Today, we took the early flight from Puerto Princesa to Manila, with a comfortable 2 hour break in between to catch the plane to Singapore. Which turned out to be really really tight when the luggage was 30 min late and we found out that we may need 30 min from Terminal 1 to 3 by taxi due to constructions.... Got there 3 min before the final call, checked in with Jetstar, a Quantas daughter, and arrived in a completely different place 3.5 hours later: an unfriendly cab driver, 25 Singapore dollars (ca. 20 € - same as for a glass of wine...) to get to the city, a stolen mobile phone (not mine...), left lane traffic, prices 10-100 times as high as in Manila, lights and glamour (visited the crazy and posh Marina Bay Sands rooftop bar and watched the light show in the Marina Bay Gardens). Will have the whole day to explore the rest of the city tomorrow!
Decided to spend our last day in the Philippines on the water again. Is there something like reversed sea sickness? The solid ground doesn't feel as solid anymore after a week on a boat, you constantly wonder if it's the world around you or you who is shaking. So getting back on a boat felt like the right thing to do. Susan's husand (we stayed at "Susan's Place", a nice B&B in Puerto Princesa) organized us a tricycle (Junior was our driver, rather senior, no teeth, disillusioned with Philippine government and health system, and slowing down to make crosses at every church we passed during our 12 km trip to Honda Bay). Finally got there, rented fins, shared a boat with two Croatian Ladies, and explored the great beaches of Pandan Island and Starfish Island, the corals of Panemo Reef and the chilled San Miguel Lights of Cowdry Island. So for the next visit: only 7.099 islands to go...
Today, we took the early flight from Puerto Princesa to Manila, with a comfortable 2 hour break in between to catch the plane to Singapore. Which turned out to be really really tight when the luggage was 30 min late and we found out that we may need 30 min from Terminal 1 to 3 by taxi due to constructions.... Got there 3 min before the final call, checked in with Jetstar, a Quantas daughter, and arrived in a completely different place 3.5 hours later: an unfriendly cab driver, 25 Singapore dollars (ca. 20 € - same as for a glass of wine...) to get to the city, a stolen mobile phone (not mine...), left lane traffic, prices 10-100 times as high as in Manila, lights and glamour (visited the crazy and posh Marina Bay Sands rooftop bar and watched the light show in the Marina Bay Gardens). Will have the whole day to explore the rest of the city tomorrow!
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Arrived in Puerto Princesa, a nice and relaxed port city on central Palawan island tonight at 3 am. Had a last breakfast at 6 (as the Seadoors crew claimed we should by now have gotten used o erring up early, with an early morning 6 am dive for the past 5 days), and then slowly packed and celebrated farewell. The 4 crazy Chinese are heading back to Nanjing, les deux Rolands, Tony, Rhita, Bernard and Thierry back to France, Rhita's daughter Sandrine will stay one more week and our two diving buddies, Alexandra and Rafael from Puerto Rico, will also continue their honeymoon. This was our group for the last 6 days, from ages 27 to 74. Along with the 10 guys from Seadoors. All in a 25m vessel, in the middle of nowhere (12 hours boat ride away from the mainland. One evening we actually enjoyed a couple of hours on solid ground - we walked through shallow water over to the ranger station in the north atoll and had a small party there: 10 rangers and 1 Irish research assistant live in a 10x10 m hut on the water. But at least it was not shaking. The waves (along with being in the Sulu sea and different stories about hijackings by pirates and Islamic fundamentalists, the prospect of diving with sharks, having strong currents and the next compression chamber being at least 2 days away) sort of got on my nerves the first day. So I skipped a meal and the first dive but when joining for the second dive and being under water, felt soooo much better. And we did see sharks, in 85% of our dives: a whale shark, a hammerhead, a thresher shark, nurse and black tip sharks, grey and silk sharks, and tons of white tip sharks. Really impressive, and not scary at all. Tons of turtles too, 2 manta rays, three swarms of dolphins, barracudas, huge swarms of tuna (man, they look mean!, jack fish, aggressive trigger fish, ,... and such an overwhelmingly rich flora and fauna - the corals were truly amazing. The pictures will follow. And I successfully finished my Advanced Open Water Dive Certificate, together with buddy Alexandra. Great food too, some first pics below: We'll be arriving in Puerta Princesa on Palawan Island this afternoon, where we will jump aboard the Seadoors, a diving boat which will be our home for the next 6 nights. First stop will be at Jesse Beazley reef, from there we'll sail to Tubbataha Reef, a UNESCO world heritage site and famous for its incredible diversity of birds and marine life (corals, fish, dolphins, turtles, ...). It is 12 hours away from the next wifi, so the next blog will be uploaded on March 20 only. And it will hopefully contain many awesome pictures of colorful underwater nature! More pics and info: http://www.tubbatahareef.org/home Thanks to all the commenting and silent known and unknown readers so far!! As I'm using the free version, I get some very basic statistics and keep wondering, who the over 890 individual users may be, who have accessed this blog over 2.300 times in the past 5 weeks... Funny feeling. At least I think I know who the about 20 regulars are:-) Got a private car organized this morning to take us through Bohol in a day. The driver, as most drivers here, loved what he called "mellow music", so we had 6 hours of heartbreak, love, tears, together forever, ...
