Businessmirror December 01, 2018

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Saturday, December 1, 2018 Vol. 14 No. 52

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WAR FREAKS OR BETTER CITIZENS? A

By Rene Acosta

MID the possible full-scale revival of the Reserved Officers Training Course (ROTC) on school campuses, the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have given assurances that measures will be undertaken to improve the course and rectify “previous mistakes” that led to its abolition.

The restoration of the ROTC for Grades 11 and 12 students is being ardently pushed by the DND and the military—with the full backing of President Duterte himself, who even certified as urgent a congressional measure requiring students to go back to the marching field donning fatigue uniforms and combat boots. Two other similar measures still await legislative deliberations and approval.

Duterte’s full support for the reinstitution of the ROTC was made possible with the persuasion of officials, led by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, citing the course’s merits.

Its resurrection, however, would have come with safety mea-

sures on issues and concerns that led to its abolition in the first place, along with the creation of the National Service Training Program (NSTP). The latter made ROTC voluntary and no longer a prerequisite for college graduation.

Officials said the forthcoming ROTC should instill patriotism, love of country, moral and spiritual values, respect for human rights and even adherence to the Constitution, and should adopt a program of instruction that will be jointly designed and formulated by the DND, the Department of Education and the Technical Education Skills and Development Authority.

Completing the course would also carry additional “incentives”

RUSS ENSLEY | DREAMSTIME.COM

As students score ‘creeping militarism,’ DND, AFP vow ‘humanized’ implementation of ‘repackaged’ military training via ROTC revival

such as Civil Service eligibility, free hospitalization and insurance during training, eligibility for military commission or lateral entry or enlistment in the AFP and access to commissaries around the country.

“The old ROTC was centered mostly on [a] military program, but it has changed in our proposed draft bill wherein its program carries three aspects, one of which is to reawaken the consciousness of youths and re-instill their patriotism and love of country,” according to DND spokesman Arsenio “Popong” Andolong.

“It would also include respect for human rights, which is not included in the old program, and of course, ethics,” Andolong added.

“We are hoping to humanize the training of the ROTC. After all, these cadets are human resources, they are persons, they should be treated as such.”

One of the principal reasons that led to the abolition of the ROTC was the alleged abuses of officials administering the military training program. This was highlighted by the case of Mark Chua, who died in 2001 after he exposed alleged irregularities in the administration of the ROTC at the University of Santo Tomas.

These issues, according to Andolong, are being rectified in the soon-to-be-revived program, while other measures are also being See “War Freaks,” A2

RISE OF THE MACHINES

How cheap labor drives China’s AI ambitions

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‘Refineries’

By Li Yuan | New York Times News Service

OME of the most critical work in advancing China’s technology goals takes place in a former cement factory in the middle of the country’s heartland, far from the aspiring Silicon Valleys of Beijing and Shenzhen. An idled concrete mixer still stands in the middle of the courtyard.

Boxes of melamine dinnerware are stacked in a warehouse next door.

Inside, Hou Xiameng runs a company that helps artificial intelligence (AI) make sense of the world. Two dozen young people go through photos and videos, labeling just about everything they see.

That is a car. That is a traffic light.

That is bread, that is milk, that is chocolate. That is what it looks like when a person walks.

“I used to think the machines are geniuses,” Hou, 24, said. “Now I know we’re the reason for their genius.”

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 52.6080

WORKERS at the headquarters of Ruijin Technology Co. in Jiaxian, in China’s Henan province, October 31, 2018.

If China is the Saudi Arabia of data, its data factories are the refineries, turning raw data into the fuel that can power China’s goal of artificial intelligence supremacy.

YAN CONG/THE NEW YORK TIMES

IN China, long the world’s factory floor, a new generation of lowwage workers is assembling the foundations of the future. Startups in smaller, cheaper cities have sprung up to apply labels to China’s huge trove of images and surveillance footage. If China is the Saudi Arabia of data, as one expert says, these businesses are the refineries, turning raw data into the fuel that can power China’s AI ambitions.

Conventional wisdom says that China and the United States are competing for AI supremacy and that China has certain advantages. The Chinese government broadly supports AI companies, financially and politically. Chinese startups made up one-third of the global computer vision market in 2017, surpassing the United States. Chinese academic papers are cited more often in research papers. In a key policy announcement last year, China’s Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4630 n UK 67.4855 n HK 6.7231 n CHINA 7.5651 n SINGAPORE 38.3161 n AUSTRALIA 38.4564 n EU 59.8206 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.0236

Source: BSP (November 29, 2018 )

News

BusinessMirror

A2 Saturday, December 1, 2018

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RISE OF THE MACHINES Continued from a1

government said that it expected the country to become the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.

Most importantly, this thinking goes, the Chinese government and companies enjoy access to mountains of data, thanks to weak privacy laws and enforcement. Beyond what Facebook, Google and Amazon have amassed, Chinese Internet companies can get more because people there so heavily use their mobile phones to shop, pay for meals and buy movie tickets.

Still, many of those claims are iffy. Chinese papers and patents can be suspect. Government money may go to waste. It is not clear that the AI race is a zero sum game, in which the winner gets the spoils.

Data is useless unless somebody can parse and catalog it.

Strength

BUT the ability to tag that data may be China’s true AI strength, the only one that the United States may not be able to match. In China, this new industry offers a glimpse of a future that the government has long promised: an economy built on technology rather than manufacturing.

“We’re the construction workers in the digital world. Our job is to lay one brick after another,” said Yi Yake, co-founder of a data labeling factory in Jiaxian, a city in central Henan province. “But we play an important role in AI. Without us, they can’t build the skyscrapers.”

While AI engines are superfast learners and good at tackling complex calculations, they lack cognitive abilities that even the average 5-year-old possesses. Small children know that a furry brown cocker spaniel and a black Great Dane are both dogs. They can tell a Ford pickup from a Volkswagen Beetle, and yet they know both are cars.

AI has to be taught. It must digest vast amounts of tagged photos and videos before it realizes that a black cat and a white cat are both

cats. This is where the data factories and their workers come in.

Taggers helped AInnovation, a Beijing-based AI company, fix its automated cashier system for a Chinese bakery chain. Users could put their pastry under a scanner and pay for it without help from a human. But nearly one-third of the time, the system had trouble telling muffins from doughnuts or pork buns thanks to store lighting and human movement, which made images more complex. Working with photos from the store’s interior, the taggers got the accuracy up to 99 percent, said Liang Rui, an AInnovation project manager.

“All the artificial intelligence is built on human labor,” Liang said.

AInnovation has fewer than 30 taggers, but a surge in labeling startups has made it easy to farm out the work. Once, Liang needed to get about 20,000 photos in a supermarket labeled in three days.

Colleagues got it done with the help of data factories for only a couple thousand dollars.

“We’re the assembly lines 10 years ago,” said Yi, the co-founder of the data factory in Henan.

Cheap options

THE data factories are popping up in areas far from the biggest cities, often in relatively remote areas where both labor and office space are cheap.

Many of the data factory workers are the kinds of people who once worked on assembly lines and construction sites in those big cities. But work is drying up, wage growth has slowed and many Chinese people prefer to live closer to home.

Yi, 36, was out of a job and trying to get other ventures going with elementary school classmates when someone mentioned AI tagging. After online searches, he decided it was not super technical but needed cheap labor, something Henan has in abundance.

In March, Yi and his friends set up Ruijin Technology, which rents offices the size of two professional basketball courts in an in-

JOB seekers from the countryside line up to apply for work at a Foxconn factory in Chongqing, China, May 3, 2013. The United States adopts a hard line against China, and an era of engagement recedes into the past. JUSTIN JIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES

dustrial park for $21,000 a year. It was previously the park’s Communist Party committee’s event space, so the ceiling lights are covered with red hammers and sickles.

Ruijin, which means smart gold, now employs 300 workers but plans to expand to 1,000 after the Chinese New Year holiday, when many migrant workers come home.

Unlike workers and business around the world, Yi is not worried that AI will take his job.

“The machines aren’t smart enough to teach themselves yet,” he said.

The bigger worry

HIRING is a bigger worry.

Ruijin’s pay of $400 to $500 a month is higher than average in Jiaxian. Some potential job candi-

dates worry that they do not know anything about AI. Others find the work boring.

Jin Weixiang, 19, said he would quit Ruijin after the Chinese New Year and go to sell furniture in a physical store in the southern city Guangzhou.

“I’m a people’s person,” said Jin. “I’m doing labeling for the money.”

But for some former migrant workers, the job is better than working on assembly lines.

“It was the same work, same movement, day after day,” said Yi Zhenzhen, a 28-year-old Ruijin employee who once worked at an electronic component company. “Now I have to use my brain a little bit.”

Most of the time, customers do not tell these data factories what

the task is for. Some are obvious.

Labeling traffic lights, road signs and pedestrians are usually for autonomous driving. Labeling many types of camellia flowers could be for search engines.

Once Ruijin was given the task of labeling the images of millions of human mouths. Yi said he wasn’t sure what it was for. Maybe facial recognition?

Who’s in control?

ROUGHLY 300 miles to the north, in the Hebei city of Nangongshi, Hou Xiameng runs her data factory out of her in-laws’ former cement factory. Her first job out of college was labeling faces for Megvii, the Chinese facial recognition company with a $2-billion valuation that is most famous for its technology

War freaks… considered to avoid pitfalls.

Among the safeguards to be carried out in the new program are the strict implementation of the Anti-Hazing law (Republic Act 8049), where, as ordered by President Duterte, tactical officers in charge of the ROTC training must have no record of abuse or hazing.

The Anti-Hazing law will be strictly implemented in addition to the strict measures now enforced by the military.

The new program also seeks to impose strict measures against corruption by ensuring that the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (Republic Act 3019) is followed by its administering officials.

“The DND and the AFP will make sure that tactical officers assigned to the ROTC do not have a record of abuse or corruption, and will not tolerate any of these in return,” said Andolong.

In addition to its quality of instruction, the ROTC will also put emphasis on “developing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations and civic service knowledge.”

The DND and the military will also conduct random unannounced inspections and audits of ROTC classes and will put up grievance mechanisms and hotlines for complaints.

“If there are complaints, of course, they will be investigated.

We will call on the officer running the program in the school and even the cadets handling the program and subject them to investigation.

I am not quite familiar with the penalties involved, but there will be penalties, including expulsion for the cadet and cases for the administrator of the ROTC,” asserted Andolong.

Continued from a1

The unannounced inspections and audit will not only ensure that the program is efficiently implemented and carried out issue-free, but will even seek inputs from its students on how it can be further improved.

“Cadets will be interviewed and asked if they are satisfied with the way the programs are running and if the program of instruction is being followed. Of course, if there are complaints, then they could be directly raised and directed [to the auditing team],” Andolong said.

The ROTC is already running in 100 piloted schools for the experiment, but Andolong said that before it was initiated, all the commandants and tactical officers running or involved in the program underwent a seminar workshop.

Here, they were taught how to judiciously handle the program.

“We made sure that the commandants and the tactical officers knew their objectives,” Andolong said. “They are answerable to the Chief of Staff of the AFP and to the DND.”

‘Shady’

platform called Face++. To this day, some facial recognition systems recognize her before they do her friends because, she says, “my face is in the original database.”

But life in Beijing was too tough and expensive. She and her thenfiancé, Zhao Yacheng, decided to move back to their hometown and start a data factory. Hou’s parents would pay for computers and desks.

They are renovating the warehouse next door to hire 80 more people.

Like Yi, Hou does not spend time thinking about the implications of her work. Are they contributing to a surveillance state and a dystopian future that machines will control humans?

“Cameras make me feel safe,” she said. “We’re in control of the machines for now.”

THE National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) is against the reinstitution of the mandatory ROTC in schools, especially for senior high-school students in the guise of what it called “shady discipline and nationalism.”

“The Duterte regime merely wants to produce students who will not be critical and brave enough to question his policies and assert for the democratic rights of the youth and the Filipino people.”

Added the NUSP: “This railroaded move is part of Duterte’s attempts to pacify the youth sector, which has been active in opposing his anti-people policies and de-

manding concrete steps to address poverty, landlessness, contractualization and access to education. The regime seeks to produce blind followers who will pledge allegiance to his dictatorship and tyrannical rule over the country,” it said.

The NUSP said the Duterte administration was deceptively bringing back mandatory ROTC under different names, such as “Advanced Citizenship Program in Cordillera or Service Training Program for Grade 12 students of PUP (Polytechnic University of the Philippines), yet the Duterte government cannot erase the bloody history of this program.”

The student group claimed that since its inception, the ROTC has propagated in schools the “violent, mercenary culture that is inherent in the Armed Forces.”

“It is also a mechanism to plant student intelligence networks on campuses for monitoring and surveillance of activities of the student body, especially progressive youth organizations,” the group said.

Tough words, sweeping allegations [as] these may sound, the proponents of ROTC’s revival are unfazed. In their book, this is a simple case of restoring an [institution] that allows for discipline, a sense of civic duty and patriotism to be strengthened in young people. In an increasingly complicated world where challenges to nation-building are no longer as simple and insidious forces can come from anywhere, it is the best time to train and nurture future citizens. Especially those among the young who can sound so warrior-like on social media, but will slink away when real trouble or threats come.

www.businessmirror.com.ph | Editor: Angel R. Calso

The World BusinessMirror

Saturday, December 1, 2018

A3

As G-20 summit opens in Buenos Aires, contentious issues loom on the sidelines

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UENOS AIRES, Argentina— Heads of state from the world’s leading economies were invited to the Group of 20 summit to discuss issues like development, infrastructure and investment. As the gathering officially kicks off on Friday, those themes seem like afterthoughts, overshadowed by contentious matters from the United States-China trade dispute to the conflict over Ukraine.

A lso expected to loom large amid dozens of bilateral meetings in Argentina’s capital: the tensions between longtime allies the United States and Europe, the gruesome slaying of a dissident Saudi journalist in the country’s Istanbul consulate and how the Saudi crown prince who is alleged to have ordered the killing is received by world leaders.

The United States, Canada and Mexico also are supposed to sign a trade deal replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement

(Nafta)that was struck following months of tough negotiations that analysts say left a bitter taste among the partners.

“The G-20 Leaders’ Summit is at risk of falling into disarray with the summit being overshadowed by items not on agenda,” said Thomas Bernes of the Center for International Governance Innovation, a Canada-based think tank. “The true test will be whether the other members of the G-20 will act resolutely or whether we will witness the crumbling of the

KILLER PIG VIRUS NEARS MAJOR CHINA CITIES AS SPREAD QUICKENS

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KILLER pig virus that began spreading in China four months ago has picked up pace, causing at least one fresh outbreak on average a day this month and encroaching on major cities including Beijing and Shanghai.

At least 20 provinces covering most of China’s northeastern, eastern and central areas have reported pigs infected with African swine fever, which isn’t known to harm humans but typically causes hogs to die within days. Authorities have stepped up surveillance around border areas after the disease was found close to North Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam and Lao PDR. About 600,000 pigs have been culled to stem the disease, which threatens to disrupt China’s $128-billion pork industry.

The presence of the virus in commercial, backyard and wild pigs, as well as evidence that infected animals have entered food supply chains, “indicate a significant challenge ahead to achieve eradication,” Matthew Stone, a deputy director general of the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, said in an e-mail.

Veterinary officials met in Beijing last week to assist neighboring countries

prepare for possible further international spread, especially through the informal movement of pigs, pork products and contaminated food that may be used as livestock feed. Even with strict quarantine and provincial pig-transportation controls, the virus has managed to travel thousands of kilometers across China, which accounts for half of the world’s swineherd.

“There’s still no theory as to why it has spread despite the ban on movement,” said Wantanee Kalpravidh, the Bangkok-based regional manager of Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. “It’s a concern for countries in the region because we share the same risks even though there’s no official import and export between some countries.”

The proliferation of the disease has spurred China to buy US pork again even though the meat is subject to retaliatory tariffs imposed as part of the trade war.

China was the third-largest buyer of pork in weekly US government data released on Thursday. The purchase of 3,300 metric tons was the most since February, before China imposed the tariffs. Bloomberg News

G-20 as a forum for international economic cooperation.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, one of the earliest arrivals, called on Thursday for international involvement and “complete clarity” in investigations into the killing of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and he said European leaders should discuss it at a meeting on Friday.

The summit’s host, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, said the matter would be “on the table” during bilateral and possibly broader meetings.

Saudi Arabia has denied that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played a role, but some leaders may be cool toward him to avoid seeming to legitimize a man who US intelligence agencies concluded ordered the killing.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has made clear it does not want to torpedo the long-standing US relationship with Riyadh, however.

It is bin Salman’s first significant appearance overseas since the killing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been sharply critical of Saudi Arabia over the incident, is also in attendance.

“Given the role that Turkey

has played in this, given that the murder happened at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, this will be an interesting meeting,” said Willis Sparks, director of global macro politics at Eurasia Group. “Just to see how leaders interact with the crown prince will be interesting—how warm they are. I expect Trump to be very warm with him, but European leaders probably are going to be very reluctant to have their pictures taken with him.”

