‘Tay la coma silaw a kinulding…

Dennis Posadas

Back in the late 1950’s when Bangui barrio folks like me still used the kingki (kerosene wicker lamp), or if you’re fortunate with some extra money, a Coleman gas lamp, to light the darkness, one of my aunts in Bangui went to Manila for the first time, stayed there for about a week.  When she came back home to Bangui where we didn’t have any electricity at the time (except, for instance, that huge lightning volt that killed my brother’s carabao instantly during a wicked thunderstorm one night in late summer), she and a bunch of neighbors were huddled around a bonfire of dried rice stalks one early cold morning when I distinctly heard my aunt, as she sucked one last gasp of smoke from her almost completely burnt out tobacco, ruefully said:  “‘Tay la coma silaw a kinulding…”  She was, of course, referring to the incandescent electric light bulb she saw in Tata Justo (Jose, Sr.) Padre’s house in Manila which she only had to flick the switch with her finger to turn it on or off.

Well, residents of Bangui eventually got the “silaw a kinulding” sometime in the late 60s and early 70s.  And to top it all, Banguinians are the first in the entire Philippines to have windmills along their shoreline to harness the awesome winds blowing in from the South China Sea and converting same into electricity which is pumped into the power grid.  And, of course, now the townsfolk can enjoy the benefits of a host of electric appliances and gadgets, such as refrigerators, electric fans, televisions, washing machines, stereos, computers, etc.

Solar Desk Fan

Now, if Dennis Posadas, former Intel engineer/analyst, prolific information technology author, columnist, blogger, and who is currently the Deputy Executive Director of the Philippines’ Congressional Commission on Science & Technology and Engineering, had his way, he would also have all those appliances and then some operated for FREE or almost FREE using solar power.  In “How the Philippines Can Be a Solar Power“, Posadas writes:  “The Philippines semiconductor and electronics industry, working closely with local universities, industries, and investors, can offer significant opportunities for innovation, particularly in solar energy applications development and manufacturing-process reengineering and optimization.”

The website home-solar-systems.com lists some of the most commonly used residential solar power applications. Such technology utilizes the heat coming from the sun for heating spaces and water. It can also be used for cooling spaces, ventilation, desalination, cooking and many other purposes.

The list of uses of solar power includes:  calculators with a small solar cell, solar battery chargers to recharge cell phones, Ipods, laptop computers and other small devices, solar panels known also as photovoltaic cells that transform the sun’s energy to electricity.  The more common use of solar power is of the residential variety–providing electricity for homes. In the latter case, solar panels are installed on the roof (photo at left) or on the ground and the electricity produced feeds a battery bank and an inverter providing 110 or 220 volts for the home. Other popular solar devices using solar technology are solar lights, solar fountains, solar pumps, solar refrigerators (ama, nalamlamuyot ngata ti ayus tay impalamiis a basi!), solar water heaters and solar fans. These products are now widely available and are a good example on how solar energy can be utilized to cut energy costs.

Ay wen, Ikit, dimo coma masapul ti mangipaburec iti danum a pangpatay ti lamiis diay nacabatia a pagbelnasmo. Wenno adda coma pagpaypaymo a paligpalig (solar fan) cadagiti calgaw a nadagaang.  Ken nasaysayaat nga amang ta awan baybayadam nga electric bill no daydiay coma solar light ti usarem a silaw a kinulding.

Warren Buffett: “If it doesn’t grab them right away… it just doesn’t make any difference”

I just want to draw your attention to the item, “Either It Clicks, Or Doesn’t At All“, on the sidebar on the right of this blog.  It’s a quote from that excellent biographical tome, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (published by Random House in 2008), written by Alice Schroeder , a noted insurance industry analyst and writer who was a managing director at Morgan Stanley.  Buffett was simply characterizing a fact that there are those in the stock exchanges that understand how the exchanges, like those at Wall Street, work and how to make money out of them and there are those who don’t.  This is the quote (p. 253):

“With some, the idea of buying dollar bills for forty cents takes, and with some it doesn’t take. It’s like an inoculation. It’s extraordinary to me. If it doesn’t grab them right away, I find that you can talk to them for years and show them records–and it just doesn’t make any difference. I’ve never seen anyone who became a convert over a ten-year period with this approach. It’s always instant recognition or nothing. Whatever it is, I’ve never understood it.”