First stop was the Blood Contract site (Legazpi was right, but it was not Lapu Lapu but someone else who he signed the contract with - Lapu Lapu was the one who killed Magellan in Cebu). There was not much left of the oldest church in Baclayon after the 7.2 earth cake in October 2014, not much left of any of the ca. 20 churches we saw today. Most of them had some outer wall still standing in heaps of debris, equally damaged were many of the bridges and most houses (and even 1 chocolate hill) in Sagbayan, the epicenter of the earthquake. But first we had a brief look at the Loboc river restaurant and decided not to wait for two hours till the lunch buffet opened but went on to the Tarsiers conservation center. Poor little things, was my first thought. They are really only a hand big (8-15 cm), sleep all day, cling to a tiny branch with long skinny fingers (their middle finger is as long as their whole upper arm), and only occasionally blink their big eyes open. Quite cute. Luckily, they seem to be taken care of and are pretty much left alone by the visitors (guides standing in the forest, pointing out the little ones, no noises/flash/tree ruttling/touching/feeding etc. allowed). So after a destroyed church and half asleep mini tarsiers, we continued to the Chocolate hills, where we didn't go for a touristy buggy or 4-wheel drive tour but just climbed the (pretty damaged, earthquake...) platform in one of the hills and admired the views. Quite fascinating, they are coral formation from aeons ago, currently grassy green and turning chocolatty brown in the summer. Had a nice lunch buffet in the chocolate hill adventure park (no, we did not zip line from hill to hill...), and, after passing lots of elementary schools (1 in every village), rice fields and peasants drying their rice on the roads and some more chocolate hills and the destroyed city of Sagbayan, we arrived at Tubigon, to take the 2 pm ferry over to Cebu, which today, for some unknown reason (well, the pier was also halfway destroyed, earthquake...), was rescheduled to 3:15. Arrived in Cebu at 5:15, and drove through the poorest areas along the pier that I have so far seen in the Philippines (half-naked people and their kids sitting/playing/sleeping on garbage bags on the sidewalks) to arrive in our 3 star resort close to the beach in Lapu Lapu City. and close to the airport from where we will continue to Palawan Island tomorrow. Connection is pretty bad (and only available in a mosquito infested lobby, not really ***), so it seems to only be uploading half of the pictures.... 20 min after DJ and wife left the island, we arrived per Ocean Jet ferry from Dumaguete, Negros to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Curious to see what Bohol is like, after Negros turned out to be such a nice, green (tons of palm trees and bananas) and pretty island. We chilled a last bit in our beautiful resort this morning before heading off to the ferry. And the ferry is really almost like a plane: security checks, seat check in, boarding, stewards, movie, biz class with nice seats in top floor, welcome speech, ... A real difference were the very vocal roosters in the waiting room; luckily they all travelled economy class. The original plan had been to take the 7am ferry and then tour the island in 1 day - unfortunately out of the 3 ferry companies and loads of schedules on the Internet, there is only the 3 pm ferry left. So for the one night we need to spend in Bohol now, I booked a hotel that is managed by IDEA, an organization that supports deaf people. Interesting concept that we are happy to support! Tomorrow's tour will include an old church, the site where the so called blood contract was formed between chief Lapu Lapu and the Spanish Legazpi (will need to verify the names tomorrow) - both along the coast; the Tarsiers Foundation in Corella; the Loboc River as the Chocolate Hills at Carmen. Well hopefully be able to catch a ferry from Tubigon to Lapu Lapu in the evening (Internet says there is one...) Started off today wih a 10min walk along the deserted beach in front of Acqua Dive to the Malapatay Wednesday market. All the locals and a handful of tourists go there to eat (of course, it's the Philippines!), shop groceries, second hand clothes (rather fifth hand) and livestock. 