Tagaytay

Sunday July 27

Sunday is dedicated to a visit to Tagaytay.  It is closer then San Pablo and the trip is pretty straight forward and quick.  It is one of the country's most popular tourist destinations because of outstanding scenery and cooler climate provided by its high altitude. Tagaytay overlooks Taal Lake in Batangas and provides one of the iconic views of the Philippines, the view of Taal Volcano Island in the middle of the lake, viewable from several vantage points in the city.

We hit the road at 9:30 and land at Antonio's at 10:30.  I was told by an IBM colleague in Manila, Carmina Marquez, that it is one of the best restaurants in the country. It does not disappoint....not only is the food great but the views of the lake are great.

My pal  Becky

Mark, Carina and Brian

Brunch more then meets expectations. I get a croques madame...the monsieur with an egg on top. Very good!

After Antonio's we take a drive up the mountains and spend the afternoon at a cottage. Waya has a good friend who loans us the place so we mostly relax and enjoy the views from the deck

Good view of the volcano.We may come back and take the boat across if we have time

Fish farms in the lake

Finally we try a few hands of poker; some of us have never played and some of us have played very little and want to try it.  We play using toothpicks for betting and no money is exchanged. Let's just say a few of us will never need to ask for something to pick our teeth ever again! Sweet haul of wood!

Sweet venue for a card game

Tagaytay is great and hopefully we can make it back again for a quick trip.  We head home at 5 to get an early end to the night and start to prep for Monday work activities. Week #2 starts tomorrow.


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Trip to Villa Escudaro

Saturday July 26

Saturday is our first day trip out of Santa Rosa and we have plans to go to Villa Escudero Plantations and Resort, San Pablo City.  51Km trip should take 44 minutes according to Google and it's the weekend...surely it will be a quick trip.  Wrong! We leave at about 8:15 and roll in around 10:45 (a few pit stops though including a Starbucks visit after "whining" by yours truly! Had to have a coffee and thankfully most everyone else is up for it.

Villa Escudero Plantations is a self-contained working coconut plantation, founded in the 1880s by Don Placido Escudero and his wife Dona Claudia Marasigan. Originally planted to sugarcane, the crop was converted to coconut by their son Don Arsenio Escudero in the early 1900s. Their children opened the estate to the public in 1981. From its humble beginnings, the resort has become a prime tourist destination for locals, overseas Filipinos and a wide array of foreign visitors to the country.

Waya imitates a tour guide from her last visit and in a very sweet voice says  "On the left are coco-nut trees; to the left are.... coco-nut trees; straight ahead ....more coco-nut trees!"   But the place is much more the coconut trees. We take a tour of the Escudero museum.

The bottom floor of the museum had mostly Catholic artifacts that looked very valuable. Lots of very fine and unique objects, many of them encrusted with silver and gold.  Carvings, statues, chairs, alters and  pictures.  I would love to show some pictures but they are not allowed.  The top floor was mostly world wide artifacts gleaned from the Escudaro's wide travels.  It was like a mini museum of natural history.

The building is older and it was really hot there. After touring for about an hour it was just awesome to have our dinner down at the river and the waterfalls. Not at the river....lunch was served IN the river

Eating with your feet in the water is....awesome 

The meal is served buffet style and our client/ host Paulo encourages us to just eat with our hands.  He could be putting us on but is adamant we try, so ....hands it is. Pretty easy when you can just dip your hands in the water.

It is nice and cool so we spend about an hour after lunch just chillin' in the river

Sridhar, Vivek and me

What else. A big team picture! 

After lunch a raft trip

Luciana and me.

Mark/ Luciana vs Ioana and Brian

An finally a Filipino show with traditional singing, music, dancing and ceremonies.

Believe it or not these guys just jumped on. No hands!

Finally took a trip on the way home to a pottery place. It is actually an estate in the middle of a very poor neighbourhood. The estate is beautiful and it is like an oasis.

Side road before the estate

Restaurant open to large groups and reserved in advance.

Nice pottery

Amazing spot but hard top pick too much pottery when you have a 20 hours of flying home.  One last pic was the boys photo-bombing Becky. I was great and Sridhar did such a good job of acting like he was taking THE perfect picture that everyone was able to creep in.

 

Great pic...she had no idea until she looked at her iPhone!

Long ride home .....Saturday night traffic is worse then Saturday morning but we make it in one piece! I was not a late night!



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Week 1 is "ovah"!

 Friday July 25

We had a good week 1 on the project.  Our clients are very good to deal with and we have had a chance to review most of their processes as part of our discovery. If anything, the social aspects of the job seem to sometimes overshadow the work but that is hard to complain about.  The people in the Social welfare office could not be nicer and more welcoming to us.

We hope to review and synthesize some of the data that we have gathered so we can present some recommendations as to how we will be spending our remaining time here. Next week will definitely be a challenge to get meetings. Tuesday will be a Government Holiday, Thursday is the mayor's birthday (events and food will overshadow anything else; there will be lechon which the Philippines is famous for). Then on Friday our key government staff will be attending a weekend getaway event.

Lechon Roasted whole pig. A Philippine specialty and always part of major events

We wind down the week by a night of karaoke and pizza in the work room the hotel has set up for us.
It's hilarious because the karaoke program has videos in the background with the "sing along" words, so no matter which song you are singing the background video flips from Wrestling, to nature scenes to some girl "twerking"  in the background.  It is bizarre! 