An expected high-profile bilateral meeting between Trump a nd Ru ssi a’s V l ad i m i r P ut i n planned for Saturday was abruptly canceled by Trump in a tweet citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian vessels over the weekend.

Russian news agencies quoted Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the cancellation means Putin will have more time for “useful meetings.”

Trump was still scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but analysts were not optimistic about prospects for a major breakthrough on the two countries’ trade disputes a month before US tariffs on Chinese goods are set to ramp up.

The US, Canada and Mexico are expected to sign the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

that is replacing Nafta during a ceremony on Friday. There had been speculation that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might not attend and send his foreign minister to sign instead if Trump did not lift steel and aluminum tariffs, but Trudeau’s press secretary confirmed on Thursday night that he would be at the ceremony.

Taking the world stage at the G-20 could be welcome relief for some leaders dealing with challenges back home.

Macron has faced mass protests in France over rising fuel taxes that are the biggest challenge yet to his presidency, though his party dominates parliament and he doesn’t face reelection until 2022. At the summit he has sought to fashion himself as the anti-Trump—a champion of the Paris climate accord, defender of the postwar system of global trade and crusader against multinational tax evaders.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is fighting for political survival as she tries to pull her country out of the European Union. Germany’s Angela Merkel is preparing to leave politics after announcing last month she would give up leadership of her party, a post she has held since 2000. Italy’s Giuseppe Conte heads a populist coalition

that is clashing with the EU and suffers internal divisions.

Merkel was supposed to get in to Buenos Aires early Friday, but her arrival was delayed after her plane suffered a technical problem and returned to Germany on Thursday night.

The British Embassy in Argentina said May’s visit would be the first by a UK prime minister to Buenos Aires. The only other prime minister to visit the country was Tony Blair, who went to Puerto Iguazu in 2001. The two countries have long been at odds over the South Atlantic islands known as the Falklands in Britain and the Malvinas in Argentina.

Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, said this G-20 summit was once considered an opportunity for Latin American members Argentina, Brazil and Mexico “to project a regional bloc to shape a global agenda.”

But now “the fact that the G-20 is taking place in South America for the first time is almost beside the point,” Shifter said, noting that Macri has lowered expectations for the event. “Now a success would be a summit meeting that goes smoothly, without any major disruption.” AP

Trump administration to advance seismic surveys for oil in Atlantic

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HE Trump administration is taking a major step toward allowing a first-in-a-generation seismic search for oil and gas under Atlantic waters, despite protests that the geological tests involve loud air gun blasts that will harm whales, dolphins and other animals.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is set to issue “incidental harassment authorizations” allowing seismic surveys proposed by five companies that permit them to disturb marine mammals that are otherwise protected by federal law, according to three people familiar with the activity who asked not to be named before a formal announcement.

The firms, including TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Co. Asa and Schlumberger Ltd. subsidiary WesternGeco Ltd., still must win individual permits from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management before they can conduct the work, but those are widely expected under President Donald J. Trump, who has

made “energy dominance” a signature goal.

The seismic surveys to identify oil and gas reserves would be conducted in Atlantic Ocean waters along the US East Coast, from Delaware to central Florida.

The research involves periodic blasts from large compressed air guns, which send out sound waves that penetrate the sea floor. When the sound waves bounce back, they are captured by sensors towed behind seismic vessels. The resulting data is used to produce detailed maps of underground geological features.

Conservationists say the blasts are so loud they jeopardize the hearing of dolphins, cause whales to beach themselves and disrupt animals’ mating and feeding habits. Scientists have warned that the surveys could cause long-lasting damage to marine animals.

The harassment authorizations are expected to lay out steps the geophysical companies must take to mitigate damage to animals, including limitations blocking sur-

veys during the calving season for the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. There are under 500 remaining North Atlantic Right Whales, which travel each winter from their feeding grounds near Canada and New England to warmer waters off South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

“The seismic air guns are firing blasts that are so loud, they create one of the loudest man-made sounds in the ocean, and they fire every 10 seconds,” said Diane Hoskins, a campaign director with the conservation group Oceana. “The blasts are repeated every 10 to 12 seconds, weeks or months at a time, and the sound travels extremely far in the ocean—the distance of a flight from New York to Las Vegas.”

Supporters stress that similar seismic surveys are already being conducted for scientific research and help find sites for wind turbines off the East Coast. They argue that, despite extensive use, there has been no documented decline in marine mammal populations from the work. And they note that

when used to identify potential oil and gas resources, seismic surveys can help energy companies better target later drilling and decrease the odds of sinking more so-called dry wells that end up being a bust.

“These activities are exploration activities,” said Nikki Martin, president of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors.

“The assessment of the resource is critical; it’s critical knowledge for the states and critical knowledge for the federal government in determining future decisions regarding offshore exploration and development.”

It has been decades since the last seismic surveys for oil and gas along the East Coast—and those only touched a sliver of the territory the Trump administration is considering for energy development. The Interior Department is developing a proposal for selling offshore drilling rights over the next five years, after putting almost all US coastal waters—including the Atlantic—on the table for leasing in a draft plan last January. Bloomberg News

ExportUnlimited BusinessMirror

A4 Saturday, December 1, 2018 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

DTI all set for the National Exporters’ Week

By Kit S. Andaya and Kaye Mendoza

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Trade-Industry Development Specialists, DTI-EMB

HE Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB), in cooperation with the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport) and Export Development Council (EDC), is ready to lead this year’s celebration of the National Exporters’ Week (NEW) from December 1 to 7.

First on the NEW’s activities are the series of seminars through the Usapang Exports. There will be three sessions that will also focus on this year’s event theme, “SPICE

[Stimulate. Permeate. Innovate.

Connect. Expand!] Up to Scale Up! Expand Exports for Inclusive Prosperity.” These sessions are “Innovative Solutions for Exporters fea-

turing Startups” to be held on December 3; “Export Opportunities: Learning from the Trade Attaches” on December 4; and the “International Certification and Standards for Greater Market Access for Gifts, Decors and Housewares [GDH] and Wearables Sectors” on December 5. Industry experts and the Philippines’s commercial attachés will serve as resource persons of the information sessions.

For the NEW’s highlight event— the 2018 National Export Congress (NEC)—the organizers have lined up new and exciting events on December 7 at the Philippine International Convention Center’s Reception Hall.

The DTI-EMB teamed up with the Board of Investments (BOI), the Competitiveness Bureau (CB), and the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (Citem) in coming up with fresh activities for the stakeholders.

Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez, together with the DTI Trade and Investments Promotion Group (TIPG) Undersecretary Nora K. Terrado, Competitiveness and Ease of Doing Business Group (CEODBG) Undersecretary Rowell S. Barba, DTI-EMB Director Senen M. Perlada and Philexport President Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr., will spearhead the event.

The BOI, CB and Citem collaborated in the first Logistics Services Philippines Conference and Ex hibition on December 6 and 7 also held at PICC. The LSPH Exhibition on December 7 will be held at PICC’s Reception Hall ’s Mezzanine Area simultaneous with the Business Matching Hub, Kapiterya and Export Enablers Exhibit.

The LSPH Exhibition aims to feature the services of the logistics service providers to prospective clients

Govt, private sector collaborate to implement the Export Plan

By Piercy Kieth Cezar Policy Advocacy Associate Export Development Council

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OV ER NMENT agencies and various private entities join forces to implement the Philippine Export Development Plan 2018-2022. Specific programs, activities and projects (PAPs) have been drawn to materialize the strategies in the PEDP to increase exports and hit the target of $122-billion to $130- billion export revenue in 2022.

PEDP 2018-2022 is a five-year road map that embodies the country’s export thrusts, strategies, programs and projects. It is aligned with the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022 and the 10-point socioeconomic agenda of the President for enhanced competitiveness and support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

PEDP 2018-2022 identifies three strategies and action plans to reach the country’s export targets. The first strategy dwells on the government’s goal of improving the overall climate for export development through removal of unnecessary regulatory impediments, enhancement of trade facilitation, improved access to trade finance and export competitiveness. The second strategy is to exploit existing and prospective opportunities from trading arrangements. It proposes to strengthen promotion efforts to existing exporters and prospective and prospective bilateral, regional, and multilateral trading agreements. Third strategy proposes the crafting of comprehensive packages to promote selected products and services for export.

Key export sector highlights electronics, food and beverage, IT-BPM and tourism.

In a series of stakeholders engagements nationwide, representatives of national and regional government agencies, the local government units, Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc., Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Foundation Inc. (Seipi), and other business support organizations or trade associations came up with specific action plans to implement the strategies.

The Department of Trade and Industry will intensify the overseas business-matching missions, trade fairs and commercial intelligence to promote Philippine products and service exports. The capacity to comply with market requirements of exporters, especially MSMEs will be enhanced through the various DTI programs, coupled with the Startup Ecosystem Development Program.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has recently signed a memorandum of agreement with the DTI and various financing in-

stitutions expanding the Negosyo Center Financing Ecosystem. This program will provide a ready referral mechanism to microfinancing institutions to immediately cater to MSMEs’ need s.

The Department of Finance will soon rollout the electronic transactions with the Bureau of Customs (BOC), starting with the electronic Certificate of Origin module on Tradenet. This will be part of the eCO exchange within the Asean by end of 2018. Clearance agencies are now connecting to the electronic import and export permit processing module on Tradenet which will pave the way to the National Single Window.

In line with this, the Tariff Commission is harmonizing the tariff codes among all trade regulatory government agencies and the BOC for easy identification of products cleared for shipment.

On the enhancement of the farm-to-market road program, the DTI-Bureau of Philippine Standards will issue a national quality standard for the road freight in support to the logistics industry in December 2018.

For human resource development, the Commission on Higher Education targets to strengthen the government-industry-academe collaborations on research and innovation projects.

The Department of Science and Technology will expand its Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of MSMEs nationwide through technological innovations. The DOST will also establish more Food Innovation Centers in all regions to enhance the innovative capacities of MSMEs in food industry. This will help improve the quality of their products and develop new ones. It also aims to promote the use of the One Stop Laboratory Services for global competitiveness. OneLab is an innovative program that leverages technology to be able to harmonize testing and laboratory services from different agencies making them more accessible to the public.

The Department of Energy will commence its information sessions on effective energy management and efficiency measures to lower the energy consumption, thus lessening the cost of power as input to production.

For the private sector part, Philexport will increase its support to export promotion activities through EDC approved projects.

Overseeing the implementation of the PEDP will be done by the EDC as mandated by the Export Development Act (RA 7844) and Presidential Memorandum Circular 27 series of 2017. To do this, a monitoring and evaluation system is put in place.

and link the exporters, manufacturers and logistics exhibitors, among others. The Business Matching Hub intends to connect the public and private sectors where they could hold discussions on future collaborations to strengthen the Philippine export industry.

The Export Enablers Exhibit showcases the government agencies and business organizations that will help expand the stakeholders’ current network and get industry updates on regulations and market opportunities. Some of the participants for this year are the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Film Development Council of the Philippines, the Philippine Coconut Authority and QBO Innovation Hub, among others.

Top Philippine exporters for the year will be recognized. This was conceived by the DTI as a testimony to the strong partnership between the

government and the private sector in pursuit of the country’s inclusive and sustainable export development.

It aims to motivate, encourage excellence and inspire the country’s entire exporting community.

Participants can look forward to engaging panel discussions with various topics, such as Lowering the Cost of Exporting; Internationalization of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through the Digital Economy; and Solutions to Bottlenecks in Exports.

This year’s NEC provides a venue for Philippine exporters where they could discuss emerging trends, market opportunities, innovative ideas and technologies.

The Congress offers a new feature where participants can download the 2018 NEC Mobile App to know the latest happenings at the event. It is now available via App Store and Google Play.

DTI-EMB conducts information session on exports in Butuan City

By Patricia Blacer

Trade-Industry Development Specialist, DTI-EMB

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PHL DELEGATION IN ELECTRONICA 2018

The Philippine delegation welcomed foreign buyers and investors from all over the world to the country’s pavilion in Electronica, one of the world’s leading international trade fairs for electronics, at the Hall B1 Booth 460, Messe Munchen in Munich, Germany. With its recently held exhibit from November 13 to 16, the Partner Philippines pavilion showcased the country as a global powerhouse in electronics export, highlighting its robust manufacturing industry, state-of-the-art facilities, highly skilled and competitive work force and growing components supply base, among other market advantages.Participating companies under the Partner Philippines pavilion were Yongden Technology Corp., Global Circuits Sourcing Solutions, Tsukiden Electronics Philippines Inc., Ionics EMS Inc. and Testech Inc.

PHL game devt industry showcased competitive advantage at G-Star South Korea trade exhibit

By Gliceria N. Cademia

Trade and Industry Development Specialist, DTI-EMB

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HE Philippines once again showcased the industry’s competitive advantages by highlighting the home-grown games of the country’s independent game developers at Asean Services Exhibition: Global Game Exhibition G-Star 2018 from November 13 to 18 at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (Bexco) in Busan, South Korea.

Organized by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)—Export Marketing Bureau (EMB), in partnership with Philippine Trade and Investment Center in Korea, supported by the Game Development Association of the Philippines and the Asean-Korea Center which provided free accommodation and inland transfers for participants and free booth for the Philippines as part of the Asean pavilion with other Asean countries, 14 delegates representing 10 companies, Audacity Studio, Indigo Entertainment, Synergy 88, Gumi Games, Komikasi, Monstronauts, Ranida Games, Redbana, Red Trident and ThinkBit participated at G-Star 2018 in Bexco.

The major component of the EMB’s OBMM was the conduct of the businessmatching activities (B2B) between the Philippines and her foreign counterparts. The mission showcased Philippine games in South Korea aimed to further establish partnership/collaboration between the Philippines and South Korean companies and other for-

eign companies that joined the event.

Total business-matching meetings conducted reached 175.

The Philippines has made a name for itself in the business-process outsourcing arena. Apart from besting other countries as the top destination for voice-based processes, Filipino BPO workers are being recognized for their work in the health care, back office and even gamedevelopment segments.

As the demographic of computer users becomes expansive, game-development companies look for other ways to market to each niche. There are educational games, games that are based on sports, strategic ones and the war game where players will be required to strategize to eradicate opponents.

The Outbound Business Matching Mission included activities like Asean-Korea cooperation workshop for game-development services in Seoul, South Korea, with representatives from 10 Asean countries, business-matching activities, exhibition, business meetings and market sensing of companies in Busan at Bexco.

The mission started with a courtesy call to Consul General Christian L. de Jesus of the Philippine Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, and a meeting with Special Commercial Counsellor Jose Ma. Dinsay of the Philippine Trade and Investment Center (PTIC)-Seoul. The Philippine game development delegation’s participation to the Asean-Korea Business Seminar on Game Industry at Ibis Styles Ambassador Seoul Yongsan, in Seoul, South Korea.

HE Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB) conducted an information session in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte, from October 1 to 3 at the Grand Palace Hotel.

The seminar, under the Philippine Export Competitiveness Program (PECP), was attended by more than 100 participants composed of exporters, business support organizations, Negosyo Center counselors, other government offices and entrepreneurs in the Caraga region.

The PECP is an EMB umbrella program that aims to boost the competitive stance of exporters, prospective exporters, and stakeholders through the conduct of information sessions, seminars and other learning activities. For this session, guest speakers from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFA R), Mindanao Trade Expo (MTE) Foundation, the Philippine Palm Oil Development Council Inc. (PPDCI), startup company eCFulfill and DTI-EMB discussed various topics relevant to the Caraga region.

DTI-EMB’s Patricia Blacer of the Export Assistance and Business Matching Division started the series of discussions by giving a background on the services offered by DTI-EMB, as well as an overview of basic export procedures and documentations.

Meanwhile, Senior Trade-Industry Development Specialist Frederick Etrata of the Knowledge Processing Division introduced Tradeline Philippines, EMB’s interactive business intelligence platform.

A live demonstration of the web site’s features was also conducted to familiarize the audience on the integrated information retrieval features of the site on import and export trade statistics, market and product information, as well as supplier and buyer databases.

Chief Fishing Regulations Officer Consuelo Baltazar of BFAR’s Fisheries Post Harvest Technology Division presented the opportunities available for aquamarine exports. She discussed the major fisheries exports and markets of the Philippines, as well as the priority commodities identified by BFAR which includes bangus, tilapia, shrimp, shellfish and seaweed.

Further, legal frameworks for the trade of fishery products, common requirements of major seafood trading partners of the Philippines, as well as the services offered by BFAR to aquamarine enterprises was also tackled during the discussion.

Raul Nuevas, member of PPDCI’s technical working group, presented the opportunities that

could be reaped from the Philippine palm-oil industry. He discussed the features and benefits of palm oil, said to be among the most competitive and most efficient vegetable oil due to its variety of uses and high global demand.

Nuevas’s presentation also highlighted the increasing demand for palm oil in the country and the national shortage which is currently being addressed through importation. PPDCI forecasts that by year 2022, the Philippines’s palm-oil import could reach up to P27.26 million, despite the fact that out of the Philippines’s more than 1 million hectares of potential land area, only 54,748 hectares are actually being utilized for palm plantations.