7 people on one tricycle are nothing compared to the 3 bulls, 7-8 goats, 10 piglets and ca. 25 chickens you can squeeze on it it, all of them alive and kicking. The piglets I felt most sorry for, lots of squealing and sqeaking all over where those poor things were being traded, carried, dragged, thrown around or even wrapped in sacks or blankets and tied to motorbikes. And some of them were already roasting as "lechon" (Spanferkel) only a few meters away. Quite a mess. You constantly had to watch out not to get run over by an ox or a motorbike carrying a bull or sheep. People wih pigs and goats on leashes, dried fish, seaweed salads, fighting roosters, fake DVDs, veggies, different types of rice and pan de sal (= the local bread - this is what I got, and a piglet leash to tie up our fake GoPro camera). An all amidst the most beautiful scenery right with palm trees and the ocean right next to it. Upon my return, we got into our diving gear and walked into the sea to go diving at the house reef. We had two divemasters with us, KF and Troy, an Australian ex-GI, ex-peacekeeper in Timor, children book author (Sorry Wally, with a Napoleon and 2 turtles, all live pics, no Photoshop), photographer, ... with more than 150 dives at that reef. He knows all the frogfish here by name. And that's what we saw: a Moray eel, banner fish, mantis shrimp, frog fish, ghost pipefish, razor fish,...little stuff, so-called critter, some not more than 1 cm. Wading back out d the sting current wih our gear on I took the BCD/tank from my back and carried it along to make walking on the rocky surface easier, thereby losing the fake GopPro camera that I had fastened with the new piglet leash onto my hand. Only noticed 20 min later. We all walked along the beach to see if the current had spilled it onto the shore but no luck. Troy even jumped into the water and snorkeled around in case the leash had got trapped to a rock or old tyre. No luck either. But then, suddenly, one of the small local boys showed up: he and his friends/brothers had found it and brought it along. So cool, we invited him over for a Sprite and ca. 6€ award. He looked so happy, and so were we. The best thing: the camera was on the whole time! Got a great video of 3 boys saving it out of the water, dancing around their find, inspecting it, and trying to open it with their teeth and by hammering it on a coconut. Priceless! Sorry again about the bad picture quality - most have been taken with the big camera and I just photographed them off the laptop screen in order to use the snip stich program and upload them with my iPhone (so much easier)... While to some (definitely to Steffen before coming here) "APO" means Advanced Planner & Optimizer solution in SAP SCM, Apo Island is a small little island east of Zamboanguita and was today's dive destination. It took us a while to get there as the boat had difficulties landing at the requested spot due to high waves. So we took a tricycle (new record for us: 7 people from ages 6 to ca. 50 on one tricycle) and started 2 hours late from Dauin beach. Upon arrival, divemaster KF and I went down first to ca. 12 m so that I was able to take my camera. Also I didn't want to go deep but decided to start slowly after the whole throat issue. And it was a good decision: while Steffen and his group only saw one big turtle (and a poisonous sea snake and nudibranches), we saw a big turtle and two smaller ones, one gliding towards us, one asleep, and one feeding. Got pics from all three of them. So I was happy! And quite exhausted and cold ("only" 26 degree water temperature), so I skipped the second dive and chilled in the boat. Tomorrow, we'll probably go to Malatapatay market right next door and then test out the house reef (allegedly lots of frogfish and ghost pipefish) and chill. Forgot to mention yesterday's highlight (apart from waves and hammock): at Manila airport, I still had a full bottle of water and a 3/4 cup of really hot Earl Grey tea. At the security check, I deposited all cameras, laptop, kindle, iPhone, watch etc. and was still holding the bottle of water in one and the earl grey in the other hand when I walked through the X-ray gate. They waved me through, and while packing my stuff back together, I could take a big sip of tea. Steffen's look when he saw me walking through the gate with the beverage in each hand was priceless! Today's highlight is "slightly" bigger, ca. 10 m bigger. Since my throat is still a bit sore and Steffen is also coughing and we didn't want to risk diving and making it worse, we decided to take a day trip to Oslob instead. Took a 1-hour shuttle to Sibulan, the 30 min fast ferry to LiloAn, and after a 30 min Ceres bus ride arrived at Oslob Whaleshark Center. On the ferry, we met Rafael (working in Makati, opposite Greenbelt 5, helping to enable Philippine startups, and he knows Reese and R2R as well as Hapinoy! Small world! @Andrie - will send you his details!) and his brother Jesse. So we joint forces, took a boat together and will hopefully be able to share pictures. It was a fantastic experience! I had my doubts as there are critics who claim that it is harming the whalesharks to be