The Toughest Place to be a Bus Driver

Meet Josh West from London. He drives a double decker bus driver with the biggest, shiniest, and latest bells and whistles that technology can provide. He does not know anything about the Philippines, save for the fact that it's where Imelda kept her shoes.



He agrees to take on a sort-of reality TV show to be a bus driver in the toughest place in the world to be one. Don't expect The Simple Life antics here though.



The toughest place to be a bus driver, apparently, is Manila. And by bus, they mean the jeepney.



I am in awe at how dignified the episode was made (care of BBC, I suppose) and how polite somebody like Josh was despite his discomfort and despite what was probably an unpleasant experience. Hats off to Josh, who was nothing but open-minded, when a lesser man would be insular.



The rest of the video:

Social Media - A National Tool for Naming and Shaming

A retired archbishop goes on national television to insinuate that there are highly placed villains in government who are dabbling in the underground gambling world that the present administration has pledged to eradicate. A senate hearing is called almost immediately.

The spokesperson of the judiciary issues a media statement to the effect that it has no money and that the courts won’t survive if the budget isn’t increased post-haste. He threatens that if congress fails to remedy the deficiency, judges would go on mass leave. The media loves the story and has a field day. Hours later, the president sets a meeting with the chief justice.

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With these events in mind, I’d like to point out an obvious perplexity in national affairs: a communication gap exists between supposedly coordinate branches of government; between the civilian and relevant government agencies. And this abyss, this void of miscommunication, is filled by an unlikely hero, villain and observer: media. Pleas are brought to this ‘unbiased’ Fourth Estate, rather than the pertinent government agency involved, due to two contiguous theories: one, media is much more effective in shaming the agency into action; two, government enforcement is usually unavailing when the camera isn’t aimed at the would-be enforcers. Considering therefore that (a) attention on the individual or (b) national shame is required to enforce government action (perhaps as a cultural byproduct of our post-Iberian heritage), I propose that a national shaming mechanism be employed to spur government proactivity in order to supplement, and even validate, the actions of traditional media.

The “name and shame” strategy, utilized by the Human Rights Watch (but yet to be effectively used by the UN’s Human Rights Council), is presently international law’s solution to the enforcement of human rights norms. Coincidentally, this is the exact same strategy employed by Mon Tulfo’s radio show where complaints against local government officials and policemen are aired live, addressed, and resolved on a daily basis. Now that social media is becoming the norm in Philippine society, perhaps this, too, can be employed as a medium to “name and shame” public institutions and officials on a national scale. Truly, if a government requires national shame and attention in order for it to function properly, perhaps this need should be addressed by our own efforts through the veritable medium of social media. This push to “name and shame” would not simply be a matter of voluntary contributions on the part of individuals but rather a collective drive, enforced as a matter of sound national policy, spearheaded by NGOs in conjunction with social media outfits. I’m pretty sure that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter would enjoy the corresponding title of being ‘progenitors of third-world change.’ Think of the Pepsi Refresh Project, turned-upside-down, adapted by Filipinos for a truly Filipino cause. Perhaps, taken in this light, social media, in its proposed task of “naming and shaming” government ineptitude, might do some much-needed social good.

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Please see all entries by the same author in this blog:

• #01, Telconopoly, June 16
• #02, Government 2.0, June 23
• #03, In Defense of Twitter, June 30
• #04, Google, Apple and Nokia, July 7
• #05, YouTube and Government, July 14
• #06, The Problem of ICT Quality Control, July 21
• #07, The Mac or the PC?, July 28
• #08, Kindle: Victor of the Ebook Wars, Aug. 2
• #09, Of Team Coco, Wowowee and Contracts, Aug. 12
• #10, Resuscitating Law Journals, Aug.14
• #11, Moot, Zuckerberg, et. al. v. The World, Aug. 19
• #12, Ground Zero of the Tech World, Sept. 1
• #13, Evolution, Sept. 9
• #14, Snapshots of Software as Intellectual Property, Sept. 13
• #15, The Smartphone OS Slugfest, Sept. 17
• #16, Social Media - A National Tool for Naming and Shaming, Sept. 21

TV vs. Net

I just realized how disconnected I am to our TV already.