Lezlie Bermudez Lu, proprietress of Chen Marine Products in Jabonga, Agusan del Norte, shared her company’s success story. Her testimonial narrated how their small enterprise blossomed into one of the leading aquamarine exporters in the Caraga region. Chen Marine now exports seafood products, such as shrimp, cuttlefish, and large-head hairtail to China and Taiwan. Lu encouraged fellow entrepreneurs in Caraga to continue to innovate, find opportunities in high-value products, and be patient and determined to succeed in their business.

MTE Foundation designer Carmaela Alcantara talked about emerging trends in wearables and homestyle export. According to recent studies of design movements, trends such as sustainable fashion, eco-conscious crafts, basket décor, wicker bags made of natural fibers, ethnic fashion, use of indigenous materials, and movements, such as “pride in my tribe” are some of the current trends in today’s global scene. Alcantara invited Filipino artisans to find ways to incorporate these trends in their crafts and explore how the Philippines’s rich indigenous artistry can be integrated in their cultureconscious designs.

Meanwhile, Ghian Marucot, cofounder and COO of online fulfillment partner eCFulfill, introduced the various e-commerce and online marketing platforms available for aspiring retailers. Marucot discussed how the Internet changed the marketing landscape and how even small enterprises can now sell internationally through e-commerce sites, with the proper promotion of their products. Currently, there are two kinds of e-commerce sites sellers can utilize: one are marketplaces, such as Lazada, Shopee, Amazon and eBay, while the other are ownstore pages in Facebook, WordPress and Shopify. Marucot also noted that apart from online platforms, online payment solutions such as Payoneer, Xend and Dragonpay are now available to simplify e-commerce transactions.

Editor: Jun Lomibao | mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph

Sports

BusinessMirror

U.S. LEAGUES, SUDDENLY, CASHING IN ON BETTING

THE Maroons’ Juan Gomez de Liaño and the Blue Eagles’ Thirdy Ravena will have their hands full in the championship series.

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EW YORK—Professional sports leagues, which once vehemently fought the prospect of legal sports betting, are now scrambling to get in on it.

In a pact announced on Wednesday morning, the National Basketball Association is partnering with Sportradar and Genius Sports to distribute NBA betting data to sports betting providers in the US. It came a day after Major League Baseball partnered with MGM Resorts to become an official gambling partner in the US and Japan.

MGM Resorts previously reached similar deals with the NBA, WNBA and National Hockey League, and has a deal with the National Football League’s New York Jets to promote its properties and mobile app to fans.

FanDuel joined with the NHL and its New Jersey Devils franchise this month for sports betting and fantasy sports play.

“It definitely feels like a gold rush— the new industry with everybody trying to get a piece of it,” said Sharon Otterman, chief marketing officer of bookmaker William Hill US. “As the sports betting landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, these new partnerships will provide robust and reliable data to ensure the best possible gaming experience for our fans in the US,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.

Scott Kaufman-Ross, vice president and head of fantasy and gaming for the NBA, said the league has recognized the changing landscape.

“We’re going to have better results in a regulated market than an unregulated market,” he said.

New Jersey won a US Supreme Court case in May that cleared the way for all 50 states to offer legal sports betting. So far seven states have: Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. And although New Mexico has not passed a sports betting law, the Santa Ana Star Casino and Hotel started taking sports bets last month through a tribal gambling compact.

But in order to win that case, New Jersey had to overcome fierce resistance from the four major professional sports leagues.

Speaking on Wednesday at a sports betting conference in New York, MGM CEO Jim Murren said the gambling company and the sports leagues know they need each other in the rapidly changing sports betting environment.

“We don’t know how this is going to play out but we know each other,” he said. “We’ve agreed to try to figure this out together.”

The sports leagues still have not given up on the idea of gambling companies paying them an “integrity fee,” consisting of a piece of the sports betting action ranging from a quarter of a percent to 1 percent.

“We’re not interested in paying an integrity fee. We’re actually offended by that concept,” Murren said. “But we are

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A5

ATENEO-U.P. DUEL UNFURLS A

LINE along Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City will be drawn starting on Saturday afternoon when Ateneo de Manila University opens defense of its men’s basketball crown against cross-street neighbor University of the Philippines (UP) in Game One of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) Season 81 Finals at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City.

The season-favorite Blue Eagles will brandish the favorite’s tag when they take on the Fighting Maroons in the match set for 3:30 p.m. and which is expected to pack the MOA Arena to the rafters.

Ateneo swept UP in the eliminations—87-79 in the first round and 83-66 in the second—and cruised past Far Eastern University, 80-61, to exercise its twice-to-beat advantage in the Final Four to the hilt.

The Fighting Maroons? They practically labored the entire season and are now hoping for a Cinderella finish to end 32 years of waiting since a team led by local basketball Legends Benjie Paras, Ronnie Magsanoc and Eric Altamirano won for the state school its one and only championship so far despite being one of the league’s founders.

UP Coach Bo Perasol, a Maroons’ team captain from 1990 to 1994, wanted to go all the way.

willing to pay—and pay well—for data and sponsorships and co-branding. In-game betting is going to be so popular that to have league-endorsed data, the most relevant and current, is going to be critical.”

But Otterman is concerned that gambling companies have access to betting data from more than one source, fearing that leagues could have a monopoly on their information.

The company that owns the Devils, the Prudential Center where the Devils play and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers struck deals in October with bookmaker William Hill and Caesars Entertainment for sports lounges at the New Jersey arena, as well as marketing and promotional benefits.

Earlier this year, William Hill agreed to do promotional work and post odds at the home arenas of the Las Vegas Golden Knights. AP

IN a pact announced recently, the National Basketball Association is partnering with Sportradar and Genius Sports to distribute the league’s betting data to sports betting providers in the US.

Bach lavishes praise on suspended Sheikh Ahmad OKYO—Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, who has stepped away temporarily from the presidency of an Olympic umbrella group to fight a criminal court case in Switzerland, was praised by International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach on Thursday.

“We have said, first of all, that we respect the decision he took under his own

Saturday, December 1, 2018

will and we recognize that this decision, his decision, was taken in the interests of all of us,” Bach told 1,400 delegates of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC).

The Kuwaiti sheikh last week also suspended himself from his 26-year membership in the IOC in order to fight the corruption case.

A NAME plate of Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah is placed on a chair during the Association of National Olympic Committees general assembly in Tokyo. AP

He has said he’s innocent and says the case is “politically motivated.”

ANOC Senior Vice President Robin Mitchell will serve as the acting president.

Mitchell said he had no idea how long that would be for.

Sheikh Ahmad is accused by Geneva public prosecutors of forgery in an alleged faked arbitration case involving four others.

“We hope we can see him back here very soon after his case is solved,” Bach told delegates, who applauded warmly.

Many credit Sheikh Ahmad with swinging votes to get Bach elected in 2013.

Bach also lectured the delegates about the need for good governance: “Maybe you don’t want to hear it anymore. But I will not get tired of repeating it with regard to good governance: What affects one of us affects all of us.”

The IOC has been hit with embarrassing corruption cases. Sheikh Ahmad is the third IOC member recently to be suspended—or self-suspended. A fourth, honorary member Carlos Nuzman who headed the 2016 Olympics, is also suspended. AP

“Everyone is saying we don’t stand a chance, but we will keep on fighting,” said Perasol after his wards disposed of Adamson University, 89-87, in their do-or-die semifinals showdown on Wednesday witnessed by a crowd of 21,000 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

“There is something in what we do that keeps us looking forward. It’s all about making an impact for a community that is hungry of winning,” Perasol said.

“These guys refused to give up. It wasn’t an easy journey but it’s worth the wait.”

Juan Gomez de Liaño, Paul Desiderio and Bright Akhuetie held fort for UP to nail that overtime win over a Soaring Falcons side that was also hoping to get a crack at the UAAP crown it last won when another Legend, Hector Calma, manned the point in 1977.

The trio was instrumental in that emotional victory.

Akhuetie made the game-winner that kept UP alive in the semifinals by negating Adamson University’s semifinals incentive last Saturday.

Desiderio took his turn on Wednesday by scoring five straight points in the waning minute of overtime.

And in both games, Gomez de Liaño was in full throttle and displayed savvy all game long.

Disposing Adamson is just another step of the real mission they want to achieve.

They will be up against an Ateneo side packed with the explosive Thirdy Ravena and silent operator Angelo Kouame, the foundation of the Blue Eagles’ offense since the start of the season.

Game Two will switch to the Araneta Coliseum on Wednesday also at 3:30 p.m. and if necessary, Game Three will be back at the MOA Arena also at 3:30 p.m. on December 8.

A6 Saturday, December 1, 2018 | Editor: Mike Besa

Story & photos

by Mike Besa

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UR older, more traditional golf courses have had difficulty competing with the newer, more modern builds in terms of turf quality and overall playing conditions. Imported turf grasses are biologically engineered to provide ideal playing conditions and are used in all corners of the golf course. The ball sits up nicely, the clubhead just knifes through the turf and the golf ball dances around the pin on the greens.

Perfection has a price and keeping turf grasses cloned brought in from other environments, that cost is usually quite high.

By last estimates over P5 million a month for an 18-hole golf course, which includes labor, fertilizer, herbicides and other inputs. But is that always necessary?

Hacienda Luisita Golf and Country Club seems to be an outlier in the grand scheme of things. The club spends a fraction of that on the historic Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, something that has positively impacted the club’s bottom line.

Ahead of its time, Luisita has tifdwarf on its greens and although the fairways were originally Tifton, parts have been overtaken by zoysia and other indigenous grasses. All this hasn’t hurt playability in the slightest but does present different challenges as you stray from the fairways.

The most interesting thing about Luisita has been the stability of the tifdwarf greens. Most of the newer golf courses started with tifdwarf on their greens.

Fil-Estate and Sta. Lucia leaned heavily on tifdwarf for their projects, but many have moved away from it while others still are planning to join the migration to the newer ultradwarf varieties that seem to tolerate our weather conditions more readily and because they can withstand lower cutting heights, provide quicker rolling greens and resist mutation.

In the face of that, Luisita’s greens have been remarkably stable and resistant to infestation. They are covered with the original grass that was planted back in 1968, 50 years ago. For greens that old, they roll remarkably well and remain very consistent year-round.

General Manager Jeric Hechanova and golf course superintendent Rey Patricio have hit on a very good balance in their maintenance routine that allows the greens to roll in the high nines almost year-round. They can speed them up significantly when the occasion demands it, but the greens like the routine that Patricio has established.

Occasional visitors and tourists appreciate this aspect of Luista more than most as the course is always in what seems to be peak playing condition just about any time they play. We had the slight misfortune to play just after the club had hosted three straight professional tournaments and just aerated the

greens on the inward nine. There was just the slightest bit of sand on the greens and they were just a bit bumpy. The level of regular intervention is minimal. Another two weeks and they’ll be perfect.

Speaking with Hechanova and Patricio, it’s apparent that they take a minimalist approach to the maintenance of their golf course. Patricio has an innate understanding of what the grasses require and is quite happy to simply support their growth cycles. His understanding of the golfers’ expectations when they arrive at the course helps synch his processes to provide the playing conditions golfers prefer. Besides his knowledge, he has the patience to allow nature to take its course and resist the urge to intervene with chemicals of one kind or other.

These practices and the results that they’ve produced bring into question the traditional methods used by other golf courses. The move to more sustainable practices and the need to reduce the cost of caring for and feeding a golf course resonate on every corner of the golf world except in the games most hallowed stages.

Golf course construction techniques that were championed in the infancy of the Philippine golf boom in the early 90s are now being called into question. Sand-capping was a must for golf courses constructed during this time frame. The practice allowed golf courses to drain quickly after a deluge but created other problems that were only evident in the mid and long terms. The speed with which the fairways drained made it difficult for the grasses to absorb nutrients and moisture since the golf course drained far too quickly, much quicker that it would naturally. This meant that golf courses needed to water more than they ever had before. Because the nutrients drained away with the excess water, more nutrients in the form of fertilizers and essential minerals had to be used to maintain the turf’s health.

An unwelcome side effect was the speed with which organic matter built up in the substrate and over time worked to inhibit the golf course’s ability to drain. The increased amount of inputs was many golf courses’ undoing.

More water, fertilizer and chemicals were used than was necessary, increasing costs and negatively impacting the bottom line.

Luisita is lucky in the respect that the golf course doesn’t have to deal with any of these issues. Could the traditional construction methods used at Luisita be the reason that the imported turf varieties have done so well there? Perhaps.

More than likely, Wit was the proper care that was lavished on the grasses that enabled them not only to survive but to thrive.

Luisita didn’t always look this good. In the years just before Martin Lorenzo purchased the golf course from the Cojuangco family, the course did leave a little to be desired. The fairways were decent, but the greens were furry and Velcro slow. The lakes, once visible from the clubhouse had become obscured by vegetation and much of the golf course’s

HACIENDA LUISITA GOLF AND

HOW GOOD CAN natural beauty was hidden from view. It wasn’t until Hechanova and Patricio arrived at Luisita that things turned around.

Working with Robert Trent Jones Jr., they set about restoring the golf course to how Jones Sr. originally intended. They realized that they also needed to toughen up the course a bit to deal with golf’s new power game. Jones Jr. identified several new tee boxes that not only lengthened the golf course but added difficulty by simply changing what the golfer sees off the tee. The new tee on 11 is a perfect example. They built the new tee back on the other side of the hazard behind the current tee box. Not only did they push it back, but the view of the fairway from the tee is set at an

angle that changes the golfer’s perspective of the fairway, making it a much-tougher shot.

The golf course today is in the marvelous condition; the best it’s been in years. It has responded positively to the changes management has instituted over the last three years, which begs the question; has the golf course peaked under Lorenzo’s crew? Can it get better still?

Our opinion is that it has not peaked and it can get better still. A team like this is never content to rest on their laurels and will continue to find facets of the golf course that they can improve upon. It’s going to be fun to return in the years to come to see the course mature further for ourselves.

THE clubhouse recently received a fresh coat of paint and is looking as good as ever.

THE second hole is one of the most challenging of the par 3s.

THE 16th green with the 17th in the background

BEST GOLF CLUBS OF 2018 A

S 2018 draws to a close, it is but fitting that we look back on the season that was and examine the new equipment releases that made the biggest impact this year.

The technology that powers golf clubs has never been more advanced and manufacturing processes are now so good that almost anything the designers can dream up can be built and mass produced at price points that are palatable to the consumer. To make this list, the clubs must exhibit class-leading technology or be unique in the category. Most important, the included technologies need

to distinguish the product from others in the category and the product must be well received by the public at large.

DRIVERS DRIVERS are the recipients of the greatest amount of technology of any golf club made today. They are also the most widely received because, let’s face it; there’s something seductive about being able to hit the golf ball further than you’ve ever done so before. Given the regulations that

govern the performance of the golf ball off the driver’s face, engineers have begun looking at the driver as a holistic package, searching for minute improvements that can make a difference in how far we hit a golf ball.

Fitting has become of utmost important in this game of millimeters. Most manufacturers offer at least two head styles and a variety of shafts and grips to enable the golfer to fit the club to his/her swing most precisely. Mike Besa

WEDGES—TITLEIST VOKEY SM7

CALLAWAY ROGUE/ROGUE SUBZERO

THE Vokey SM7 is more evolutionary than revolutionary since it takes the progressive CG design of the SM6 and takes it even further in the interest of absolute performance. To augment the performance of the ball off the clubface, Titleist has a selection of six different sole grinds, the most of any manufacturer in golf today, to suit every golfer profile in every conceivable playing situation.

It is simply the best.

THE Rogue and Rogue Subzero take the key technologies pioneered in the Epic line of drivers last year and have made them easier to use without a loss of distance. That’s a fine line to walk as more of one tends to result in less of the other. Not the case here. With six different shafts from two global markets, we are spoiled for choice with the Rogue drivers. A proper fitting is essential to make sure you achieve your potential with either club.

HYBRIDS—TAYLORM

PING G400 MAX

THE G400 Max is a bit of an outlier in the scheme of drivers. Seldom has a super game improvement driver found so much favor with professionals and top amateurs, yet this is precisely what Ping has achieved with the G400 Max. It’s not a one-fits-all driver and for those that require something different, Ping also offers three other variants; the slightly smaller G400 and G400 LST and the draw biased G400 SFT.

THE GAPR makes this list because the Although it competes in the same sp they are much closer in design to iron golfers that want a more iron-like ba hitting more wood-like hybrids consi styles in the GAPR range for three dis to further fine-tune the club’s flight c market, but it offers a bit of somethin between their longest iron and short

TITLEIST TS2/TS3

THE TS2 and TS3 drivers from T performing drivers that Titleis on looks, feel and workability that has changed this year and any driver on the market toda in the market for a new big sti 50-65-grams and if neither of works for little or no extra mo

www.pinoygolfer.com | Saturday, December 1, 2018 A7

COUNTRY CLUB

N SHE GET?

GROUNDBREAKING U.S. COLLEGE CAMP COMES TO THE PHILIPPINES CLASS in session

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HE country’s very first US college golf camp was held on November 24 and 25 at the Manila Southwoods Golf and Country Club.