Neither do I understand it.  We’ve made overtures in this blog to extend some real opportunities to some folks in Bangui and we haven’t got a single, solitary reaction, nay a sign of even the least bit of inquisitiveness to find out what it is we’re offering.  Examples:

• The Felix P. Soriano Memorial Scholarship Awards to promote academic excellence in the town’s public high schools.
• The plan to start something like the Entrepreneurs of the Year Awards in Bangui to stimulate business/economic activity within the town.
• The offer to provide each public high school in Bangui a copy of Gruber’s Complete SAT Guide 2009 which contains excellent tips on how to study, how to prepare for a test, how to take a test effectively and an English Grammar module–all excellent resources for school survival in general designed for all student.
• A FREE OFFER for all students and teachers in Bangui to assist them in learning English and how to pronounce with lots of FREE self-paced and computer assisted learning aids.

Not a single soul from Bangui reacted to the above overtures, inspite of the fact that we even tried to contact some of the people concerned by email.

In fact, years earlier, I helped the Banguinians, an organization of Bangui folks here in Southern California, collect and refurbish second-hand computers and monitors, loaded them with the proper operating system, application software, and shipped them all along with some educational software to the Banban Elementary School (10 PC systems) and the Bangui National High School in Banban (12 PC systems of which 2 were reportedly DOA).  The follow-up was lacking.  When I visited the place in March 2008, the PC units at the elementary school had been largely cannibalized and inoperational.  Ms. Edith Romano, the high school principal, showed us the PCs locked inside a section of the high school library.  The PCs at the high school appeared to be still functional at the time and were being used by students who signed up to use them.  At the time of our visit, the telephone company was busy laying out the landlines about a kilometer from the school.  Since those PCs are Internet-ready, it is widely expected that some effort would be expended to get the necessary Internet connection for them to really get on the information superhighway, like the rest of the world.  But we haven’t had any follow-up nor heard from the Bangui National High School folks in Banban.

WHY THE APATHY?  WHY DON’T OUR OFFERS GRAB THE INTENDED BENEFICIARIES IN BANGUI RIGHT AWAY?  Frankly, we don’t harbor any ulterior motives for, nor are there any strings attached to, our offers.  The overweening desire is to help or bring about some improvement.

We happen to think that some of the townsfolk in Bangui might be able to take advantage of some or all of our offers.  But if they don’t, we need only one to let us know so and we shall understand.  As simple as that.

BIT: English Pronunciation Power Course–100 Hours

Tucked somewhere in the TESDA complete list of registered programs authorized for the Bangui Institute of Technology is the 100-hour English Pronunciation Power Course.

Having resided in these United States for more than 37 years of my adult life, I’ll be the first one to attest to you that 100 hours is utterly inadequate to reach a passable level of pronunciation of the English language, especially if the ones teaching you are not native English speakers, no offense to our Filipino teachers who are trying their best to teach English pronunciation.  Believe me I know because I occasionally listen to those English language broadcasts on Philippine TV that are available on DirecTV satellite programming.

You see, I didn’t bother to attend one of those free neighborhood community school courses to “remove” my ethnic accent.  Nevertheless, I think I was able to reach a point that I actually can communicate verbally with most Americans who speak the English language AND had at least some elementary education.  It’s the unschooled ones or first grade dropouts who persist in their own slangs whom I have a difficulty communicating with.  With this latter group, I’m proud to say that our elementary school students of English in the Philippines could speak English with relatively better grammatical construction.

Now, I have a practical proposition for ALL Bangui teachers and students of English pronunciation–whether from the Bangui Institute of Technology or all the elementary and public and private high schools.  AND IT’S FOR FREE!

All you folks need to have is a PC system with a compact disk (CD) drive or a DVD drive–and it does NOT need to be connected to the Internet.  I’ll provide you with the audio files with matching text files–you could listen to a native English speaker and read the corresponding text at the same time.  What’s more, you could learn BOTH pronunciations with the North American accent AND the London accent, using entirely separate audio files and matching text files.  Learning both accents could be extremely useful, especially if the student intends to pursue an English major (perhaps to become an English teacher) or work eventually as a customer representative in one of those outsourcing companies, or if the student plans to immigrate to either Canada, the U.S. or Great Britain.