fed and visited by tourists. On the other hand, they had clear rules (no sunscreen, no touching, 4 m distance, no flash, ...). In other parts of the world they are hunting Whalesharks, so I assume this is a better way to preserve them (this is what I tell my conscience). The pics below are only what I photographed off the video from our fake GoPro camera, better ones will follow. Favorite moment: they get really close to you with their mouths gaping open to inhale the krill, so you have to paddle strongly with your fins to get out of the way and keep the required distance, which is not always easy. As I was viewing one, another one came up from behind and there was a soft touch of its dorsal fin with my leg. A minute later, when I was staring at the two in front of me, another one came from the other side, very solemnly, with 5-6 cute little lemon fish lined up in front of its mouth, swimming there like miniature guards. Really cute. After a bit more than 30 min, we were quite exhausted and our time was up, the current had moved us out of the main center of Whalesharks activity. So despite the ecological/psychological impact of human interaction on these wonderful creatures (mostly between 7-10 m in size!), the liters of salt water you swallow, the not quite so great view because of the krill and the fact that you have to watch out for your head all the time so that you don't hit it on the rails of the accompanying bancas, it was definitely worth it!!! Rafael recommended going to a waterfall close by and arranged a driver for us - turned out it was a small motorbike. So Steffen and I squeezed behind the driver onto the seat and drove there (no, it was not dangerous, Mama. It was a small road, no traffic and it was going 30 kmh max.) And the waterfall was really reall great! We hadn't expected much after all the waterfalls we had visited in Chile (and where it had taken us hours to get to one), so this one was a positive surprise: only a 10 min ride, many cascades, about 100 m high, sunlight shining through, bamboo, cristal clear blue (no, Priscilla, not showing off :-) pools for swimming, wow! Our way back we tested out some more means of public transport: motorbike and Ceres bus and ferry again (with a huge dead cockroach right next to us), but then a tricycle ride from Sibulan to Dumaguete, where we strolled around the bay and bought some fruits at the local markets (the whole city seemed like a bustling market, plus 4 universities and a governor home in White House style). Then another tricycle to the Ceres bus terminal (and yes, you can fall asleep on a tricycle) and a completely crowded small bus back to Zamboanguita, where I sat perched with 4 other people in the back seat, barely an aisle to walk back and forth - and fell asleep again, head on my backpack. They dropped us off right in front of our hotel when Steffen raised his hand (in a bus of >40). Quite a day! I should mention that the lack of sleep may come from the fact that a sleepwalking (or drunk or both) Czech guy had mistakenly come into our room at 4:15 last night and it had taken us a while to friendly shive him out again. He didn't understand us and wasn't able to talk but was quietly wandering around and just seemed to want to lie down. @Jana/Ondra: it didn't help that the only two Czech words I know from you guys are ahoj (hi) and berunka (ladybug)! Luckily we didn't see him this morning for breakfast, I'm quite sure he doesn't remember. And luckily he didn't mistake our room for the bathroom. So yes, quite a day. And we will lock our door tonight! Got up early after a sleepless night in an airport hotel to catch the 7:00 plane to Dumaguete. Enjoyed the quiet and peace in Acqua Dive's garden - there are things worse than falling asleep in a hammock by the soud of waves and palm tree leaves. Day 1 of the holidays was actually not too different from the week-ends in the past 4 weeks - lots of food, lots of activities, but this time I could share it with Steffen, whom I had picked up at the airport at midnight: breakfast in Flying Pan, saying good-bye to Sindhu, Jörg and Michelle, visiting Salcedo Market, driving through the city (traffic was actually quite good today), walking through Intramuros, stopping by in the Greenbelt/Glorietta shopping mall, getting lost in there, accidentally ending up at the R2R mini shop and finally buying my R2R bag (the navy blue mini buslo), eating Pomelo-Shrimp salad at People's Palace, having a great dinner at Wildflour wih nice people (DJ + wife, Caroline + brother). Plus, we discovered a Thai massage place (7 €/hour) close to the hotel, which was really really good (why did I only discover it the last day?!). Tomorrow early morning we'll be off to Dumaguete!