There are many opportunities for our juniors to gain entry into the US collegiate sports system to avail themselves of a quality education and the chance to take their games to the next level.

The US College Sports Camp Philippines saw the men’s and women’s golf team coaches from US Division I schools, Southern Utah, Arkansas-Little Rock and Seattle University to the Philippines hold a two-day golf camp for 31 junior golfers aged 12 to 18.

The event gave the participants a college training day experience in a small group setting directly under the US coaches. Each camper received in-depth expert instruction on full swing, short game, course management, tournament preparation, mental game, fitness and instruction. They were given an overview of the

NCAA recruitment process and the transition from junior golf to the ultra-competitive college game.

This event was made possible through the efforts of lawyer Bobbet Bruce and US College Camps George Duangmanee. Bruce, who has been involved in junior golf for over 10 years said,”This is a breakthrough event for our junior golfers and will give them the rare opportunity of showcasing their talent in front of top golf coaches from the US without leaving the country.” Duangmanee added, “We are very happy to be in the Philippines and to be part of history. We hope that we can help a lot of Filipino junior golfers navigate in their US college golf recruitment journey. There are a lot of talent here that needs to be given the opportunities to play at the highest level of college golf.”

The coaches who participated in the event were Southern Utah Men’s and Women’s Richard Church, Jake Harrington, Golf Director for the Men’s and Women’s programs at the University

of Arkansas—Little Rock and Marc Chardonet, Men’s and Women’s Head Coach at Seattle University.

The coaches were very impressed with the talent that they saw and even more impressed with the level of proficiency in the English language. A stark contrast to other Asian recruits that struggle to surmount the language barrier necessary to fulfill the requirements of American universities and colleges.

The camp opened our juniors’ eyes to the various opportunities to get an education as a student athlete in the American setting. There are so many programs and grants at the colleges in all three divisions throughout the United States that an enterprising junior will certainly be able to find a school whose program will allow him or her to prosper and grow.

A January 2019 workshop/minicamp for juniors who want to actively pursue the opportunity to play college golf in the United States and a full camp in May with close to 10 coaches and an expanded field of 80 kids are already in the works.

Teijan Mercado, James Luguban, Jacob Magat, Joaquin Gomez, Conrad Limcaco, James Limcaco, Pocholo Medina, Graeme Tamayo, Gilbert Purcia, Samuel Sagral IV, Jolo Magcalayo, Jona Magcalayo, Gabriel Bolivar, Jacob Bolivar, Sophia Magbitang, Kim Tae Soo, Lurea Duque, Masaichi Otake, Dominic VIllamor, Bernette Morillo, David Guanko, Sean Ramos, Zach Castro, Gillian Cua, Miguel Ilas and Raid Sarmiento from De La Salle Zobel, Riggs Illescas, Maio Castaneda and Jacob Rolida from Ateneo, Anya Cedo and Annyka Cayabyab from St. Paul Pasig and Paqo Barro from Laurel Springs School participated in the camp.

The event was made possible by US College Camps in cooperation with Golf Globally, Llc., J.L.M. Hotel and Food Management Inc. (Jollibee—Lopez, Quezon), De La Salle Zobel and venue benefactor, The Southwoods Golf and Country Club.

Tiger Woods and Discovery’s GOLFTV announce exclusive, long-term global content partnership IRONS—PXG GEN 2 IRONS

PXG spearheaded the development and sale of iron heads that were constructed using hollow heads with very specifically located centers of gravity. Before this, irons were made of one-piece forgings or castings or multi-piece construction with different materials used for the frame, face and weighting. Hollow construction methods allow for faces with high coefficients of restitution for faster, more consistent ball speeds across the clubface. PXG’s one downside is the high cost of entry but other than that, these are phenomenal irons. The Gen 2 irons differ with slightly massaged head shapes and a different, higher performance foam in the head which, according to PXG, enables higher ball speeds than in the gen 1 irons. Their science has since been validated with similarly designed irons coming to market from TaylorMade and Titleist. The age of the hollow-bodied iron is well and truly here.

TIGER WOODS and David Zaslav-GOLFTV

N

MADE GAPR

ere is really nothing else like it on the market. pace as other hybrids, the GAPRs are unique because ns than fairway woods. This addresses the concerns of all flight with their hybrids and often have difficulty istently. TaylorMade offers three different head stinct ball flights and includes their adjustable hosel characteristics. It doesn’t quite redefine the hybrid ng for everyone looking to bridge the distance gaps test fairway wood.

3

US College Golf Camp participants and coaches

Titleist make this list by virtue of being the highestst has ever produced. Their D-series of drivers focused and placed less emphasis absolute performance. All d the TS2 and TS3 drivers offer as much performance as ay. This makes Titleist’s new drivers a must-hit if you’re ick. You have a choice of four shaft offerings from f them works for you, you can custom order a shaft that oney.

PUTTERS—EVNROLL

BESIDES precisely locating the center of gravity in an optimum location to control skid and hopping when the ball leaves the putter face and insert technology that aids in this quest, there have been few revolutionary technologies that have made their presence felt on the market today. Guerin Rife is one putter designer that has made it his life’s work to help us get the little ball into the hole and his newest line of putters dubbed Evnroll perform like no other putter on the market today. The asymmetrical grooves on the faces of his putter actually help straighten out your mishits on the green; hits on the toe and heel magically make their way back to the center. There’s a video on the Internet of a robot putting three golf balls (one struck in the center, another on the heel and the third on the toe of the putter) which end up in exactly the same spot. Remarkable. There is nothing like it on the market today.

EW YORK—In a major development as part of the strategic partnership between Discovery Inc. and the PGA Tour, GOLFTV has unveiled an exclusive multiyear global content partnership with 80-time PGA Tour winner and 14-time Major champion Tiger Woods.

Starting in January 2019, GOLFTV powered

by PGA Tour, the new global live and on-demand video streaming service jointly developed by Discovery and the Tour, will collaborate with Woods on a wide range of programming, content creation and storytelling opportunities that will offer fans an authentic and regular look into the life, mind and performance of the game’s ultimate icon.

The GOLFTV partnership will reveal Woods as fans have never seen him before, providing an unparalleled opportunity to get close to Woods’s practice routines, preparation and life on the road through a variety of programming showcased exclusively on GOLFTV. “I’ve been watching Discovery and David Zaslav build up a global sports platform with Eurosport, the Olympics and the launch of GOLFTV with us at the PGA Tour, so I think they’re the perfect partner to help grow the game.

They’re global, they get sports and know how to build new, younger and big audiences. It’s a perfect fit and I’m so excited to be a real partner with the Discovery Sports team,” said Woods.

“I love the vision of GOLFTV and the ambition for it to become the premier destination for golf entertainment worldwide. To have my own platform to communicate is the culmination of a lot of hard work from my team and the team at Discovery. We’re going to build content for everyone, whether you’ve been playing golf for a long time or just starting out. I’ll be sharing stories and giving insight into my approach that has never been seen before. This is such an exciting time for golf and for me, so to be part of the vision to grow the game all around the world is fantastic. I can’t wait to share my knowledge on GOLFTV,” he said.

“I want to talk to golf fans and golfers everywhere, directly, and straight from me.

That’s important to me. Talking about what we care about: what’s happening on the course, how to play better, how can I shoot lower scores tomorrow, how can I beat my friends? David explained how GOLFTV is for the fans and the players, a single place they’ll all want to go, and

he’s building something everyone will want,” Woods remarked.

Among the plans, Woods and GOLFTV are collaborating to develop: n Weekly practice and instructional videos to improve your game; n Exclusive access into Tiger’s preparation routines; n Behind-the-scenes access before and after PGA Tour rounds; n Unique and exclusive post-round commentary.

“Getting the chance to do instruction is exciting. I’ve always been focused on my own game and this experience can help players everywhere. Whether you’re a longtime player or a beginner, there are some things that help us all play better. It’s one way I want to give back to people who love the game like I do. If I can help the next generation enjoy the game more and play better, that’s pretty special,” Woods concluded.

A first for Woods on video, this content will be exclusively owned by GOLFTV globally, including in the United States, where Discovery has the opportunity to execute an owned or partner distribution strategy.

David Zaslav, president and CEO, Discovery, said: “I am excited to welcome Tiger to the Discovery family and to GOLFTV, a true superstar joining our company of world-class storytellers and brands. At the heart of Discovery is highquality storytelling, told through the most authentic, credible and trusted voices. Tiger is the ultimate example of a world-class athlete and cultural figure with whom audiences are enamored, and follow closely around the world. Our global partnership with Tiger is a perfect example of our strategy to collaborate exclusively with top talent to extend global media platforms, and take advantage of our international distribution and technology infrastructure and aggregate audiences and build long-term value.

“With Tiger joining us, I am confident that GOLFTV will be the new gold standard for comprehensive sports streaming, nourishing

golf fans when and where they want to consume what they are most passionate about,” Zaslav added.

This partnership with GOLFTV comes at an ideal time in Woods’s career, on the heels of a comeback season that saw him return to form in spectacular fashion, culminating in a history-making win at the 2018 Tour Championship in September.

Alex Kaplan, President and General Manager, Discovery Golf, said: “It’s a privilege for us to welcome Tiger to the GOLFTV team.

No one else in the game resonates globally the way Tiger does or has the global fan base, and he has great wisdom to share, on and off the course. We’re thrilled to give him the global platform to do just that, and to provide our audience in more than 200 markets and territories a closer look at Tiger on the greens and behind the scenes.

“Our long-term partnership with Tiger reflects our broader ambition as we rollout the service over the coming years, seeking to grow GOLFTV into a true ecosystem for all things golf: watching, learning and playing,” Kaplan added.

GOLFTV powered by PGA Tour will be available to fans starting January 2019. It will present more than 2,000 hours of live action each year, as well as a wide range of premium content on-demand, featuring the sport’s most exciting moments, superstar players and tournaments on every screen and device. Live coverage of the PGA Tour will be extensive and include The Players Championship, the FedExCup Playoffs and the Presidents Cup. Discovery Sports is the global leader in live sports with extensive brands and exclusive partnerships with premium sports and events including: Eurosport and the Eurosport Player, the Olympic Games, the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, La Vuelta a España, The Championships-Wimbledon, US Open, Roland Garros, Australian Open, ATP Tour, Bundesliga, English Premier League, UEFA Europa League, Eliteserien, PGA Tour, Six Nations Rugby, FIS Ski World Championships, Moto GP and Formula E to name only a few.

OurTime

A8 Saturday, December 1, 2018 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

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www.businessmirror.com.ph

Life-expectancy gap between poorest, richest in England expands to 10 years C

After a wildfire, rebuilding life can be hardest for the oldest

L

ONDON—The life-expectancy gap between the most affluent and the most deprived members of society in England widened to nearly 10 years, British researchers found.

The study analyzed a total of 7.65 million deaths in England between 2001 and 2016 based on data from the Office for National Statistics.

Researchers at Imperial College London found that the lifeexpectancy gap between the most affluent and most deprived sec-

tors of society increased from 6.1 years in 2001 to 7.9 years in 2016 for women, and from 9 years to 9.7 years for men.

The life expectancy of women in the most deprived communities in 2016 was 78.8 years, compared to 86.7 years in the most affluent

group. For men, life expectancy was 74 years among the poorest, compared to 83.8 years among the richest, the study published on Thursday in the journal Lancet Public Health said.

The largest contributors to lifeexpectancy inequalities were deaths in children younger than five years old, mostly neonatal deaths, as well as respiratory diseases, heart disease, lung and digestive cancers, and dementia among the elderly.

Majid Ezzati, senior author of the research, noted that “a perfect storm of factors” led to the early deaths of poor people, including stagnated working income, rising price of

healthy foods, funding squeeze for health and late diagnosis of diseases.

“This study suggests the poor in England are dying from diseases that can be prevented and treated,” said Ezzati, who is also a professor of the School of Public Health at Imperial College London.

“Greater investment in health and social care in the most deprived areas will help reverse the worrying trends seen in our work. We also need government and industry action to eradicate food insecurity and make healthy food choices more affordable, so that the quality of a family’s diet isn’t dictated by their income,” he suggested. Xinhuanet

A $570-B pension fund eyes hiring spree amid equity rout in South Korea

He had to go—but where?

S

OU T H Korea’s Nat ion a l Pension Service (NPS) is looking at boosting alternative investments abroad as weak returns domestically and slumping stock markets globally are forcing the world ’s thirdlargest pension fund to seek higher yields.

The pension fund, with $570 billion in assets, also aims to bolster investment portfolio performance by doubling the number of fund managers and raising their pay, the pension’s Chairman Kim Sung-Joo said in an interview with Bloomberg.

With assets projected to exceed $1 trillion within the next few years, a boost in size of its investment team to at least 500 fund managers is necessary, he said. That would be up from 231 currently. The NPS is also planning an organizational change for alternative investments, creating three divisions based on asset classes: infrastructure, private equity and real estate, Kim said. It is currently organized by domestic and overseas investments.

At the moment, the yield-improvement plan is just that for Kim as the pension fund is overseen by the country’s health ministry and must appeal to the National Assembly for any major revamp or hiring moves.

“Every night, I dream of hiring talented people,” said Kim, who took the helm of the country’s biggest pension a year ago.

“I am vigorously discussing with the government and the assembly for the authority to decide the employment of fund managers and set the level of salaries by ourselves.”

Currently, a typical NPS fund manager handles about $2 billion in assets compared to an average of about $1 billion for pension fund managers in other countries, he said.

T here is some u rgenc y to Kim’s appeal as the total annual returns for 2018 are expected to be at about 2.2 percent, the worst since 2011, with the benchmark Kospi slumping about 15 percent this year. While total assets are estimated to rise to 1,778 trillion won ($1.57 trillion) by 2041— the fund will begin to decrease in 2042 and run out by 2057, according to the country’s health and welfare ministry. Nearly 22 million private-sector and selfemployed workers contribute to the fund, but that number will begin to decline with a negative birth rate and growing elderly population. Bloomberg News

HICO, California—The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, the Camp Fire, was finally brought under control by firefighters on Sunday after raging for 17 days. But for many people left homeless by the fire, the most frightening part of the disaster is just beginning.

The hardest-hit community, Paradise, California, was a popular place to retire, with more than onequarter of its residents 65 or older, according to census figures. Many of them have now lost everything late in life and must start over from zero, often with little support and with major health challenges.

After a battle with throat cancer, Daniel Cayer wears a tracheostomy tube, breathes through a hole in his neck and speaks through a device pressed to his cheek. He had been living alone in a trailer park in Paradise, and had planned to celebrate his 72nd birthday with a barbecue on November 8, the day the fire started. But a plume of black smoke that morning scotched those plans, and soon the flames were in the trees near his home.

WELCOME SMILE An elderly woman welcomes San Mateo, Isabela, Mayor Crispina R. Agcaoili as the lady executive personally pays a visit to houses in town devastated by Typhoon Rosita. The local government of San Mateo recently received the Seal of Good Local Governance for 2018. CEASAR M. PERANTE

They played the Swine Bowl as teenagers and played the last game as octagenarians

N

EW YORK—It is a safe bet that the Egg Bowl, the Iron Bowl and the Palmetto Bowl, college football rituals of Thanksgiving weekend in certain circles, will be played again in 2019.

It is a safe bet that the Swine Bowl, a ritual of Thanksgiving weekend in a different circle, will not.

The original roster of Swine Bowl players, a dozen or so men now hitting 80, have called time-out for good; the touch football game played on Saturday in Central Park was their last.

They have faced off every year since 1954: At first they played in New Rochelle and Larchmont, in Westchester County, where the founding players grew up, and in Central Park since the early 1960s.

Of the 15 or so original players, most still show up. One spends most of his time in France. Another flew in this year from California, and his sister came from Florida. Yet another arrived from South Carolina. At least two exwives cheered from the sidelines.

Dan Breslaw, who now lives in West Corinth, Vermont, said the only Swine Bowl games he ever missed were during the six years he lived in Alaska. Mark Bloom, a science writer and editor, said he had missed only a single game. His excuse? He slept through it. He even slept through calls from players who left the field and ran to a pay phone.

Longevity alone gives them bragging rights. “Other bowl games, they have different players every year,” Breslaw said. “This, I would claim,

is the only one played by the same personnel since it began.”

But it is not just the same players.

Over the decades, the rosters have expanded to include wives, children, grandchildren and their friends.

Three of the original players have died, and one is in an assisted living facility with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Originally, it was antifootball,” said Richard Greeman, the one who now mostly lives in France. “We did throw a football, and sometimes there were rather spectacular plays, but we didn’t play to win, we played to be silly. Now that it’s our sons and daughters and grandchildren, they’re getting very good. There are actually plays where people catch passes.”

Which means that there was a football to be thrown and caught.

“One year, there almost wasn’t,” said Wendy Stasolla, who has attended seven Swine Bowls with loom’s nephew, John Gregg. The ball was “deflated,” she said.

A mini Deflategate? No. Someone dashed off to a sporting goods store and bought a football with air inside.