THE OFFER IS FREE.  And it’s entirely self-paced.  If you need clarification for the pronunciation of a specific word and want to return to that specific word, you could easily do so using the PC navigation tools.  You don’t have a physically present teacher looking over your shoulder or correcting/scolding/insulting you for a mispronounced word, etc.  You can learn at your own time.  You can begin or stop at any point any time you feel like doing so.  What’s more, you don’t have to attend a regularly scheduled class.  You could be studying these English pronunciation exercises within the comfort of your home, assuming you have a PC or can loan one to bring home.

With an adequate level of immersion in learning English pronunciation through this proposed method, I can almost guarantee that in no time will the interested student be speaking like a Londoner [in perfectly normal sentences laced with the omnipresent “you bloody c…” expression] or a North American.  HONEST.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources for Australian English pronunciation, mate (pronounced like “might”).

I’m inviting all the teachers in Bangui (elementary, high school and Bangui Institute of Technology) who teach English to take advantage of this offer to assist them in teaching English even more effectively.  Of course, students are welcome to the offer as well.  All you need to do is leave your name and contact means (preferably your email address) in the COMMENT section of this blog entry and I’ll get back to you.  If you don’t yet have an email address, the old snail mail will do.

Natnateng ken fruit trees ditoy arubayan

Yantangay winter ita ditoy Anaheim, CA [nopay agdama nga 82 degrees ti 3:00 p.m.], nagangon ti caadduan cadagiti mulmulac a nateng ditoy arubayan.  Dagitoy Washington navel orange, satsuma mandarin, calamansi, atemoya, marunggay, balimbing, chico ken carmay ti adda nabati a bungana.  Dagiti parda ken lasona (saan a nailadawan) ti saan a sumuco iti lamiis.  Mabalin nga “ipadaramudom” ti lasona a laocan iti bagoong ken camatis, wenno lutuen a cabulon ti bagoong ken scrambled eggs–pagpa-power a cuna tay nga Ilocano!  Isu a no macalagip datao, sublian ti kinalangto dagitoy fruit trees ken natnateng idi Junio tay napalabas a tawen:

Kitaen tay man no siasino ti caadduan ti mailasin, wenno sinno ti macailasin iti amin a nailadawan a fruit trees ken natnateng iti ngato…

Bangui Institute of Technology

Formerly known as the Bangui School of Fisheries, the school, located in Manayon, Bangui, had since been renamed the Bangui Institute of Technology (BIT) by virtue of Republic Act 9469 signed into law by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on May 21, 2007.  Eduardo E. Malabag is the Institute’s vocational school administrator.

The Bangui Institute of Technology is one of Technological Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) institutions all over the Philippines.  BIT’s offerings initially include education and skills development in agriculture and fisheries, automotive and land transport, tourism and food processing.

Already connected to the information superhighway, BIT’s faculty members and students have all day Internet access to broaden their studies, research and job opportunity searches.

BIT also serves as assessment center for those who qualify and require institutional and national assessment. Those who successfully pass the institutional assessment are recommended for national assessment.  Those who pass the national assessment are entered in the Registry of Certified Workers.  An individual who’s assessed and certified is given a National Certificate, an important  credential in the individual’s search for a job locally or abroad.  Those who fail undergo some immersion courses at the BIT campus.

The Bangui Institute of Technology offers a gamut of courses that includes agriculture, automotive servicing, baking/pastry production, bartending (as if the townspeople have a pressing need for it!), beauty care (yup, we need that!), caregiving (we’re so good at caregiving for all the peoples of the world), computer programming and hardware servicing, food and beverage services, dressmaking, fisheries, healthcare services, practical nursing, all the way up to tour guide and travel services. Click here for a complete list of BIT’s authorized course offerings and individual course lengths.

TESDA also offers a variety of student financial assistance through the Private Education Student Fund Assistance (PESFA).  For particulars regarding what types of student fund assistance TESDA-PESFA provides, who qualifies for financial assitance, how to apply for the financial/scholarship grants,  what are the obligations and reporting requirements of the grantees, and  what are the grounds for disqualification of a grantee, please visit the TESDA website. 