(Pictures to follow - moved to a new hotel really close to the airport to save a bit of time tomorrow morning and the wifi connection is pretty bad and limited to one device only so I can't copy the iPhone images over - I already miss Citadines!) The SAP Sicial Sabbatical officially ended yesterday with a Big Bang. As of today, I'm on vacation!:-)
But the impressions remain and will last for a long long time. Especially with the many pics on iPhobe, camera, hard drives.... We tried to assembly them as the as possible but there is still some work to do. Also, there are lots of follow ups both with the Solar Energy Foundation (setting up SAP Jam to stay in touch and exchange crucial documents such as OperationsHandbook.docx, KPIS xls, next steps, handover ppt, ...), and with SAP leadership on the outcomes, lessons learnt..., within our group (via Facebook/what's app/jam about arriving back home, recipes, favorite books, pics,...), with Andrie and the ManilaTao Facebook page (which will continue!) about the press snippets,... So, ManilaTao lives on! Nevertheless, some thanks (=salamat) because it's the people who made this stay unforgettable! BIG THANKS - to SAP for having established this program and giving us the chance to grow by getting to know new cultures, countries, industries, businesses and ourselves better. To gain new skills and incredible experiences together with colleagues from all over the world. It's a really really cool program and, as we noted yesterday in the press conference, a true win-win for everyone. - to Andrie, Alexandra, Brandon and Martijn for their outstanding efforts in preparing and supporting us as friends and colleagues throughout the whole sabbatical process and beyond. Special thanks to Andrie for accompanying is through these intense 4 weeks around the clock and showing us the smiling and proficient face of the Philippines every day. Make it happen! - to Bambi and Jim for being those charismatic, inspiring, congenial, warm-hearted, funny and at the same time highly professional people and all of the support they provided and things they made possible. Thanks for a great and lasting welcome into the SEF family! Also to Kat and Dolma, who were great and motivated colleagues, and to everyone from Cypress 1609 - and Boyax in Mindanao! - to my SEF team mates Jamie and Simon for making work a lot of fun and for putting up with my constant complaints about air conditioning, and supporting or friendly talking me out of any silly ideas and keeping the group focussed, for providing advice and treatment against hand rashes, sore throats, acute impatience, overeating and physical inactivity. And simply for being the best team mates ever! - to DJ for being a reliably cheerful, energetic, loyal and fun buddy and triggering all these great week-end trips - to Jörg for putting aside almost all Badish-Swabian differences and and being a great German-speaking haven and friend - to Priscilla, Michelle, Sindhu and Caroline for being true girl friends and all the great and inspiring conversations, the unlimited support and considerations, the fun and laughter, the shared pleasures (food, drink, thoughts, charade ...) - what else do you need? Let's pleeeeease stay in touch!!! - to Vineet for being the incredibly big-hearted, cheerful and special person he is and putting up with us teasing him about his time management. And for showing me all the necessary functions of my camera in 5 min (which I hadn't found out in 4 years of using it...). - to Vince for being a sporty idol and really funny person, for all the great jokes (and sorry for having been so bad at getting some of them), the great quotes, and giving us so many new insights in Chinese pronunciations, food, culture and diversity. - to Yasar for being a solemn, thoughtful and inspiring role model in blogging and leadership discussions and being an awesome media spokesperson for our team To be continued... just wanted to start with it as long as it's fresh! :-) Everyone was so right in saying that the time would be passing so quickly and we would be realizing it only on the last day. Today was our last day as a group in Manila - Priscilla and Yasar are already on the plane back home. We already had some finals today: We started out quite seriously today, accompanying Vince to his MessyBessy working life to experience the morning value session they have with their learners every day. It was really impressive: their office reminded me of a café, with small tables and neat lamps, everything nicely arranged. And only a huge glass window separates the computer folks from the production line, everything is very open and transparent. They formed a half circle and one of them gave an interactive lesson on "faith", the motto of this week, including a song about "God is at your side" (which Simon would hum for half the morning...) and a "Touching Video" (that was the actual desciption on Youtube) about carrying your load and overcoming hurdles.