Saturday’s Swine Bowl was delayed because one of the captains was stuck in the subway. Someone served Cognac from a thermos. The first touchdown was scored by Liam Breslaw, Breslaw’s six-year-old grandson, who returned the opening kick. As the game ended, the consensus was that the score was 70-70, generous, perhaps. But there were a lot of touchdowns and there was no official scorekeeper. No scoreboard, either.

New York Times News Service

CR AMPED emergency evacuation shelters can be dangerous for older people with health conditions like Cayer. Infections can spread quickly, like the norovirus outbreak that sickened nearly 150 fire evacuees last week.

But Cayer said he had no family to turn to instead; he hasn’t spoken with his daughter in 15 years, he said, nor with his sons in 30 years. So he’s been sleeping in a camper outside a church shelter in Chico, the first place where many fleeing Paradise have taken refuge—and where, because of the fire, the air quality has ranked among the worst on the planet.

“Most people would put on a mask,” Cayer said through his speech device. He pointed to the hole in his throat. “I can’t.”

Many of the thousands of struc-

tures in Paradise and surrounding parts of Butte County that were lost in the fire were nursing homes, assisted living facilities, other geriatric care centers or mobile home parks catering to retirees. Roughly 2,300 residents of the fire zone had relied on in-home health aides, according to Shelby Boston, county director of employment and social services.

“There were a lot of people who were barely able to make it at home, and those are the people that tend in situations like this to make their way to the shelters,” said Dr. Andy Miller, public health officer for Butte County. Some patients with memory issues and the early stages of dementia have had their conditions made worse by the chaos of evacuation and by losing their daily routines, he said.

Coping with the aftermath of such a disaster can be daunting enough at any age, but for those in their 70s and 80s, it can seem almost impossible.

“Half of them don’t have it in them to start all over again,” said Mari Stewart, nursing supervisor for the clinic at the East Avenue Church in Chico, which has been turned into a shelter.

Disasters can go on taking a heavy toll long after the initial crisis has passed, experts say.

“Being cut off from your medicines, being cut off from your medical care, being cut off from your social supports, the added stress of having lost things and living in an evacuation center, and having to relocate—studies clearly show that there are additional hospitalizations that occur, even deaths that occur, in the months afterward,” said Dr. David Eisenman, director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters.

When older people are displaced, he said, “for them to not be allowed to rebuild and live in their community again might produce a kind of harm that’s much greater than if you or I or younger people had to rebuild and move away.” New York Times News Service

Meet Zora, the robot caregiver

Z

ORA may not look like much—more cute toy than futuristic marvel—but this robot is at the center of an experiment in France to change care for elderly patients.

When Zora arrived at a nursing facility an hour outside Paris, a strange thing began happening: Many patients developed an emotional attachment, treating it like a baby, holding and cooing, giving it kisses on the head.

Zora, which can cost up to $18,000, offered companionship in a place where life can be lonely. Families can visit only so often, and staff members are stretched.

Patients at the hospital, called Jouarre, have dementia and other conditions that require round-the-clock care.

The nurse at Jouarre who oversees Zora controls the robot from a laptop. He often stands out of view so patients don’t know it’s him at the controls.

The robot can have a conversation because the nurse types words into a laptop for the robot to speak. Some patients refer to Zora as “she,” others “he.”

Zora often leads exercises and plays games.

Not everyone is enamored.

Robotics still has a long way to go before there’s a realistic chance of having a humanoid nurse.

Zora doesn’t dispense medicine, take blood pressure or change bedsheets. At Jouarre, Zora was viewed by some as a superfluous tool that just “keeps the patients busy,” according to a nurse, Sophie Riffault.

Another nurse, Nathalie Racine, said she wouldn’t let a robot feed patients even if it could. Humans shouldn’t delegate such intimate moments to machines.

“Nothing will ever replace the human touch, the human warmth our patients need,” she said.

The experience at Jouarre provides a window into a future when we will rely more on robots to help care for loved ones as they age.

Zora Bots, the Belgium-based provider of the robot at Jouarre, says it has sold over 1,000 of the robots to healthcare facilities around the world, including in the United States, Asia and Middle East. It is part of a growing emphasis on robotics focused on care. A robot dog made by Sony has been marketed as a companion for older adults.

“We need to help with loneliness,” said Tommy Deblieck, the co-chief executive of ZoraBots.

Giving robots more responsibility to care for people in the twilight of their lives may seem like a dystopian prospect, but many see it as an inevitability.

THE robot Zora stands in front of a group of patients sitting in chairs arranged in a semi-circle last week in the Frenchy hospital Jouarre. NEW YORK TIMES PHOTO

In nearly every country, the population of older adults is rising. The number of people over 60 will more than double to 2.1 billion by 2050, the United Nations said.

The figures point to an emerging gap. There simply won’t be enough people for the required health-care jobs.

Proponents argue new technology must be created to help fill the void.

The challenge is particularly acute in France, where hospitals have been facing a national crisis, with healthcare professionals striking and protesting budget cuts and staff shortages. A rise of suicides of nurses and doctors has made national headlines, and France’s health minister acknowledged that the hospital system was “running out of steam.”

The challenge will be creating machines capable of doing more complex jobs. Lifting a patient’s mood with a song is different from providing health care.

The French hospital, which bought the robot with the help of a charitable grant, brings out Zora just a few times a month.

In Australia, a hospital using a Zora robot studied the effects on patients and staff. The researchers found that it improved the mood of some patients, and got them more involved in activities, but required significant technical support.

The experience of the French hospital staff has been similar.

Staff members have been continually surprised by how attached patients have become. One nurse, Mickaël Feret, said some patients get jealous of others spending time with Zora. New York Times News Service

BusinessMirror

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

Saturday, December 1, 2018 A9

The black hole that is YouTube PRIMETIME

DINNA CHAN VASQUEZ @dinnachanvasquez luckydinna@gmail.com

MICROSOFT CEO Satya Nadella looks on during a video presentation as he delivers the keynote address at Build, the company’s annual conference for software developers in Seattle. AP

Apple’s stock sours, Microsoft’s soars.

Say what?!

BY MATT O’BRIEN The Associated Press

WALL Street investors are enamored with a newly emergent tech company.

It has nothing to do with posting selfies or finding a soul mate. The company is instead making billions of dollars selling cloud computing and other technical services to offices around the world.

Say hello to Microsoft, the 1990s home-computing powerhouse that is having a renaissance moment—eclipsing Facebook, Google, Amazon and the other tech darlings of the late decade.

And now it is close to surpassing Apple as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.

Yes, that Microsoft. As other tech giants stumble, its steady resilience is paying off.

That Microsoft is even close to eclipsing Apple—and did so briefly a few times this week—would have been unheard of just a few years ago.

But under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has found stability by moving away from its flagship Windows operating system and focusing on cloud-computing services with long-term business contracts.

“They’ve finally turned the corner and have become a viable cloud player,” said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager for Synovus Trust. “They’ve made a very strong transition away from the desktop.”

A brief period of trading on Monday was the first time in more than eight years that Microsoft was worth more than Apple. Microsoft surpassed Apple again briefly on Tuesday, before Apple closed on top with a market value of $827 billion, just 0.5 percent ahead of Microsoft’s $822 billion.

Apple has been the world’s most prosperous firm since claiming the top spot from Exxon Mobil earlier this decade. Microsoft hasn’t been at the top since the height of the dot-com boom in 2000.

Microsoft became a contender again in large part because Apple’s stock has fallen 25 percent since early October, while Microsoft hasn’t done any worse than the rest of the stock market. But the fact that it hasn’t done poorly is a reflection of its steady focus on business customers in recent years.

Just a few years ago, Microsoft’s prospects looked bleak. The company was dependent on licensing fees from the Windows operating system used in personal computers, but people were spending money instead on the latest smartphones. In 2013 PC sales plunged 10 percent to about 315 million, the worst year-to-year drop ever, according to research firms Gartner and IDC. It didn’t help that Microsoft’s effort to make PCs more like phones, Windows 8, was widely panned.

But a turnaround began when the Redmond, Washington, company promoted Nadella as CEO in 2014. He succeeded Microsoft’s longtime CEO, Steve Ballmer, who initially scoffed at the notion that people would be willing to pay $500 or more for Apple’s iPhones.

That bet paid off. Windows is now a dwindling fraction of Microsoft’s business.

While the company still runs consumer-focused businesses such as Bing search and Xbox gaming, it has prioritized business-oriented services such as its Office line of e-mail and other workplace software, as well as newer additions such as LinkedIn and Skype.

But its biggest growth has happened in the cloud, particularly the cloud platform it calls Azure. Cloud computing now accounts for more than a quarter of Microsoft’s revenue, and Microsoft rivals Amazon as a leading provider of such services.

Being less reliant on consumer demand helped shield Microsoft from holiday season turbulence and US-China trade war jitters affecting Apple and other tech companies.

President Donald J. Trump amplified those tariff concerns when he told The Wall Street Journal in a story published late Monday that new tariffs could affect iPhones and laptops imported from China.

The iPhone maker had already seen its stock fall after reporting a mixed bag of quarterly results earlier this month amid fears about how the technology industry will fare in the face of such threats as rising interest rates, increased government regulation and Trump’s escalating trade war with China.

Apple also spooked investors with an unexpected decision to stop disclosing how many iPhones it sells each quarter. That move has been widely interpreted as a sign that Apple foresees further declines in iPhone sales and is trying to mask that.

While smartphones caused the downturn in personal computers years ago, sales of smartphones themselves have now stalled. That’s partly because with fewer innovations from previous models, more people choose to hold on to the devices for longer periods before upgrading.

Morgan said Microsoft is outperforming its tech rivals in part because of what it’s not. It doesn’t face as much regulatory scrutiny as advertising-hungry Google and Facebook, which have attracted controversy over their data-harvesting practices. Unlike Netflix, it’s not on a hunt for a diminishing number of international subscribers. And while Amazon also has a strong cloud business, it’s still more dependent on online retail.  AP Technology writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this report.

I

F the saying “Show me the videos you watch on YouTube and I’ll tell you who you are” is true, then mine would say I’m confused and unfocused. Just kidding—there is no such saying.

YouTube is a black hole of sorts. You start out with music videos and an hour later, you’re listening to soothing music for small dogs. There really is so much content out there.

People are surprised when they learn that I love YouTube. Years ago, when my daughter was a teenager, I would watch videos of British content creators Dan Hill, Phil Lester, Caspar Lee and many others. I was at the first YouTube FanFest in the country that was held at Marriott Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, which was very new at that time.

It’s funny that now, I’m the one who watches a lot of videos. My teenager is now a working adult and she’d only have time during the weekends.

A number of my friends and colleagues are also now on YouTube, meaning they create content, because it’s the new frontier. Blogging killed print (ostensibly) while videos and Instagram are slowly killing blogging (this is a controversial opinion that I’m merely echoing, as it’s my blogger friends who told me this) because these days, people would rather watch than read. I believe that there’s room for everyone on the Internet and beyond. Print is not really dead and is making a slow but sure transition.

But back to YouTube—the statistics are mind-boggling. There are 1.9 billion active users at present. About 5 billion

videos are watched every day by people around the world. Millennials are said to prefer YouTube two to one over traditional television (millennials and even those who are younger hardly watch traditional TV).

Anyway, there is so much interesting content out there and my favorites vary according to my present interests. So here are the channels I’ve been watching a lot of lately: 1. Wayne Goss (youtube.com/user/ gossmakeupartist) Contrary to what my friends think, I don’t watch a lot of makeup tutorials but I watch all of Wayne Goss’s videos and I believe every word he says. Why? Because Goss has never failed me. When he says this foundation is great, it really is. All the products that he says are good really perform well. But more than that, Goss is an excellent makeup artist with practical tips and tricks for normal people like myself. I can say that I learned how to apply foundation properly and make it look natural because of his videos, which are mercifully short and to the point.

2. Judy Ann Santos (bit.ly/2ysENaa) I love how entertaining Santos’s cooking videos are and how practical she is as a homemaker and cook. Her recipes turn out well as I have tried several of them already from the Japanese food video. (youtu.be/X�KW1oVWluY) 3. 1MILLION Dance Studio (bit. ly/1NcZpjP)

I chanced upon this channel because of my weird obsession with the song “Rewrite the Stars.” 1MILLION is dance studio in Seoul’s Gangnam district. Their YouTube channel has over 12 million subscribers and their dance videos are

simply amazing. The dance school’s choreographers work with some of Korea’s top entertainment companies, including SM Entertainment and YG Entertainment. Their channel has some of the best dances you’ll see. 

Multisys’ Clash of Codes showcases ingenuity of Filipino IT experts

MULTISYS Technologies Corp. President and CEO David Almirol Jr. and Bayad Center President and CEO Manuel Lorenzo Tuason led the launch of Multisys’ firstever systems solutions competition. Meralco-Bayad Center recently acquired the Multisys eCommerce Platform, which has been successfully integrated into more than 40,000 payment channels nationwide.

IN a bid to empower the information-technology (IT) community and as a showcase of potential technological advancements in the country, Multisys Technologies Corp., a leading one-stop provider for integrated software development and system solutions, staged recently its first Clash of Codes at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.

Over 200 elite programmers took the challenge of designing and coding an integrated e-commerce system that is powered by SMS features and connected to 1,800 billers and over 30,000 payment centers.

Three groups and three individuals emerged as winners of the competition. For the group category, Team Batibot (Rodette Pedro, Jayson Uy, and JR Respino) emerged as the first-place winner. They were followed by Team Foxtrot (Aldrin Bautista, Niño Eclarin and Raven Lagrinas) in second place and Team Pocket Coder (Mcjover P. Dacanay, Marjorie L. Tiozon and Danis Gabriel M.

de Perio) in third place.

Winners for the individual category are: Alexie Madolid in first place, Mark Erwin Villarina in second place and Trinmar Boado in third. The first placers in both categories took home a cash prize of P100,000 each. The second and third placers received P50,000 and P30,000, respectively.

Multisys President and CEO David Almirol Jr. emphasized the importance of initiatives that encourage the IT community to show off their ingenuity, such as Clash of Codes, as demand for sophisticated business processes continue to rise.

“The systems that our participants worked on were all impressive. Beyond being able to prove that the local IT community has the skills and talent to build effective programs from scratch, they were able to exhibit their passion in being able to create systems that make our daily tasks easier to accomplish. Clash of Codes was a true showcase of what Filipino IT talents can offer,” Almirol shared.

Killer messages on Sony PlayStation 4 and how to deal with them NOT everyone knows that Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4) has its own instant messenger: PlayStation Messages. There are also app versions for Android and iOS, so that it can be used not only on the console itself.

Turns out, though, sending a short message (any piece of text followed by a special Unicode character and the heart emoji) to this messenger is enough to send the poor PS4 into an infinite reboot loop.

Reddit users first drew attention to the issue, after which it was picked up by the news media. The worst thing is that the message doesn’t even need to be opened. When it is received, first the controller stops responding, then the sound switches off and, finally, the console crashes and starts rebooting endlessly. Players who get one of these messages at a crucial moment in a game probably won’t be jumping for joy.

But there’s good news. First, Sony confirms that it has already fixed the error so the next firmware update should be the end of it.

Second, even if your console got stuck in a cyclic reboot, it can be restored to life. To do so, Kaspersky Lab suggests the following steps: 1. Install the PS Messages app on your phone (Android or iOS).

2. Delete the malicious message using the PS Messages mobile app.

3. On the console, start up in Safe Mode and select Rebuild Database (option 5).

4. Now, the console should start as if nothing had happened.

One last thing. Even if you haven’t encountered this problem yourself, you can take preemptive action to make sure you never do. To do so: 1. Go to the console settings.

2. Select Account Management > Privacy Settings. At this point, a password is required.

3. Select Messages, followed by Friends or No One in the drop-down menu.

4. Now, strangers will not be able to send you messages, killer or otherwise. Better safe than sorry.

Kaspersky Lab is a global cybersecurity company, which has been operating in the market for over 20 years. The company’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into next-generation security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe.

BusinessMirror

A10 Saturday, December 1, 2018

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Why Twitter’s cute, heart-shaped ‘like’ button is not so harmless

J

BY A. TREVOR SUTTON Concordia Seminary

ACK DORSEY, Twitter’s founder and CEO, was recently reported to have questioned how the site “incentivizes people to want [the number of likes on their posts] to go up.” He also said that “he was not a fan of the heart-shaped [‘like’] button and that Twitter would be getting rid of it ‘soon.’” Twitter has since released a statement indicating that there are no immediate plans to remove the “like” button.

Whatever the future of Twitter’s “like” button may be, as a scholar of social media and religion I’d argue that the cute little heart-shaped button on Twitter and Facebook is far more impactful than it appears.

GLOBE AT HOME PLAN GIVES SUBSCRIBERS 6 MONTHS FREE HOOQ ACCESS

LEADING wireless communications and lifestyle company Globe, through its Globe At Home brand, remains committed to elevating home entertainment by providing world-class content through their partnerships with top streaming services and their high-speed Internet. The latest in such efforts, new Globe At Home subscribers will get free six months subscription to HOOQ. The streaming app returns with a wider collection of local titles ranging from romantic-comedy blockbusters, such as Sid & Aya, Walwal, The Breakup List, Never Not Love You, My Ex and Whys and Forevermore. The list goes on—from classics to contemporary, from heavy drama to heavy comedy, from TV shows to movies, from indie to mainstream. If it’s a Pinoy favorite, Globe At Home is bringing it to subscribers via HOOQ. The telecoms giant continues to make it easier for subscribers to stream and enjoy their favorite Pinoy hits from safe and legitimate sources, anytime and anywhere they want.