The practical benefits the Institute (sometimes referred to as BITBANGUI) offers to residents of Bangui and beyond are enormous.  Now, one does not have a really good excuse to be an unproductive member of society.  You need a skill to be able to do something for your life–like find a job or start a business?  No problem.  The Bangui Institute of Technology is there to provide the training and/or skills.  We, iBangui, are lucky for BIT–there are a lot of communities all over the Philippines that don’t have one like it.

We would love a follow-up of this article with some testimonials from those who studied/graduated from the Bangui Institute of Technology (or the former Bangui School of Fisheries) who have succeeded in establishing their own businesses or those who have found jobs locally or abroad, either on their own or with the Overseas Filipino Workers program.  If you’re one of them or know some other alumni, you may please keep us posted by leaving a comment here or sending your info (a photo would be nice, but optional) to joepadre@sbcglobal.net.  In fact, we’ll start the list right now:

LIST OF BANGUI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (formerly BANGUI SCHOOL OF FISHERIES) ALUMNI:

Cimatu, Clifford (automotive 2004)–currently a member of the Operational Staff at Ford Motor Company Philippines.

Padre. Ruel (automotive)–currently working as a mechanic in Doha, Qatar.

And The Top Ten Entrepreneurs of the Year Are…

We have proposed honoring the top entrepreneurs of the year for Bangui.  It would be nice to award the trophies to the winners at the conclusion of the town fiesta in April each year.  The purpose, of course, is to stimulate business or economic activity within the town, fully aware that entrepreneurs need the right people, the right resources and the right information to bring their business ideas to life.  They need the right people or even existing companies to join their startups as partners, co-founders or other team members. They have to tap into a network of other entrepreneurs and small business owners to learn from them and to avoid the costly mistakes others have made. The biggest beneficiary of all this, of course, is the town and its people.  And that’s why we would like to honor those who, after 5 years or so of successfully growing their business, belong to the elite Ten Entrepreneurs of the Year.

The following is an article, entitled “Entrepreneur of the Year — Trophy Awaits You,” from Mind Body n Soul and it just happens to fit the picture we have in mind:

‘Those who condemn wealth are those who have none and see no chance of getting it”, is a very witty remark by William Pen Patrick.  Candidly speaking there is certainly no reason to condemn wealth.  Wealth creation is an inevitable necessity and quite worthy of that.  Or else how do we propose to mitigate poverty, build infrastructure or develop technology?  But mind you it is by no means a dilettante’s job.  It is like art, better your imagination more attractive the picture.  “Innovation”, the cornerstone of burgeoning business is nothing but a flight of imagination.  In this fast paced world, one who has vision for the SEEN and the UNSEEN is the one who emerges victorious.

Going up on the podium to receive “Entrepreneur of the Year” award is a dream most youths see while entering trade and industry.  It is a very inspiring dream to begin with.  The unconscious dreams that we spin while asleep may have Freudian interpretation but the conscious dreams like this one need conscious energy and effort to come true.  Detailing the colour of your suit or working your thank you speech for the award ceremony is a very gainful visualization.  Do not consider it like building castles in the air.  This is the gas station where the MIND fuels the body for the journey ahead.

But before your name is announced for the award, there will be challenges, fears and uncertainty to cow you down.  Self-doubt is the biggest and the worst challenge with most of us.  Why should you doubt your own capability?  This is the most pitiable and self-justifying excuse you give to run from the task.  “I may not be able to do it” implies “I do not want to do it” because there is absolutely nothing that you are incapable of doing at the command of your mind.

There is no way to lose in the game, because once your mind is fearless and determined you will either reach your destination or go higher.  Don’t we know how.  Columbus set out to reach but discovered?  In an investor’s jargon it simply means, “A fundamentally strong mind will not sell your dreams short”.

There is another fact to understand.  Do not expect absence of challenges because that is not part of the plan.  Since we have the most sophisticated machinery with unlimited capacity (i.e., MIND), challenges should not be much of a problem to handle.  Moreover, a timorous man shying from his fears and skeptic about his ability would not make an impressive “Entrepreneur of the Year”.  This is part of the game that while you are on the way to realize your dreams, the on-road hurdles make you strong and savvy to deliver a cogent and influential speech on the dais when receiving the award.