The owner, Kree, was very welcoming and friendly and didn't mind answering all of our questions (and lending us her driver to give us a ride over to Jim's place ("No one walks in the Philippines"), which turned out to be great as the "5 min" walk was rather a 5 min drive. After that, we feverishly worked on our handover presentation, which we grouped into the 4 categories Standard Operating Procedures, Knowledge Management and File Management Tool, Analytics/KPIs, and Training/Handover. In our handover meeting from 2:00-6:30, we managed to go through Number 1 (in combination with 2+3). So there will be more handover tomorrow! Today's culinary highlights were still a bit impacted by my sore throat, unfortunately, but here they are: Tried some star apples Bambi and Dolma had brought back from the school in Apia - delicious. Plus, the drink at Dolma's place after work turned out to be a full-blown dinner, with a barkeeper awaiting us in their lovely garden next to the pool, on which Sri Lankan wooden ships (built by Tsunami refugees) were slowly moving back and forth. Very idyllic! The whole team was present, even Missy joined us later. Lots of delicious food too - Pomelo salad, rice with lamb, fried fish, Indian yoghurt sauce and - celebrating our get-together - Satinder Bindra, Dolma's husband, opened a bottle of Mango rum. Learnt a lot about CNN spokespeople and about how he had organized a live satellite connection with Larry King and the Dalai Lama, which ended up the following way: Larry asked the Dalai Lama to tell him how Muslims celebrate the New year. His holiness just laughed for 40 seconds, pointed out that this was a really good joke, and told Larry, how Buddhists celebrate the new year. Quite an interesting evening, just wondering how much more interesting Sat could have been without Dolma's gag order, which he alluded to every once in a while.;-) Also learnt a lot about boxing, Mayweather against Manny Pacquiao is up on May 2 in Las Vegas, which is supposed to be the last big fight in boxing, 400 million USD business. Manny is a Filipino legend, and we eventually drove by his house (allegedly 8 mio USD worth, now being sold for 10) in Forbes Park, 2 min away. He seems to be moving out as some of the neighbours, probably ambassors and this kind of people, complained about tourists and "Thrilla in Manila" like people visiting him. Different values. Overall, kind of funny to sit at a table with Filipinos and an American to talk about boxing (and here, I had at least heared of Thrilla and Rumble in the Jungle), while the Indian and the Irish chatted about Rugby (or Cricket, can't really distinguish the two, to be honest). And the Indian and Filipino calling out a Mango contest (allegedly this is something to cause war over: who has the best Mangos?!) This evening, the ones from Cebu won by technical K.O. (Indian Mangos didn't show up), along with the Mango Rum Liquor. Hmmm! But not helpful against throat ache, I must admit. Woke up with a hammering head and sore throat his morning - I blame it on the air conditioning, of course. And no, I wasn't even part of the crowd who got stranded in the "Last Man Standing" pub last night and found some trees in their way (there actually is one mean tree right in the middle of the boardwalk on the way to our hotel...). Got some strepsils at the drug store and it's getting better now. So for today, only a few pictures. My highlight was the skype call (without sound) and conf call (with lots of sounds) with Boyax and Pasali, both calling from different places in Mindanao. Let's put it like this: They have very active roosters in Mindanao - the constant "kikkeriki" and "cock-a-doodle-doo" (some dogs barking in between) was heartbreaking and mouthwatering at the same time. At some point all of us were considering to have chicken for lunch:-) Really a different kind of teleconference experience, for sure! Some pics from the Monday night out at Barbara's and Manila Hotel (for some reason I could not turn the picture of Vineet doing the national Filipino dance): And some week-end pictures from Intramuros, starring Andrie, who joined us as friend and tour guide; Minion (happy and fluffy), famour tour guide Carlos (ran into him); Senior Rizal - the national hero (he translated Andersen and Grimm, Goethe and Schiller from German to Tagalog and was a doctor, philosophist, artist, and alleged revolutionary); lots of families at Luneta Park. And the real, nice camera pictures from SOS Children village: Jamie posted the video of week 2:
http://youtu.be/LXpzpmiJV9g And there are many other nice pictures from the Manila Tao team here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Manila-Tao/1608779976000062 (Can't believe I'm actively promoting facebook, but we actually have over 1.500 "friends" by now and it is really a good summary of what's happening at the different sites.) Today was a real office day outside the office (we worked from Jamie's room in Citadines) where the four of us, Jaime, Kat, Simon and I slaved away with putting the finishing touches on our deliverables. It felt a bit like a "Cliff young shuffle" though - we crawled along adding links, moving folders, changing xls fields, ... slowly but steadily. The second most exciting thing therefore were my two visits to the post office on the other side of the road. I totally shocked them going in 10 minutes after opening to ask for stamps. They looked as if this hadn't happened in a long time, asking me to come back when the actual post officer would be there (no clue when this would be). I dared to come back 15 min before they officially closed (working times MO-FR, 9-12, 13-15:30), and the guy (or woman, was really hard to tell) was standing outside and saying that I should come back during opening hours. I must have stared at both my watch and the big opening hours sign in disbelief so that (s)he re-opened the door to let me in and locked it again right behind me. Quite strange experience, but I got my stamps. They said it will take at least 4 weeks for them to be shipped to Europe... The real excitement though happened after work - when Bambi took us to "Barbara's" in Intramuros to have a cultural dinner: buffet accompanied by music and costumed dancers. The guitar players were quite good, Vineet and Vince excelled in the Filipino national dance (Vince was even blind-folded), Sindhu was pampered with tons of vegetarian food, and DJ started his "Tour de Wine", which ended in the Manila House, Manila's oldest Hotel in town. More pics to follow! Having spent half of my Sunday in Asia's formerly biggest mall (in 2006 when it opened, the name "Mall of Asia" remains as a statement. It's actually the 10th biggest in the world now, no. 3 and 4 of the World's largest malls are also in the Philippines...), and feeling flashed by the sheer size and offer (huge skating rink, its own tram system, marching bands, over 400 restaurants, ...) and the business concept behind this, here are some thoughts on the status of social business and profitability.