The promo gift is worth P149 per month, available for two concurrent users, plus a bonus of free monthly rentals for freshly released movies and access to the latest episodes from the Arrowverse series (on the same day as their US telecast!). Globe At Home subscribers will receive an e-mail that contains instructions and a redemption link for HOOQ within 48 hours after broadband plan installation.

Consumers can sign up or upgrade their existing broadband subscription to Globe At Home GoUnli Plan with speeds up to 100Mbps at no data cap, plus enjoy their free six-month subscription HOOQ, as well as DisneyLife and FOX+. The offering ends January 31, 2019 (shop.globe.com. ph/broadband).

Global lawmakers grill Facebook exec in UK parliament LONDON—Lawmakers from nine countries grilled a Facebook executive on Tuesday as part of an international hearing at Britain’s parliament on disinformation and “fake news.”

Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president for policy solutions, answered questions in London in place of his boss, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who ignored repeated requests to appear.

Allan, sitting next to an empty chair reserved for Zuckerberg, said the Facebook founder and CEO had already appeared before numerous other committees this year. He acknowledged that the company has not been without blame in how it handled various scandals. “I’m not going to disagree with you that we’ve damaged public trust with some of the actions we’ve taken,” he said.

Allan was responding to Canadian lawmaker Charlie Angus, who said the social-media giant has “lost the trust of the international community to selfpolice,” and that lawmakers have to start looking at ways to hold the company accountable.

British lawmakers were joined by their counterparts from eight other countries at the hearing held by the parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Zuckerberg accepts that what’s needed is “a regulatory framework and action by responsible companies like ours—it’s the two in tandem,” Allan said.

The hearing comes after the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins, took the unusual move of forcing the CEO of an app maker to turn over confidential Facebook documents. AP

HOW PEOPLE USE THE ‘LIKE’ BUTTON THE “like” button is not there by accident. Instead, this one-click feature exists as an intentional design decision. Like most big tech companies, Twitter has an entire department dedicated to understanding users. Every feature and font, based on their research, is there to maximize the overall user experience.

The design decisions furtively influence users’ feelings and behaviors. Chris Nodder, a user experience researcher and the author of Evil by Design, explains how designers must always ask the question, “How do we influence behavior through the medium of software?”

In other words, design decisions are made not only to improve a users’ experience but also influence their behaviors. The “like” button is one example.

While the heart-shaped button is seemingly only for expressing appreciation for the content of a socialmedia post, researchers have determined that people use the button for many other reasons.

A team of researchers, for example, found that users in the United States often chose to like something for bonding purposes rather than simply liking the content.

Another study of Facebook users found that the “like” button is used to maintain relationships with existing friends or to develop new relationships.

People may use the “like” button as a way to publicly show closeness to another person, or even as an effort toward dating someone.

The point being that the “like” button does far more than just express how much a person likes a particular picture or post.

NOT SO HARMLESS RESEARCH has also shown that the “like” button is not entirely harmless.

Social-networking sites are powerful tools for building relationships. Nevertheless, research has shown that certain social-media features can adversely affect users.

For instance, a study found that impersonal

gestures such as the one-click “like” communication may not promote user well-being. According to Facebook researcher Moira Burke and Robert Kraut, an emeritus professor at Carnegie Mellon University, “simply reading about friends, receiving text communication from weak ties, and receiving oneclick communication did not affect well-being.” On the other hand, more personal and direct communication such as a direct message or personalized comment can have an impact on user well-being.

A particularly harmful byproduct of the “like” button is found in the way social-networking sites foster negative social comparisons. A review of research on the topic has found that social-media use correlates with measurable increases in envy and depression.

These feelings of envy can take two different forms: malicious envy and benign envy.

Malicious envy involves resentment and a desire to harm the other person. Benign envy involves admiration and a desire to obtain what the other person possesses.

One of the studies in the review involved 194 college-aged Facebook users in Germany. In this study, researchers found that “the closer the relationship, the more a Facebook user will experience benign envy.”

These digital showrooms allow people to present the best version of themselves for everyone else to see.

Often, people use the number of likes to judge others and themselves. That little heart-shaped button becomes a publicly quantifiable measure of social support. According to this research, the “like” button works as a “mechanism to compare oneself with others.” The number of “likes” make social support quantifiable. It can then be easily viewed for making social comparisons.

RIPPLE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES GIVEN the impact of social networking sites on the feelings and behaviors of billions of users, I believe there needs to be an ethical component to designing these technologies.

As Twitter is busy “rethinking everything,” the company would do well to think about how the platform is shaping the feelings and behaviors of its users. Michigan Tech humanities scholar Robert Johnson, in his book User-Centered Technology, writes how technologies have “ripple effects” that “shape culture in defining ways.” The same argument is true for social-networking sites. As such, every design feature—even that little heart-shaped button—must be carefully scrutinized. ■

Security Fabric architecture bolsters Q3 performance of Fortinet

BY RODERICK L. ABAD Contributor CYBERSECURITY solutions provider Fortinet reported a 21-percent growth in total revenue to $453.9 million for the third quarter (Q3) of 2018 as a result of its delivery of needed security features to any point, from the endpoint to the cloud, in real time at the onset of various threat issues confronting the digital world.

The aggregate topline from July to September of this year was over $79.7 million than $374.2 million recorded during the same period in 2017.

“We delivered strong third quarter financial results. Our market share gains are being driven by the competitive advantages associated with our highly differentiated Security Fabric platform,” said Ken Xie, founder, chairman and CEO of Fortinet.

Built organically from the ground up, this architecture gives a wide set of security capabilities with exceptional integration and automation, for both on-premise and cloud deployment, according to him.

Of the overall revenue, the product topline rose 20 percent from $137.1 million to $164.5 million yearon-year (YoY). Service revenue for the two periods in review, on the other hand, reached $289.4 million, up 22 percent as against $237.1 million.

The company’s total billings amounted to $527.5 million, or an increase of 22 percent compared to $431.7 million.

Operating income based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles stood at $62.8 million from $33.7 million in Q3 2018 and 2017, respectively.

They represented a GAAP operating margin of 14 percent and 9 percent, accordingly.

This year’s third quarter also saw Fortinet’s strong fiscal performance, with cash flow from operations surging from $162.3 million to $176.7 million YoY. Free cash flow ballooned to $158.5 million in Q3 2018 versus $140.6 million in Q3 2017.

“Fortinet is well positioned to empower our customers with the latest evolution in network security and we are excited about the sizable opportunities that lie ahead,” said Xie. The multinational expects to sustain its growth in

the fourth quarter, with revenue ranging from $490 million to $500 million and billings between $620 million and $635 million.

For the fiscal year of 2018, it projects the topline to hit $1.785 billion to $1.795 billion and billings in the level of $2.125 billion to $2.140 billion. The security vendor secures the most valuable assets of some of the biggest enterprise, service provider and government organizations the world over.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, it is present in most of the countries, offering real-time protection to more than 300,000 customers worldwide.

In the Philippines, the network security company provides sales and marketing support, as well as technical back up to their distributors and resellers.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Saturday, December 1, 2018 A11

Apple to tutor women in tech in bid to diversify industry

BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE The Associated Press

ILLUSTRATION BY INGO FAST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

How was your experience?

Please rate the entire world

U

BY HILARY SHEINBAUM New York Times News Service

PON searching “Pacific Ocean” using Google Maps, one might expect to find a diagram of the world that illustrates Earth’s largest body of water. And, yes, the result returns an interactive graphic displaying just that.

But the aquatic destination also gets a rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars, and more than 14,500 reviews, many describing presumably fictional experiences. “Stop down-voting the ocean because of sharks,” chides one.

User-generated feedback is now constantly selfpublished on sites, such as Google Maps, Amazon and Yelp, a crowdsourced education for potential customers about the functions, satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) of products, services and venues. The format is so common it is now often spoofed.

In September, on Google Maps, a critic with the screen name Makorun shared thoughts regarding the Pacific: “Wonderful ocean. Very refreshing, although it needs a heating feature. If it was drinkable I would rate it 5 stars but I’ll keep it at 4 until the developer fixes the water. Almost every species is aggressive, except for the dolphins sometimes. I suggest making it breathable too and maybe add more light in the deep parts of the ocean.” This imaginative paragraph received more than 140 likes.

Funny comments on Amazon became so popular, the company published Did You Read That Review?: A Compilation of Amazon’s Funniest Reviews in 2014. The text, available in paperback and (of course) Kindle, highlights more than 100 items that inspired comical reactions. Featured products include a yodeling pickle, a JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank

and a three-carat diamond pacifier that once retailed for $17,000. A reviewer named McBaine shared thoughts on the bejeweled baby accessory in August 2014: “I’m sure this would be great for some babies but since mine prefers his thumb he won’t even try this out. We decided to go with a 5K platinum band thumb ring, you know just so he doesn’t feel neglected.”

Angie Newman, a spokesman for Amazon, said pricing is often a factor when it comes to joking commentary. “A really expensive gadget of some sort, or a really inexpensive gadget, can lead to some humorous content,” she said.

Newman, who lives in Seattle, has observed a variety of written opinions surrounding a range of products, citing a Richard Simmons Disco Sweat CD, a self-washing, self-flushing cat litter box and a horse mask. As long as consumers’ feedback falls within the community guidelines, their reactions are passable for publication on Amazon, she said. The rules prohibit profanity, pornography, posting other people’s phone numbers and name-calling, among other indiscretions. The site, with more than 300 million customer accounts worldwide, and hundreds of millions of reviews, uses artificial intelligence to scan comments in a timely manner and ensure users are complying with the site’s guidelines.

“Automated systems are not perfect, but we have good rates of being consistent in terms of what’s making the cut and what’s not,” Newman said.

Customers can also report violations for investigation, should statements appear unfit.

On Yelp, seeking references for bars and restaurants is typical, but local hospitals, colleges and universities, as well as prisons and correctional facilities, are listed, too.

Scott P., of Greenlawn, New York, left a satirical comment about Rikers Island Correctional Facility of East Elmhurst, New York, in October 2017. “Not a bad place for a short stay,” he wrote. “Close to La Guardia airport. Kind of hard to get a taxi though. Swimming is dangerous. Guards don’t want you to leave.” The jail complex mostly houses inmates awaiting trial.

Julie Armstrong, a clinical and forensic psychologist in Los Angeles and Phoenix, said these comments can stem from feeling annoyed in response to retailers constantly requesting product or service reviews. “Sometimes they’re intended to be funny,” Armstrong said. “In some cases, it’s an opportunity to express frustration in a focused way, in a sarcastic way.”

Other participants consider it a hobby. “Some of these people write hundreds and hundreds of reviews,” Armstrong said. “It’s a talent to put the words together in a way that we find amusing. It’s not exactly like you’re going to review the DMV to decide where you’re going to get your driver’s license.”

But perhaps readers will at least take a peek.

Opinions about departments of motor vehicles are shared on Yelp and Google Maps, too. One written by a William M. of Manhattan about an office in the Financial District appears to have taken about as long as he spent on license renewal (10 minutes). “If you want the classic dingy, scary NYC institutional experience, you’ll have to either go to Penn Station during rush hour, or visit your cousin Vinny at Rikkers,” William wrote approvingly. Four voted his extensive remarks “useful,” six “funny,” two “cool.”

“People like to be a part of a community, and who doesn’t like making other people laugh?” Newman said. “It’s fun to share that with other people.” ■

SAN FRANCISCO—Apple is launching a new program designed to address the technology industry’s scarcity of women in executive and computer programming jobs.

Under the initiative announced recently, female entrepreneurs and programmers will attend twoweek tutorial sessions at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

The camps will be held every three months beginning in January. For each round, Apple will accept up to 20 app makers founded or led by a woman. The app maker must have at least one female programmer in its ranks to qualify. Apple will cover travel expenses for up to three workers from each accepted company.

Like other major tech companies, Apple has been trying to lessen its dependence on men in high-paying programming jobs. Women filled just 23 percent of Apple’s technology jobs in 2017, according to the company’s latest breakdown . That’s only a slight improvement from 20 percent in 2014, despite the company’s pledge to diversify its work force.

The idea behind the new camp is to keep women interested and immersed in the field, said Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of world developer marketing.

Apple’s training camp is “a great step forward,” said Lorrain Hariton, CEO of Catalyst, a group that fights for equal rights for women workers. “There a lot of talented women in technology. Hopefully, this helps set a tone for the entire industry.”

But it’s not clear how much of a dent Apple’s new program will make. Google also offers training for girls and women pursuing careers in technology, but its program hasn’t done much to diversify the workforce so far. Women were hired for nearly 25 percent of Google’s technology jobs in 2017, up from nearly 21 percent in 2014, according to the company.

Apple and other technology companies maintain that one of the main reasons so many men are on their payrolls is that women traditionally haven’t specialized in the mathematical and science curriculum needed to program.

But industry critics have accused the technology companies of discriminating against women through a male-dominated hierarchy that has ruled the industry for decades.

Apple isn’t saying how much it is spending on the initiative, though beyond travel expenses, the company will be relying on its current employees to lead the sessions.

Responsible holiday shopping is right at your fingertips THE holiday shopping season is definitely here. Along with the festive spirit comes that feeling of anxiety, born out of the need to strike a balance between satisfying your Christmas list and sticking to a healthy budget.

As everyone’s flush with their 13th-month pay and other holiday bonuses, it’s all too easy to give in to temptation and indulge. With the allure of sales and promos all around, harmless window-shopping can instantly turn into an overwhelming urge to splurge.

The good news is that by going digital, we can all become more responsible holiday shoppers.

■ PAY YOURSELF FIRST. This is proven to be the easiest and most rewarding financial habit you need to adopt. Instead of spending money immediately, set aside a portion of your income the moment you receive it. And to make the process simpler, you can easily transfer funds electronically from your

payroll straight to your separate savings account through your banks’ mobile app. Now that’s a savvy way to save.

■ READY YOUR LIST AND SET A BUDGET. With a little planning and cash management, you can stretch your hard-earned peso and still meet your savings and expense goals. It helps to prepare a list of the people you plan to give presents to and have a set budget for each of them. Various apps such as Mint and Wally help you easily track your finances on the go.

■ FIND THE BEST ONLINE DEALS AND REWARDS. Avoid the holiday traffic rush and take advantage of coupon codes, eVouchers, and live discounts which are all up for grabs online. E-commerce stores also offer great sales during the holiday season.

■ BORROW RESPONSIBLY, IF YOU MUST. If you absolutely need a little extra cash to help you through a month when your expenses are slightly

higher than expected, mobile apps such as Cashalo are a convenient and affordable solution—offering purpose-based financing with the lowest nonbank interest rates. Cashalo’s newest solution, Cashacart also makes it easy for you to buy the items you want by providing access to a digital credit line at zeropercent installment rates from a network of over 250 partner retail stores.

Smartphones can be really helpful tools for developing responsible spending habits, and powerful apps such as Cashalo (www.cashalo.com) empower you with more options to be financially prudent. Not only does it encourage you to use your money wisely, but it also improves your financial well-being by helping build a robust financial identity and positive credit score. Being a responsible consumer and making timely payments unlocks even more financing options providing greater flexibility.

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

BusinessMirror

Saturday, December 1, 2018 A12

The most memorable phone calls in history THE TECHNIVORE ED UY

whereiseduy@gmail.com

O

N March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell uttered the words, “Mr. Watson, come here.

I want to see you.” It might not be the most epic statement, but it went down in history as the very first words uttered in the very first telephone call ever made.

Bell’s assistant Mr. Watson, was just in the next room.

Mr. Bell would repeat those same words 38 years later as he inaugurated the US transcontinental telephone service in New York. But unlike before, Watson, who was in California, replied, “It would take me a week to get to you this time.”

But as we all know, phone conversations are seldom mundane, and there are a lot of memorable and sometimes scandalous calls made throughout history, both real and reel.

In 1969, for example, Gloria Diaz knew what she’d do if a man set foot on the moon, but as Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong did so, and soon after their moon shoes touched the lunar surface, they received a phone call from then-President of the United States Richard Nixon.

“Hello Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House,” said Nixon.

This has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House to someone outside the planet.

Unfortunately, for Nixon, there was this other phone call during his term that would eventually become one of the biggest scandals in the US history: Watergate.

Drake’s song “Hotline Bling” may be one of the most popular songs about calls, but as far as Hollywood celebrities go, the most controversial calls ever made were from Alec Baldwin (who called his daughter Ireland a rude thoughtless, little pig) and Mel Gibson with his numerous f-bombs while talking to ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.

