PhilFAQS

Interesting news item that flowed across my desk today:

LATE-NIGHT calls to one of the State’s main directory inquiry services are being answered from the Philippines after the company that operates the service, Conduit, outsourced the night shift to a call centre in Manila.

The move involves the loss of 10 jobs in Conduit’s Dublin headquarters and has prompted fears among the 120 staff working on the day shift of the 11850 directory inquiry service that their jobs could also be transferred to southeast Asia. The night-shift workers, some of whom have up to 10 years’ service, are being laid off later this month. Staff say that they have been offered a redundancy package of two weeks per year of service plus the statutory minimum.

Conduit switched the answering of directory inquiry calls between 10pm and 7am to Manila last June on a trial basis, and recently decided to make the new arrangement permanent.

KGB, a large US call centre operation that owns Conduit, runs a call centre in the Philippine capital employing 3,000 people. Wages in such call centres are typically about $2-$3 an hour, much less than the rates paid to Irish call centre employees… More of the article on Irish call center workers here.

Couple of interesting points, not all of which are readily apparent on first reading.

• This same article, with different details was written in some US paper or another a few years back when the company which is now KGB (no, not the same as the former USSR Secret Service ;-)) "stole" the jobs from the US and shipped them to Ireland, because the Irish workers would do the work for a lot less than the US workers.  Did someone just whisper the word "karma" under their breath?
• Those who are blindly investing billions in one call center after another here in the Philippines might want to consider who is going to undercut Philippine Call Center prices.  It will certainly happen.  Actually, few if any call center employees in Manila are working for $3 an hour as the Irish article suggests, wages have been climbing steadily in pace with demand.
• The blind spending of my own countrymen, still buying Hummers and other gas guzzler’s comes home to roost in mysterious ways.  the jobs mentioned, and many, many others are no longer American jobs or Irish jobs but they have become the ‘property’ of KGB.  The own of property can essentially do anything that he wishes with it, and KGB is a Bahraini company.  It’s not the Irish or the Indians or Malaysians or the Filipinos who are "stealing" American jobs, it’s the oil princes who have them pressed into their hands as tribute every time Americans prostrate themselves toward Mecca and offer tribute at the pump.
• Last item I found worth a chuckle.  In spite off all the paragraphs in the article bemoaning the poor folks who lost their jobs … actually none did.  ten were asked two change their shift because of cut backs.  Two did and eight others said, "I’d prefer my severance package" and departed.  Somehow I think a person who actually had no job might consider being asked to move to a different shift a little less life-changing than these folks did … but then again, it wasn’t me.

Still think only of the Philippines as a poor country?  As I have said before there is a lot of money in the Philippines and some very rich people who amass it, spend it and apparently enjoy it.  The big difference with say the US is, in the US there are very few (proportionally) truly poor people …even the average unemployed welfare mother or lad-off senior citizen is rich compared with a poor person in the Philippines … it’s the distribution of wealth that is such a culture shock, not the lack of wealth itself.

Many people in the USA have never even texted or sent out a text.  It’s treated as something optional for teenagers as far as the average person thinks.  It’s different in the Philippines.

Wer na u? Yo, RP texters send 600M messages a day!

If texting were an Olympic event, we would have brought home the gold.

The average mobile phone user in the Philippines sends around 15 text messages a day, according to telecommunications companies.

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone group estimates that the 33 million subscribers of Smart and Talk N’ Text collectively send 500 million to 600 million text messages a day. This means the average subscriber of the PLDT group taps out 15 to 18 text messages on the cellular phone per day. … full Philippine texting article here.

  600 million?  How much is that?  here’s a scale drawing that illustrates a million pennies.  So think of this blog post having 600 of these drawings (wow, that would take some server space and load time, wouldn’t it?)

Yep, 600 copies of the picture … that’s how many texts flow per day here … and then consider this.  On average each text costs 1 peso … about 2 US cents at today’s rate.  If you do the math, that is about $4.7 Billion US dollars per year.  Maybe not as much as Google makes, but a long, long way from "chump change". 

Oh, and regarding the cost to the phone companies to provide all this service?  texting is essentially a zero cost operation.  The cellular network itself has to be built with several "text only" control channels which are unused much of the time … Text messages are sent over these idle channels on a "best effort" basis … that’s why sometimes texts are delivered slow, or not at all when the network gets busy.  The network itself is built and maintained by the charges for regular vice calls, texts essentially "go along for the ride" so the companies are basically paying nothing for that extra 4.7 billion  a year … not a bad return on investment, eh?

Still think there’s no money in the Philippines?  (by the way, PLDT is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (PHI), it’s close to $70 today, take a look at its past five year’s performance, if you are the kind of person who follows stocks).

One of the great things I gained from my years in US Federal Service was the opportunity to work with a lot of great men and women.  Some of them impressed me a lot with their leadership … you might like a story I wrote once about a fellow named Bob who taught me a lot about myself and what it means to be an expert (and if your name is also Bob, this one is for you ).

Another man whom I learned a heck of a lot from was a man named Russ Ondusko.  Russ was kind of a cross between a fantastically qualified radar technician and a backwoods philosopher reminiscent of Will Rogers.

