoPoMoFo. In my case, I'm prone to calling Pinyin "BoPoMoFo" until today (read here ). It's because Pinyin basically serves the same purpose as Zhuyin--teaching one how to read Chinese. I'd like to say that I got too comfortable with this old sequence: I may hate memorizing Zhuyin but I like treating Pinyin in the same sequence. The new table which uses the 23 initials-24 finals method (read here ) can be confusing. Some old-timers may have an easier time transliterating the Zhuyin into Pinyin. However, I still find the new sequence confusing. I may no longer remember Zhuyin (and I kept failing at it and kept memorizing sentences without understanding) but I can remember Pinyin. Except my memorization of the Pinyin was in the BoPoMoFo sequence.  With more than a billion Chinese speakers worldwide--can we keep using the old books to teach Mandarin? That's why I wrote about why the old Chinese textbooks can't be us