Like any successful business it should address unattended needs and leverage available resources. And it should help to address a social problem and be non-profitable, meaning being self-sustainable and re-investing. According to Mohammad Yunus (nobel peace price winner), "A charity dollar has only one life; a Social Business dollar can be invested over and over again." If you look at the social businesses we are currently supporting, they fit well into this picture: Need: No central electrification grid; many People without electricity. Resources: many days with regular sunlight Solution: Bring electricity to people with solar lights. -> Solar Energy Foundation Need: De-central financial system (both infrastructure + distribution of wealth); rural areas with no access to banks Resources: small stores to satisfy basic needs (Sari-Sari) in rural areas; good mobile phone infrastructure Solution: Help to facility money transfers from the cities to rural areas via Sari-Sari stores and mobile money transfers -> Happinoy Need: People without access to education and jobs; market gap/desire for all-natural household items and cosmetics Resources: People, recipes Solution: Employ people to produce all-natural household products and sponsor their education -> MessyBessy Need: Artisans without jobs; market gap/desire for high-quality local products and for social support (buy something nice & useful AND support a good cause -> good reason to buy) Resouces: artisans, their ideas, skills and products Solutions: Give artisans a fixed income by creating and selling articles that people like -> Rags2Riches So if the formula is so simple, why is this not spreading like a virus? Obvious reasons are lack of initial or continous regular funding and that most people want to make money and not re-invest every penny to help someone else. Some others are, and this is something that is common to all of our clients, the difficulties in scaling up. 1) How to get bigger and remain efficient? 2) How to get bigger and secure the livelihood of those you are supporting (e.g. get sufficient funds on a regular basis)? 3) How much to invest in "necessary evils" such as IT infrastructure, administration, marketing & sales, customer relationship management, Controlling, ... which is, in overhead costs that make a social business less attractive to employees (as they want to work in the field and help rather than filling in xls sheets and filing reports) as well as donors (as they want every cent to go directly to the needy)? 4) What is the "right" size for a social business if it's about maximizing impact and not making money? Or is making more and more money the prerequisite for maximizing the impact? In any case, even though thousands are swamping the big malls on a Sunday, the Filipinos still have lots of needs (basic needs for quality of life, power/traffic/economic infrastructure, creating middle class businesses and demand, ...) , but they also have a huge pool of resources (qualified workforce, social media and BPO, low labor cost, natural resources, ...). Only a few pics today: We went to the SOS Children village this morning to play with the kids. Jamie and I were invited to House 2 (Peace) and the time just flew by. We really enjoyed it - and not because of the Jollibee kids program or the Jollibee mascot, least the Jollibee food. I think it was that the kids seemed to thoroughly enjoy being with us and teaching us Tagalog, talking to us, laughing, showing stuff, playing, and clinging onto us. It was a really nice morning (if you can say that after visiting a place of orphants and abandoned children) and a different service day to what we had expected, but definitly time well spent. The compound looked well-maintained, the concept of families well implemented, and the kids seemed to be quite happy. I went into the selfie business - below some of my first attempts and some impressions from the village: Pictures from the trip to Intramuros will follow. Just didn't have a change to download them yet (sorry about the quality of the pics above - I photographed them off my SLR camera...).