In the movies, who could forget Liam Neeson’s promise to find his daughter’s kidnappers in Taken, or Hannibal Lecter’s call telling Agent Starling that he was having an old friend “for dinner,” which is equally as frightening as that opening scene from Scream — “You hang up on me again, I’ll gut you like a fish— understand??”—and we all know that didn’t end well for Drew Barrymore’s character.

Here in the Philippines, I’m pretty sure my fellow titos and titas still remember that famous telephone number “801-67-22”, which Andrew E mentioned in “Andrew Ford Medina.” And who could forget that very controversial convo that started with “Hello Garci?”

So don’t you find it a bit weird that as our phones get “smarter,” the lesser we actually use it to make calls? But even if our method of communication has evolved—from calls to texts, to messenger apps and Skype, none of it would be possible without that very first phone call.

In my previous column, I wrote about how Smart Communications made Clark and Makati the first 5G cities in the Philippines. Earlier this week, they added a new milestone, which I think will again be part of Philippine history, as Smart made the very first live 5G to 5G video call in the country.

The 5G-powered video call was made by PLDT-Smart Chief Technology and Information Advisor Joachim Horn from the PLDT headquarters in the Makati City Central Business District, to Clark Development Corp. President and CEO Noel Manankil at Clark Smart 5G City in the Clark Freeport Zone.

The 5G-enabled video call was made using 5G Radio and Core equipment of Smart’s technology partners Huawei in Makati and Ericsson in Clark, showcasing 5G interoperability in a multivendor environment at this early stage.

PLDT-Smart Chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said 5G is real and it’s now here in Makati and Clark, and he promised that they are working very hard

with their technology partners Huawei and Ericsson in piloting 5G use cases and establishing even more Smart 5G Cities across the country.

In the coming months, Smart is firing up additional 5G cell sites across the Makati Central Business District, paving the way for piloting 5G solutions in densely populated areas like CBDs. Smart has been testing 5G since 2016, when it achieved speeds of 2.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps) using 100 MHz with latency of just 1 millisecond over a “live” network—the first in the Philippines.

As part of its 5G preparations, Smart also launched in June its 5G Technolab, the company’s flagship facility for the research and development, standardization and testing of 5G, which is designed to be a sustainable environment for innovative services.

Parent company PLDT has committed historic levels of resources for network transformation. For 2018, PLDT capex is expected to reach P58 billion, which includes allocations for the aggressive roll-out of its fiber broadband service, which also supports the stepped-up deployment of the mobile network by providing highcapacity links for cellular base stations.

THE ONLY MULTIMEDIA GADGET YOU NEED THIS CHRISTMAS

WE all love the Christmas season for a variety of reasons even if it is also the busiest time of the year. So it’s always a good idea to have a gadget like the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite, which you can use both for work or play.

The M5 Lite sports is a 10.1-inch Full HD IPS display on its sleek and slim tablet body, making it a more ergonomic and convenient alternative to heavy, unwieldy laptops. Streaming buffs will especially love the highly detailed visual output courtesy of the ClariVu 5.0 display enhancement tech onboard. Whether it’s for watching favorite Christmas movies or video chatting with loved ones overseas, the M5 Lite’s pure screen excellence can’t be beat.

On the audio side, it’s nothing less than Harman Kardon-tuned quad speakers for the M5 Lite. Such is the sound quality produced by the speakers that every musical note, vocal expression and ambient noise transports the user to audio heaven.

The included M-Pen Lite stylus with the M5 Lite elevates the tablet above all else in terms of productivity. Equipped with 2,048 layers of pressure sensitivity, the M-Pen provides a smooth and natural hand feel whether it’s jotting down notes, marking up e-mails, or illustrating. Inspiration truly is a scribble away thanks to M-Pen support.

While tablets are certainly an easy way to placate rowdy kids who’ve perhaps eaten a tad too many sweets, it’s always important to protect their eyesight form screen glare. Parents can enable the M5 Lite’s Eye Comfort feature with five modes for optimal protection which, for instance, reminds kids if they’re too close to the screen, applies blue ray filters or controls usage time. The M5 Lite is smart enough for kids to use safely for extended periods of time, especially during holiday cartoon marathons.

Packing an 8-core processor, 7,500 mAh battery with QuickCharge technology, and EMUI 8.0, the MediaPad M5 Lite transitions seamlessly from productivity machine to entertainment hub. Thanks to such powerful hardware features, the M5 Lite more than keeps up with even the most demanding work, gaming and Web browsing sessions.

If you’re looking for the overall best multimedia experience on a gadget, it’s hard to beat the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite. With a dynamic combination of features that’s suitable for meetings as much as for binge-ing sessions, it truly is the tablet to get for every holiday scenario.

Huawei is also giving a special treat in time for the holidays with a grand Christmas promotion. Ongoing until January 15, 2019, Huawei is giving away amazing free gifts when you purchase their selected devices.

More information is available at consumer.huawei.com/ ph/campaign/christmas2018/.

CURBING PILFERAGE OF SHIPMENTS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

WHENEVER I would talk to my businessman friends, our topic would somehow always end up with a discussion about their problems with shipping and customs, including delayed shipments, pilferage and even safety.

It’s a good thing the Bureau of Customs is implementing a program that will further improve its operations.

Called iTrack, this geographic information system allows the BOC to track containers via container seals equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.

The iTrack system covers customs transit operations involving containerized and noncontainerized cargo, whether transported by land, water or air. It enhances the capability of the BOC in ensuring that the transit cargo arrives safely and securely at the intended destination by effectively sealing, tracking, monitoring, providing alerts for diversion and tampering, and audit of said

cargo through the use of GPS technology. It also strengthens the security and monitoring of transit cargo during customs transit operations.

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jeffrey Dy, who heads the Management Information System and Technology Group (MISTG), explained that the iTrack system is intended to directly address the problem of swinging or diversion of transit cargo, since unauthorized stops, route deviations or tampering with the seal in order to open the container will automatically be detected by the system in real time and trigger alarms that will alert the enforcement personnel of the bureau to potential criminal

activities. He added that the adoption of the iTrack system will promote the BOC’s increased level of compliance with RKC, SAFE Framework and other related international agreements pertaining to supply chain security. This system is also intended to complement and, ultimately, replace the guarding of transit cargo, where applicable.

The pilot implementation of the iTrack system has allowed the BOC to identify the major routes being used by haulers/truckers/transport/logistic providers and has enabled the bureau to properly define the geo-corridors where the containers may be taken en route to its final destination. Upon rollout to the out ports, there would be a similar process of gathering data of the proper routes that may be taken to ensure that the bureau can identify route deviations from major and common routes. Based on the pilot implementation, there is minimal impact on the processing and release of containers. Outfitting containers with the electronic GPS seal does not take more than two minutes, as long as the arming station for the device is found in an optimal location.

Dy believes that the iTrack system is a modern technological innovation that will definitely address the problems of the BOC with regards to security and monitoring of transit cargo. Through the iTrack system, smuggling by pilferage due to “swinging” or diverting of transit cargo “will be eliminated, and real-time monitoring with regards to location will be enabled.

We are confident that the iTrack system will ensure that trade corridors are secure and cargo transported between bonded ports and zones are released from origin and arrive at the destination untampered.” 

MIT and LinkedIn co-founder award MeToo leaders CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts—Three women influential in the #MeToo movement are receiving an MIT award that recognizes disobedience for the good of society.

The MIT Media Lab Disobedience award carries a $250,000 cash prize

funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

This year’s prize will be shared by Tarana Burke, BethAnn McLaughlin and Sherry Marts. Burke is an activist who coined the phrase “Me Too” more than a decade before it became a

slogan for survivors of sexual violence.

McLaughlin and Marts have worked to combat harassment in science fields.

Four finalists will each get $10,000.

Last year’s award went to two people who exposed problems from lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan. AP

DECEMBER 1, 2018

WHAT’S INSIDE:

ULTIMATE TASTE TEST MASTERS EDITION

For anyone remotely interested in food and restaurants, you’d have to be living under a rock for you to not have heard of Anton Diaz.

EXCITING NEW RESTAURANTS AND STORES TO TRY AT ETON CENTRIS A revitalized brand now with even more options, Eton Centris continues to intensify its retail mix as it opens its doors to unique retail and dining concepts within the complex.

COOK MAGAZINE MARKS 18TH YEAR WITH A SLUMBER BALL For the past eight years, COOK Magazine has been holding an annual thanksgiving party for its advertisers, columnists and friends.

Saturday Edition

COOK CONNECTING FOODIES

PUBLISHER T. ANTHONY C. CABANGON BUSINESSMIRROR EDITOR IN CHIEF LOURDES M. FERNANDEZ COOK MAGAZINE EDITOR IN CHIEF DINO H. DATU MANAGING EDITOR MAGNOLIA S. SILVESTRE GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR EDUARDO A. DAVAD GRAPHIC ARTIST SHAIRA MAE B. BARNUEVO ONLINE EDITOR RUBEN M. CRUZ JR. PRESIDENT BENJAMIN V. RAMOS

Roasted ‘maya-maya’ with roasted vegetable salad

BY CHEF BRUCE LIM ROASTED ‘MAYA-MAYA’ INGREDIENTS:

1 kg Maya-maya, cleaned and gutted

1 pc lemon, sliced 100 g fish stock 1 head garlic, cut in half

20 g shallots, sliced 2 sprigs tarragon 2 sprigs dill 2 sprigs parsley

50 g butter

50 g olive oil salt and pepper to taste

PROCEDURE: 1. Cut four bias cuts on both sides of the whole fish (try not to cut all the way to the bone).

2. In between all cuts, add 1/2 teaspoon of butter and a slice of lemon. Then place the remaining butter and lemon inside the cavity of the fish with all the herbs, garlic and shallots. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Rub fish with olive oil and place onto an ovenproof baking dish. Pour fish stock into the baking pan and cover fish with wax paper.

4. Place fish inside the oven set at 180˚C. Bake for 15 minutes.

5. After 15 minutes, remove the wax paper and turn the oven up to 220˚C and bake for five to eight minutes or until the core temperature reaches 63˚C. 6. The color should be browned. Serve on a platter with herbs and lemon as garnish.

PROCEDURE: 1. To make the confit, place vegetables in an oven-proof deep dish. Add one sprig of rosemary and cover vegetables with Canola oil. Bake for two hours at 160˚C. 2. To make the roasted red peppers, brush the peppers with olive oil and wrap in foil. Place in a preheated 200˚C oven and roast for 10 minutes. Remove foil and peel skin. Remove the seeds and cut into strips.

3. To make the roasted garlic, cut off the top of the head and drizzle the cut side with olive oil and wrap it in foil. Bake at 160˚C for two hours. Let it cool, then gently squeeze the garlic out of the skin.

4. For the remaining vegetables, cut it into thick strips and roll in olive oil, then season with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for five to eight minutes at 210˚C. 5. To make the couscous, bring chicken stock to a boil and season it with salt and pepper. Then add couscous, stir for a minute then turn off the heat and cover. Let it sit for 10 minutes.

6. For the dressing, mix all ingredients together and whisk until everything is mixed well.

7. To make the salad, place all ingredients together except for couscous. Mix with dressing until it is seasoned to your liking.

8. In a large bowl, make a mound of couscous and top with vegetable mixture. Serve with extra dressing on the side.

ROASTED VEGETABLE SALAD INGREDIENTS: VEGETABLES 200 g cherry tomatoes (confit) 100 g shallots (confit) 200 g zucchini 200 g carrots 200 g eggplant 100 g roasted red peppers

25 g roasted garlic

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5 g 2 g 250 g 500 g

basil, picked; chiffonade parsley, chopped couscous chicken stock

DRESSING 100 g Sherry vinegar

25 g Balsamic vinegar

50 g orange juice 300 g olive oil

1 g salt

10 g sugar or honey cracked black pepper to taste

VP FINANCE ADEBELO D. GASMIN VP ADVERTISING SALES MARVIN N. ESTIGOY ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER MARLON A. ALDENESE ACCOUNT MANAGERS MARIBEL C. AVELIS LEAH CALING-BONOTAN MICHAEL N. PITUC EVENTS & MARKETING OFFICER CARLO M. ABALOS CIRCULATION MANAGER ROLANDO MANANGAN PRODUCTION MANAGER JOMAR ESCALICAS PRE-PRESS SUPERVISOR RODANTE B. INGLES Contact us: Editorial: Tel. no. 814-0134 to 37 local 108; Website: www.cookmagazine.ph; e-mail us at editor@cookmagazine.ph.

Advertising: Tel. No. 814-0134 local 152, 0915.769.0022 or e-mail advertising@cookmagazine.ph Circulation: for subscription; purchase back issues; and inquire about bulk orders; please call 893-1662 or e-mail circulation@cookmagazine.ph Copyright 2004 By Philippine Graphic Publications Inc. No reproduction without permission of Philippine Graphic Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Entered as second class mail at the Makati Central Post Office under permit no. 722-00 - NCR dated August 21, 2000.

Subscription Rates: P1,800.00 for 2 years (Metro Manila); P3,000.00 (Provincial); P960.00 for 1 year (Metro Manila); P1,560.00 (Provincial).

Cook Magazine - Connecting Foodies (ISSN:0119-9900) is a monthly publication of Philippine Graphic Publishing Inc. with editorial office at Dominga Bldg. III, 2113 Pasong Tamo cor. dela Rosa St., Makati City.

Telefax No. 814-0134

ULTIMATE TA S TE TES T

Masters Edition F

BY CHEF DINO DATU

OR anyone remotely interested in food and restaurants, you’d have to be living under a rock for you to not have heard of Anton Diaz. One of the first to popularize the medium and arguably the most influential, Anton has made blogging a byword in the local food scene. While visiting restaurants and reviewing food is what Our Awesome Planet is mainly known for, they are also a popular travel blog, documenting their family adventures and sharing these with readers. The blog, as Anton himself discloses, started as a way of documenting their family journey through the years. It’s something their sons can look back to, a “record” of the milestones, the trips and the epic meals. That the public has taken to his blog and used his entries as a food guide wasn’t his initial intention.

JETERRA Bakery Café’s baked goods

FLOUR Pot’s Avocado Inipit Cake

BELLEFLEUR by Beatrix’s baked goods

SALTA: Italian Rotisserie Bar

by Pappare

THE author (from left) with Rachelle Uy-Diaz, Our Awesome Planet’s Anton Diaz and Chef Gel Salonga

ULTIMATE TASTE TEST

PIZZA Brava

APART from his widely read blog, Anton is also known as the creator of The Ultimate Taste Test series.

For the past 10 years, together with his wife Rachelle, the Diaz couple have mounted events where amateur and professional food purveyors can showcase their products to the public. Unlike the usual weekend markets, UTT is more of a competition, where participants get the jump-start that their business needs, while the food-loving public gets to taste new and exciting offerings to their hearts’ content.

This year was my first-ever UTT experience (sad, I know). While I had a brief glimpse of the event last year (UTT Pro Edition 2017), I really didn’t get to sample the food on offer, as I was there not for the bites but to pick up a date (UTT is a great venue to pick up a lifetime date). My very first UTT experience, the Ultimate Taste Test Masters Edition 2018 was something I looked forward to. For their 16th edition of this popular competition/expo, they changed the setup a bit. Instead of holding the event

in a mall or somewhere accessible to the public, this year’s UTT was held in private, at an events space in Quezon City. 100 invitees from the food industry (restaurateurs, chefs, food writers, bloggers) served as the judges for the event. We’d come at our convenient time and rate the food while we roamed the venue, tasting small portions from each of the participating purveyors. In years past, the event was open to the public and for a minimal fee, they got to taste and vote their favorites. This time, food-industry personalities became the judges, with each vote tallied and the winners declared the same day.

The UTT series is an example of turning a passion into something that helps promote small businesses and budding entrepreneurs. Getting much-needed media mileage and an “endorsement” from food lovers and influencers is what every start-up needs. Thanks to Anton, Rachelle and everyone involved in UTT, more top-quality food businesses are getting the nudge and encouragement they sorely need.

BusinessMirror Cook December 1, 2018 3

Ham preparat ion made easy

BY LLENA TAN-ARCENAS

C

HRISTMAS is just around the corner, and ham will always be the table centerpiece in gatherings. Don’t let ham preparation intimidate and prevent you from having a standout offering without the fuss.

Basic baked ham is easy even for a newbie. Just follow these steps: 1. Brush ham with store-bought light syrup, glaze or spread prepared mustard all over.

2. Coat with brown sugar all over.

3. Bake uncovered at 350˚F for about 15 to 20 minutes or until sugar melts and caramelizes.

4. Rest ham after baking for about 10 minutes before serving and slicing. Place on a plate and garnish.

5. Drizzle glaze on ham upon slicing or serve on the side.

Here are some other tips to guide you: 1. Choose a good ham to work on if you have no intention of working from scratch. Depending on the size requirement, budget and ham profile preference, there is Purefoods Fiesta Ham 1kg and 1.5kg, Fiesta Ham Pre-sliced 1kg, Ham Slices 200g, Brick Ham 500g, Pear-shaped Ham 800g and Jamon de Bola 1kg available.