One of Russ’s favorite sayings would come up often when someone on the job had a success that defied logic or one of us had something go right when, by all the odds, it should have gone wrong … "Even blind hog will find an acorn once in a while".

Here in the Philippines we are not, in my opinion, blessed with the best of law enforcement.  There is a spider web of often conflicting law enforcement agencies, often with no clear division of responsibilities.  The main agency, the Philippine National Police (PNP) is chronically understaffed under-funded and has, at least at some times, been tainted with scandal.  The pitifully low salaries paid to police officers almost seems to guarantee that their level of competence will often not be very high and when a man is asked to risk his life in a job that doesn’t even pay basic "hole in the wall" living expanses it is not at all surprising that some fall victim to the lure of corruption.

But still the men and women of the PNP soldier on, and often do a very creditable job … in some cases, like this one, substituting diligence, observational skills and simple logic for the flashy tools we see being used every day on CSI or Texas Swat.  At least some of the Philippines’ rice stocks are now safer since one gang won’t be stealing for a while.

Police find Philippine thieves via rice trail

08/30/2008 | 10:16 AM

MANILA, Philippines - Police say four thieves have been arrested after unwittingly leaving a trail of rice stolen from a warehouse in the central Philippines.
Senior Inspector Danilo Francisco says the four men were charged Friday with robbery.
Francisco says they broke into a warehouse in Bacolod city before dawn Wednesday, cutting the barbed wire on walls surrounding the compound and hauling off four sacks of rice, a television set and assorted grocery items in a tricycle.
Unknown to the thieves, one of the sacks of rice had a hole. Grain spilled through the hole and into the street, leading police to their house about 500 yards (450 meters) from the warehouse. Full Rice Tracking Story here.

It’s about time for an update on this ongoing series, don’t you think?  I’ve been having a great discussion on the subject of solar and commercial electric service over on Randy’s excellent blog, Journey to Samal.  I’m certainly going to be writing more on the subject, but I thought that today I might cover something that will help practical people both here in the Philippines or back there at home, trying to get yourself financially ready to move to the Philippines.

And, oh by the way, help save the planet (I know, I know not very popular in certain political circles, but hey, just because Al Gore might have made the movie does not make the facts go away).

I’m talking, of course, about what you drive.  here in the Philippines it’s completely practical in most areas to live for years without even owning a car.  There’s public transportation of some sort on virtually every street corner.  But I’m well aware that back in the USA it’s often impossible to live without a car.  And caring for and "feeding" a car is a big part of many a family’s budget.  The more you have to spend now, the longer it will take you to be ready to move to the Philippines and enjoy life, as I do, so that’s my Philippine connection for this article.

Tip One: Don’t drive so many vehicles.  Sounds simple, but I already hear all the naysayers out there coming up with the ‘"You don’t understand" comments.  Well, I do.  I’ve owned many cars and trucks, often more than one at a time.  I’ve also come to realize just how wasteful it is.  When my dear wife Mita and I first went to the US I had one vehicle, a Ford Ranger.  Mita got a job right away so, of course, we went out and bought her a car to get back and forth to work.  Everyone needs one for that, don’t they?  Turns out that the job and Mita’s’ love for driving didn’t exactly match up.  Guess what.  I changed my schedule by half an hour at work and became her driver for the rest of her employment.  One vehicle sat in the garage for months until she decided to work elsewhere.  We really needed that second vehicle.  Like a hole in the head, actually.  The majority of multi-vehicle households (especially if there are teenagers involved do not need a second (or third or fourth) vehicle either.  They just think they do.  What do you think?

Tip Two: Downsize what you’re driving.  Oh yes you can, you just say you can’t because sticking to the status quo is easier than making the tough choices.  Just a week or so ago I watched a great case study from Canada (all the smart energy shows here on cable come from Canada or Australia … wonder why that is?)  A fellow in eastern Canada earned his living as a carpenter.  he was driving what every carpenter/contractor needs, a huge Dodge Ram pick-up.  What was in the truck?  Hundreds of pounds of tools, some of which he used on any given day.  The truck was on lease and thus he was "stuck" with it, so might as well just bite the bullet and make the best of it.  His gasoline bills?  nearly $1200 a month!

So what did he do?  Bought one of these. (my current next car candidate by the way).  Even with parking the truck and continuing the lease payments and making the payments on the Prius he was several hundred dollars a month ahead of the game (not to mention that the truck payments will go away at the end of the lease when the dealer has to take the dinosaur back).

And the tools and all the reasons he had to have truck (manly carpenter dude, after all)?  Turns out that after cleaning the hundreds of pounds of tools (a big gas waste all on their own) out of the Dodge he was able to repackage and fit everything he needed on a daily basis into the Prius with room to spare to drop off kids at school on his way to the job site every morning.  The ‘dropping off kids’ was the main reason his wife "needed" another car as well.  How did the kids get home?  One of the other moms traded rides for her kids to school in the morning in return for bringing all the kids back from school in the afternoon … wow, actually sharing a car between families … how un-American is that? (oh. right, it’s some weird Canadians, after all).

Enough for today’s thoughts.  Let me hear your thoughts?  If you’d like, I could tell you how to turn any vehicle into 80% or so of a Prius using nothing more than a device you already have in your purse or pants pocket?