As my social network clouds are slowly fading while I'm getting more and more engaged (slowly, as I said) with the f------- tool, Twitter, blogs, vlogs, and apps, what amazes me most is how much time you can spend with it (without actually intending to do so). It's like a technological haze (and maze) that envelops everyone who gets caught in it. Not that there aren't many things that are great and make things much easier -and at no cost: skyping and lyncing with my family - my grandpa almost got the hiccups when I told him I was calling from the Philippines and ordered my grandma to swallow her sandwich more quickly, what's-apping with the Manila Tao team, facetiming and i-messaging with friends,tripadvisoring the next available hotel, dropboxing/onedriving/googledriving data back and forth, snipstitching my photos for this blog (will hopefully save time doing the formatting, this was quite a pain...) and can't remember what else I did today. All in one day, all in a haze...:-) Other people, I just saw in a German newspaper, are spending their time by photographing food paintings (why didn't I have this idea?!) - see http://m.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-123984-7.html. In any case, this sort of electronic haze is definitely not helpful if you want to solve the problems of millions of people who don't even have access to any kind of electricity. Where social media is leveraged to join forces and connect supply and demand, it actually helps a lot. On the other hand, what is actually causing stir and getting the attention of millions is whether dresses are gold/white (which they are) or blue/black... Hopefully our social service day tomorrow will help us to "look up from your screen" (see https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS9Wte1gX9g), get in touch with and talk to people and get at least for a while, out of his haze.... And here my first snip stitches: Getting ready for delivery mode now; only 4 more real working days to go, as we need 1-2 days for handovers and next Friday will already be the final closing ceremony. Time flies by too quickly... Today was quite busy, with Malvin and En from Hybrid Solutions, Dolma, Kat, Bambi and the 3 of us all working from the guest room. Luckily we had different meetings so all went well. Keeping my fingers crossed that the afternoon meeting with the department of education about sponsoring over 100 solar suitcases went well! We continued to work on the Dropbox file share solution today, which will, after talking to Jim, probably become a Dropbox-googleDrive mix. Really interesting to work on the implementation of cloud solutions that people will be working on in offline scenarios in remote areas without electricity and a lot of paper-based hard copies (and probably tons of pictures respectively). So many options but which one will serve the best for the specific purposes and situation? How to store and access all kinds of data across various platforms, people, organizations and locations best? How to unify individual Dropboxes, iClouds, Gmail and other email accounts, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and other inline and offline data sources? And only 1 more week to go... Almost forgot: Jamie's video blog (a so-called VLOG, don't worry, I also only learned this last week) from week 1 is finally ready: http://youtu.be/JZ-Rgfr-zAk
Today is "Edsa"-Day, the People Power Anniversary to celebrate the revolution and restoration of the country's democracy and the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. It's sad to see that the country is still fighting with the legacy of what Marcos caused in terms of inequality, corruption, economic crisis, and religious unrest. Marcos was exiled to Hawai where he died 3 years later, but his family, e.g. son Bongbong Marcos (a senator...), former first lady Imelda (with a collection of over 7.500 shoes) and a grandson are still around. The grandson, some people who know him from school, told us how he tweeted about finding a real Picasso in the basement (which got confiscated a few days later). Due to the death of the SAF44 in Mindanao and the continuing inequality, there were lots of demonstrations going on today. As it was a "working" holiday though (big announcements in the paper so that no one mistakes it for a "real" holiday), we joined our PPT presentations rather than the PPA demonstrations. Not dropping it!Finished the rework of our process overview; more Powerpoints - but looking good now, and the file sharing recommendation: After analyzing a number of tools, Dropbox turned out to be our favorite. From feature perspective all were pretty close, some even better in terms of user authorization, collaboration, file versioning. But Dropbox seems to be the easiest and most flexible tool in terms of working across platforms and being compatible with thousands of apps. And, most importantly, the clients knows and uses it already -> low learning curve. So we started working with it today, collaborating, downloading, sharing, moving our file structure over to test things out, dropping something here and there, testing it out. We'll keep you updated on how they like our recommendation! Jaw-dropping:Lunch with Bambi, José and Ging in the basement brought with it (apart from a really nice Bangus = Milkfish) the surprising fact that Ging is buying 20 kg rice every week. That's why she needs such a container to store it: Remy took up the challenge and surprised up with real Indian veggie samosas for Merienda and some home-made lemonade. They are really spoiling us - completely and utterly. |