2. If ham is frozen, thaw in its packaging overnight in the lowest part of the refrigerator.

3. Whole ham is usually scored. Scoring allows glaze to brush over ham and penetrate during baking.

To score, make diagonal cuts 1 inch apart on the ham surface, resulting in a diamond pattern. At points where the cuts intersect, these are poked with cloves and also decorated with fruits like pineapple rings and cherries. Decors are added after baking.

Purefoods Fiesta Ham Slices with pineapple glaze MAKES 8 SERVINGS | GLAZE YIELD: 1 CUP

4. Whole ham is normally baked in the oven. If an oven is not available, options include using an oven toaster or turbo broiler, or searing surface areas of ham with a heated sianse (metal turner) until well browned all over.

5. Let the ham rest after baking so that the juices have time to be reabsorbed.

6. Purefoods Hams, being fully cooked, can be eaten also as is. Whole hams can be cubed, and slices can be rolled or folded and arranged on a board or platter garnished with dried fruits and nuts.

Try these #Madalicious ham recipes this holiday season—Purefoods Fiesta Ham with apple chips and honey-mustard glaze, and Purefoods Fiesta Ham Slices with pineapple glaze. For more recipes, visit www.homefoodie.com.

Purefoods Fiesta Ham with apple chips and honey-mustard glaze MAKES 10-12 SERVINGS

INGREDIENTS: 2 (200 g each) packs Purefoods Fiesta Ham Slices

2 tbsp dried fruits (cranberries, apricots and/or sultanas) for garnish

2 tbsp toasted nuts (cashew, pistachio and/or almonds) for garnish GLAZE:

1 (227 g) can pineapple chunks

1/2 cup brown sugar

pinch whole cloves

1 cup unsweetened pineapple juice PROCEDURE: 1. Prepare glaze by combining ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

2. Transfer to a saucepan. Bring to boil then reduce heat to simmer. Cook for 15 minutes or until thick, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

3. Roll or fold ham slices and arrange on a platter. Drizzle glaze on ham.

Sprinkle dried fruits and nuts of choice over ham. Serve extra glaze on the side.

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INGREDIENTS:

1 pc whole Purefoods Fiesta Ham, thawed

1 pc red Fuji apple, cored and sliced thinly using a mandoline

1 pc lemon, juice extracted pinch cloves GLAZE: 1/4 cup prepared mustard 1/3 cup honey 1/4 cup brown sugar PROCEDURE: 1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. 2. Toss apples in lemon juice to keep it from browning. Set aside.

3. Prepare glaze by combining ingredients in a bowl. Mix well.

4. Using a basting brush, spread glaze all over ham. Cover ham with apple slices and secure using cloves. Apply another coating of glaze.

Bake uncovered for 20 minutes.

5. Take out ham from the oven and baste once or twice during the baking process. Continue baking until apples turn golden or caramelized.

Serve immediately.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS AT F1 HOTEL MANILA

I EXCITING NEW RESTAURANTS AND STORES TO TRY AT ETON CENTRIS

A

REVITALIZED brand now with even more options, Eton Centris continues to intensify its retail mix as it opens its doors to unique retail and dining concepts within the complex. The 12-hectare mixed-use property is currently home to Zubuchon’s flagship store in the north. Quezon City folks can now dig in to a sumptuous meal to satisfy their Cebu lechon cravings.

Centris Walk, the new cluster in the development offers unique and delicious experiences within easy reach of those who work within the complex or come to relax and bond with loved ones. There’s this one-ofa-kind restaurant which is every movie buff’s haven, the Movie Stars Café. The entire restaurant at the ground floor of Centris Station, is filled with lifesized statues and costumed iconic movie characters.

Every night, the characters perform musical shows reminiscent of your favorite movie and anime series.

Not to mention, the food and the friendly staff make the café a perfect group or family bonding destination.

If you’re looking to pig out, head on to Romantic Baboy for unlimited Korean grill.

Also expect to see more unique store concepts making its way to Eton Centris soon. Leading the lineup is Baby Mama, the Philippines’s top breastfeeding store, offering exclusive brands and seminars to help more mothers in their breastfeeding journeys. There’s also Mount Sinai Veterinary Practice, a full service veterinary clinic and supplies store for all things pets.

The new cluster in Eton Centris is also home to Ramen Kuroda, Better Days, ASSI Fresh Plaza and Starbucks. Tim Hortons is also set to open in the complex soon.

Situated at the corners of major thoroughfares Edsa and Quezon Avenue, Eton Centris is a place that has something to offer for friends and families alike. With a range of unique shopping, dining, and entertainment options, it is a place where you can find what makes you happy. Watch out for more exciting stores and restaurants opening in Eton Centris!

Be part of the Centris community. For leasing inquiries please contact: (02) 548-4058.

T’S the time of the year again! Fulfill your Christmas traditions and let yourself be spoiled with awesome treats by spending the holidays at the home of happy experiences.

Make F1 Hotel Manila your home for the holidays and have a grand escapade this Christmas season with the “Holiday Getaway” Room Package. Have a staycation in a Deluxe Room for only P6,000 net per night inclusive of breakfast for two persons valid from December 5 to 30, 2018. Rejoice and give love by celebrating the true meaning of Christmas. Revel in the real reason for the season by attending the Christmas Eve Holy Mass, 5 p.m. on December 24 at Infinity Ballroom.

What better way to get into the holiday spirit than having a joyous buffet at F All Day Dining?

Indulge in a hearty feast with your family and loved ones with the Festive Flavors promotion for only P2,199 net per head. This sumptuous buffet offer is available only on December 24, 25, 31, 2018, and January 1, 2019. To complete the holiday traditions have a taste of our sweet treat, a Christmas Log Cake available daily for P850 only.

Hot cocoa is so last season! Try our Choco Snow for only P350 net per glass. Make your holiday season more alive with Canary Lounge’s sweet blend of cocktails; perfect for celebrations and gatherings.

Have a Merry Christmas when you spend it at F1 Hotel Manila. For inquiries and reservations, please call 908-7888 or visit www.f1hotelmanila.com.

EASTWOOD CAFÉ+BAR BRINGS BOTTOMLESS FUN EVERY FRIDAY

SOFITEL PHILIPPINE PLAZA MANILA CELEBRATES ART DE NOËL

S E

ASTWOOD City is known for its vibrant night life which comes even more alive when the weekend rolls around. Eastwood Richmonde Hotel’s Eastwood Café+Bar is one of the area’s chicest go-to gastropubs that offer an array of beverage and menu choices to satisfy your thirst or hunger, no matter what your poison or craving is. But unlike other hotel restaurants, Eastwood Café+Bar has very competitive pricing which is comparable to the prices of other resto bars.

Now there’s another reason to make Eastwood Café+Bar your preferred drinking spot for your T.G.I.F. celebrations with pals. “Bottomless Bar Fridays” serves up unlimited quality bar drinks, and delectable bar chow buffet from 8:30 p.m. to 12 m.n. for only P600 net. Presented in partnership with Emperador Distillers, this drink-all-you-can offer features popular bottled drinks that include Smirnoff Mule, Andy Cola, and Raffa Sparkling

Wine, and exceptional cocktail concoctions created from a variety of spirits like Zabana Rum, The Bar Gin and Whyte & Mackay Whisky. Beer drinkers won’t be left out because they can also down all the local beers they can for P750 net. And because drinking sprees are more enjoyable with tasty bites, a scrumptious eat-all-you-can spread consisting of well-loved pica-pica items and innovative new dishes is also served.

Adding to the happy ambience of this bar fest is the opening of Eastwood Café+Bar’s al fresco area, and the cool sounds mixed by the resident DJ. So round up the gang now and kickoff the weekend with a festive Friday wind down at Eastwood Café+Bar. “Bottomless Bar Fridays” is available every Friday from 8:30 p.m. to 12 m.n., beginning November 16, 2018. For inquiries and reservations, call Eastwood Richmonde Hotel at (632) 570-7777.

OFITEL Philippine Plaza Manila marks the beginning of the Christmas season with the lighting a 45-foot Christmas tree with the theme, ‘’The Enchanted Journey.’’ Sofitel invites you to experience a voyage through the Yuletide offerings starting from the Le Marché de Noël, a Christmas market featuring traditional Christmas toys, memorable and rich selection of festive culinary treats. Discover a wonderland of seasonal adornments featuring a vintage propeller plane, hot air balloons, a 45-foot Christmas tree and a 25-foot Pierre, the French snowman visiting with his friends.

The highlight of the evening was the handing over of a P500,000 check to the Virlanie Foundation raised from the recently concluded Sofitel Wizard Run, a family run. The angelic voices of the Virlanie Children’s Choir serenaded the guests with lovely renditions of traditional Christmas songs.

Since 2014, fun runs have been organized by the hotel to raise money for the benefit of the children of Virlanie Foundation, a nongovernment organization that helps the street children of Manila. Sofitel Philippine Plaza Manila’s ambassadors have been active in participating in the foundation’s activities, such as “Teach to Reach” and “Adopt a Child” programs.

BusinessMirror Cook December 1, 2018 5

COOK Magazine Marks 18th Year with a Slumber Ball

F

OR the past eight years, COOK Magazine has been holding an annual thanksgiving party for its advertisers, columnists and friends. This year’s celebration, “Slumber Ball—A High Gloss Pajama Party,” was conceptualized by the COOK team to provide our guests with a relaxed and fun-filled atmosphere. The theme reflects the working environment at COOK— laid-back, filled with dreamy food and recipes, and lots of fun and laughter. While publishing a monthly magazine isn’t a walk in the park, 18 years in the industry is proof that when you do what you love, it won’t ever feel like work.

This yearly celebration is an opportunity to personally thank all of our advertisers for their continued support of COOK through the years and the highlight of the evening is the awarding of all the top advertisers. It also gives the COOK team a chance to introduce ourselves, along with our columnists and contributors—everyone involved in making COOK Magazine what it is. As the longest-running and only monthly culinary magazine in the country today, we’ve outlasted the trends, the ups and downs, even the shift to other platforms. We’re very proud of this achievement but we know that without all the support from advertisers and friends in the industry, COOK Magazine wouldn’t exist—so thank you!

As a simple way of showing our gratitude, we’re sharing with you the very thing that has fueled COOK Magazine’s 18 years—the love for food. What else could we do better than feed the ones we love?

We would like to thank House Manila, for again providing us with an awesome venue. COOK’s very own Editor in Chief, Chef Dino Datu, has prepared something for our guests, courtesy of Canadian Beef.

We would also like to thank our caterers, our friends from Chefwix Catering who prepared a spread of Buttered Vegetables, Creamy Pesto Chicken and Indonesian Pork BBQ Spareribs. Cowboy Grill prepared some Pork Sisig, Beef Caldereta Adobo, Chicken Teriyaki, Steamed Veggies and Coffee Jelly for dessert. Kitchen Seventy-One owned by Chef Jhic de Guzman Dimagiba prepared Beef Caldereta, Thai Grilled Porkchop, Cajun Chicken and Baked Mac. Pedro ’N Coi presents their specialty Filipino dishes like Pansit, Pakbet, Sisig, Bistek, Roast Chicken and their famous Pinoy street food, Tunog Kalye (fish ball). Since no celebration is complete without lechon, no less than the famous crispy lechon from Lydia’s Lechon is present. For sweet endings, there’s the Cheese Bar, Inutak, Assorted Kakanin, Pastillas Pops, Suman Cake, Pastillas Cake and Latik Fondue served

by Aging’s Food Delight and delectable desserts from Sweetilicious Homemade Goodies by Chef Jojo Cuesta-Javier. Our friends generously provided us drinks, too! Glasses were filled with drinks from: Lick Iced Tea, Coffee from the Illy booth, Gato Negro Wines and the Open Bar of House Manila.

Certificates were awarded to COOK Magazine’s top advertisers: Petron Corp., Häfele Philippines (Bosch), King Sue, Mega Global Corp., Rhodesian Distribution, Mekeni Food Corp., Fly Ace Corp.

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COOK Magazine team with Publisher T. Anthony C. Cabangon

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: F1 Hotel Manila.

Marketing Officer Patricia Bolosan accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Excellence Appliances Technologies Inc. Marketing Manager Joy Catiis-Cruz accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Mega Global Corp.

Senior Brand Manager Raymund Alegre accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Häfele Philippines (Bosch).

Division Manager Efren Reyes accepts the award.

( Jolly Food Lines), Appstar Global Distributors Inc., F1 Hotel Manila, Excellence Appliances Technologies Inc. (Whirlpool & Fujidenzo Appliances), Dermaline Inc. (Diana Stalder), Richmonde Hotels and Huddle Room Media Inc. (Petron).

Certificates were also awarded to COOK Magazine’s very supportive columnists: Chef Jojo Cuesta-Javier, Chef Edward David Mateo, Chef Editha Singian, Chef Bruce Lim, Chef Day Salonga, Chef Gel Salonga, Roel Hoang Manipon, Nadia Montenegro, Dolly Dy-Zulueta and Sabrina Artadi.

FROM left: Marlon Aldenese, House Manila’s Marketing Director Vanessa Francisco and host Choi Soriano

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Dermaline Inc. (Diana Stalder) Marketing Officer Sheila Caday accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Petron Corp.

Advertising and Promotions Officer Bong Cleofe accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Rhodesian Distribution Marketing Manager Chito Iscala accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: King Sue General Manager Richie King accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Mekeni Food Corp. Corporate Communications Assistant Manager Patricia Castanos accepts the award.

COOK Magazine’s Top Advertiser: Appstar Global Distributors Inc. Marketing Officer Ma. Rica Wendy Morales accepts the award.

THE winners of COOK Magazine’s major prizes

Major prizes went to Marjorie Rodriguez (Bosch Fully Automatic Espresso Machine), Sheila Caday (Whirlpool Refrigerator), Rica Dilag (Bosch Mum Kitchen Machine food processor and mixer), Richie King (Bosch Universal Slicer), Scott Fazon (Tecnogas Oven) and Jewel Calma (two sets of a seven-piece induction cookware from Masflex). Other prizes raffled off included hotel accommodations, round-trip ticket, gift certificates for buffets and spas, water filter, skin-care products and a whole lot more.

As per tradition, guests wearing the most dazzling sleepwear had a fashion parade with prizes awarded to Hafele’s Jacob Astrologo and perennial winner blogger Lariza Garcia who began her speech with “I have to defend my title!” to much applause.

Mayda Chua provided the night’s entertainment by serenading the crowd. The event was hosted by Choi Soriano and COOK Magazine’s Advertising Sales Manager Marlon Aldenese.

COOK Magazine would again like to convey our sincerest gratitude to House Manila, our official venue partner. A million thanks to the following for supporting our 18th anniversary and eighth Holiday Bash: Apo View Hotel, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Bluewater Resorts, Boracay Tropics, Bosch Appliances, Century Park Hotel, Cheez Whiz, City of Dreams, Dermablend, Diana Stalder, Dusit Thani Manila, Eastwood Richmonde Hotel, Eden, Eurotel, Excellence Appliance Technologies, F1 Hotel Manila, Fujidenzo Appliances, Gato Negro, Ginebra San Miguel, Gold Seas, Golden Phoenix Hotel, Grand Hyatt Manila, Häfele Philippines, Harvest Hotel, High Tower, Hotel Celeste, Hotel H2O, Icon Hotel, Illy, Ivo, Jpark Island Resort & Waterparks, King Sue, Kitsho, Laketown Inc., Lick Iced Tea, Luljetta’s Place Garden Suites, Luxent Hotel, Makati Diamond Residences, Marco Polo Ortigas Manila, Maria Clara Sangria, Masflex Cookware & Kitchen, Mega Prime, Mega Sardines, Mega Tuna, Mondelez International, Movenpick Resort & Spa Boracay, New World Hotel Makati, Omni Channel Marketing, Oreo, Pearl Farm Beach Resort, Perfect Shots Photobooth, Perk Communications, Petron Gasul, Photoman, PRC Inc., Rebel Marketing, Resorts World Manila, Rhodesian Sales Corp., Richmonde Hotel Iloilo, Richmonde Hotel Ortigas, San Miguel Corp., San Miguel Purefoods Culinary Center, Skechers Go Walk, Sofitel Philippine Plaza, South Carolina Beverages Inc., Stratworks Marketing Communications, Taal Vista Hotel, Tang, Tecnogas Appliances, The Henry Hotel, The Heritage Manila, Thousand Miles Travel, UCC and Whirlpool Appliances.

We want to also thank our media partners: BusinessM irror, Philippines Graphic, Health & Fitness, WNOT What’s New Out There, DW IZ 882 and Home Radio 97.9.

THE contestants for the Best in Costume award

FROM left: COOK Magazine Account Managers Maribel Avelis and Michael Pituc, COOK Magazine Advertising Sales Manager Marlon Aldenese, BusinessMirror VP for Advertising Sales Marvin Estigoy, COOK Magazine Publisher T. Anthony C. Cabangon, COOK Magazine Managing Editor Magnolia Silvestre and COOK Magazine Account Manager Leah Caling-Bonotan

COOK Magazine’s columnist Chef Jojo CuestaJavier accepts her certificate of appreciation

COOK Magazine’s columnist Chef Edward David Mateo accepts his certificate of appreciation

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