I remember the times when I had to finish my assignments at school so that I could just stay at home, relax and watch my favorite anime series at that time (BT' X, Ghost Fighter, Hunter X Hunter, etc.) I'd get mad at my cousins when they try to change the channel whenever my eyes are glued unto the screen. I know the exact times when my favorite shows are shown and I always act as if I have a vested right to watch these shows, as a reward for my being a "good" student.


But now, I rarely watch the TV. Aside from the snippets I see from the teleseryes my mom's fond of, I only watch the TV whenever I feel like I need to watch the news to remain "in the know".

And now that I thought about it, me getting over the tube-box may have been caused by my now-full-blown internet addiction:

1. My daily morning news from Inquirer.net and Yahoo! News;


2. My weekly dose of anime and manga from various torrent and streaming sites (I don't need to be at home at a specific time just to watch a TV show anymore);


3. My daily mail;


4. My daily fix of Facebook and its games;


5. My occassional Wikipedia trips.

Even my mom, who has been religiously following her seryes 'til almost midnight has discovered the existence of Youtube, ever so thankful that she won't need to stay up late just to watch Villainess A slap the face of Protagonist B.

Indeed, the Internet has changed the way people entertain themselves and it probably will continue to make TV less and less relevant in the future (thus resulting in a lot stronger presence of the TV networks on the Net)

If video did kill the radio star, then the net will, someday, kill the TV star.

IMHO: Megan Fox and Eminem in a Rihanna-chorused video is HOT

For my last blog entry for ICT class, I was thinking on whether to write something about the Automated Election System or Online Psychology--the former kept me up and running last summer and while the latter kept, and still keeps, me perpetually amazed at people.

But, in my humble opinion, this video deserves an entry.

It just helps me stay awake for my exam on Tuesday. It is disturbing, yes. Megan Fox is hot, yes. I love Eminem and Rihanna, yes. Although I am switching from this video to Bob Marley's Turn Your Lights Down Low, I will need to apologize to the reggae master. Or am I really sorry? Maybe not. Maybe not now.

Megan Fox is so hot she shouldn't have been in the Transformers movie. Because Bumblebee SHOULD always have the spotlight!



Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip? - Eminem

With these cars, no Eminem, you can't let it slip.


Lose yourself in the music!

Excuse my incoherence.

Paulyn Duman
http://almostinsightful.blogspot.com/
http://iconmagazine.multiply.com/
Blog #16
(for October 1)

YouTube and Government

premises and possibilities

The televised Fourth Estate in the RP is a proactive force to reckon with. No matter how much this government tries to assert itself through its own news agencies, its efforts are like pebbles in a pond, dwarfed by the massive boulders like ABS-CBN and GMA who, on a whim, can make or break a government’s success story or turn an innocent mistake into a living PR nightmare. Our press acts as a microphone which can be turned on or off depending on circumstances. We have nothing akin to (and probably will never have) the influential effect of government-sponsored BBC. Thus, ever since people power became the norm rather the exception, administrations have walked lightly, carefully watching its step in order to avoid stepping on the media’s shoes. And rightly so.

The question I ask, however, is that should government remain shackled by precaution? Should the metaphoric microphone remain the gatekeeper of information? YouTube would beg to differ. For one thing, the online tool is reshaping a paradigm in the United States where mere city mayors (not to mention state governors and its own President) can break their own stories without the need of a third-party amplifier.

One might argue that internet penetration in our own country is not as pervasive as the United States. The numbers today, however, show a strong pattern of change. At the very least, they no longer appear to be inconsequential. In October 2009, there was an estimate of over 6M people in the RP who were Facebook users. According to Facebook analytics today, there are now 14.6M people who live in the RP who use the same. If we have 94M in the country, one can infer that at least 15% of our residents are “connected.”

With this in mind, the ultimate issue boils down to the utility of YouTube as an effective tool for government. Considering that the present members of the newly formed cabinet are media-shy, the use of this online medium might prove to be a viable and worthy alternative. Mighty as it is, the Fourth Estate need not be the sole gatekeeper of newsworthy information. Should government finally decide to come out of its shell, it can change the whole ballgame with something as ubiquitous as an online channel. YouTube and Government might just become "Your Government" - a channel that is transparent, effective, and, above all else, free.