Karaoke is not really my thing but eventually I join in if there are others singing....not ready for a solo. My buddy Brian, noticing I have joined in(and probably my up-tightness about it) makes a silent signal for the other singing to abruptly stop so my voice can be heard....I stop but a moment too late and one solo note slips out. Hey I sound like Julio Inglesias!! :-)

We don't keep it going too late as we have several day trips planned over the weekend to see some of the country. Should be fun. 



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Back to the Barangay

Thursday July 24

More data and process gathering today.  We spent the morning with charts and a few more interviews. I said earlier that we had tried the Jolibees restaurant which is one the national restaurant chains started in The Philippines. I knew we would be trying it again before long. We decide, that a burger would be great for lunch and what could be more Filipino then adding pineapple to the burger..... seriously pineapple is awesome here!

Sometimes ya gotta have a burger! The Aloha

After lunch,  we head out with Paulo and Judith to visit one of the local Barangay offices close to City Hall to see some of the people there and what they do. One step in most of the processes is the Proof of Indigency forms to receive aid.  This is where it is all approved before people come to the office at the City Hall; the theory being it is easier to manage that in each neighborhood where the people know each other better. 

The Barangay Office

Me, Jeanette (ABV), Judith, Brian, Paulo and Carina

Us and the team in the Barangay office.

After the meeting back to the office for more interviews, but before we do that we are treated to more food. Seriously? :-) Judith is a great host and some of her staff had brought in some home made treats, including several types of rice cakes(savory and sweet), some coconut vanilla candies(tastes like a caramel) and finally some pork stew, traditional here called Dinuguan. 

Not our actual Dinuguan but similar.

After heading back to the hotel, we cap off the evening with a team meeting to prepare for a side project we will be working on down there.  Dinner is light because is has to be, so down to the Japanese restaurant for soup and a bit of tempura. 

Week #1 almost completed.

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Traffic in Santa Rosa

Wednesday July 23

We have been back and forth to work a few times now and traffic is definitely a factor getting around here. On Google Maps the trip from the Microtel to City Hall is 16Km and should take 21 minutes. I don't think we have beat 45 yet! 

Yours truly in the back of the van "Ne pas porter la seatbelt"

The traffic is soooooo different.   The population density is different here and the streets for the most part don't have as much room. The variety of vehicles is very different with a lot more bikes and tricylces.  Traffic lights are non existent and very few stop signs. If you are not aggressive you would never move and you have to take your openings and jump in to the fray.  Crosswalks are everywhere but I fail to see how they differ from any other part of the street, you just cross whenever.  In some ways better then in Halifax where as a driver you are supposed to anticipate someone crossing even if it is a mere gleam in their eye and come to a screeching halt!

We asked our teammates who are working in the Traffic area if there are many tickets given out and what would lead to a fine.  They said the most common fines are for not wearing a helmet, driving in shorts and not stopping.  Then we see 3 people go by on motorbikes with no helmets wearing shorts and rolling through an intersection! :-) 

I am not going to say one methodology is better or worse but there seems to be very little in the way of accidents. You rarely get going to top speed and you have to constantly be both offensive and defensive at all times. Would I drive here?  I suppose so but thankfully I have not been asked to!

This traffic summary leads to how we spent the day. We headed in to the office with the hopes to meet again with Judith, Paulo and their staff in the morning but unfortunately they had to attend a government meeting in Manila. The meeting is scheduled for less then an hour at 11 am but by the time they get back from meeting a 1 hour drive turns in to a 3+ hour one. We only catch them for about an hour and a half to conduct more interviews. We spend most of the day mapping and sorting the information we have now and make plans to visit one of the Barangay offices on Thursday.

Long day and just need to relax once I get back. Been eating often, and people are so generous with treats in the office that bypassing one dinner is not be a hardship!

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Friends with Sushi Benefits

Dateline Tues, July 22

The hotel restaurant is a Japanese place and it is obvious that it will become the stopping point for dinner for many of us over the next 3 weeks. It is a short walk down the hall and the food is excellent.  I have not eaten a lot of Japanese food but am becoming a big fan! Umenoya serves good food. 

A few of us gather for dinner and ask if we can get one of the back rooms. You have to take your shoes off and sit sort of on the floor but with lots of leg room. It's more of a communal style and it's a neat experience.

"Sure!" ......"3000 Peso limit to book the room" (that is approximately equivalent $70).  "No problem!" There will be 5 of us and we want to have a taste of the sake; we can make it happen! Nick and Becky are obviously aficionados of the food so James, Carina and I are more then happy to let them order for us. One less thing for me to do since my attention will be spent trying to make my chop sticks work. The darn things just never seem to cooperate..... it might be me though!

James, Nick, Becky and Carina

A night of cooking and storytelling with your host, Becky Ju!

A great meal and good company makes for a fun night! We manage to easily clear the 3000 Peso limit (we pole vaulted over the high jump bar)so everyone is happy!

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The Barangays

Dateline Tues July 22 

Our new work place over the next 4 weeks will be in the City Hall building. We have been given a room to share between 3 of the Groups (us, the Traffic team and the Police Team ). We will work there when we are not meeting with our client.  It is tight quarters but since we are all coming and going for meetings it will work. 

We had spent the last few hours on the Monday afternoon meeting some of the staff at CSWD to learn more about what they do in the office and the processes involved. Judith had presented an overview of all of the areas their department touches on Monday and it is a very extensive list.  The office provides assistance for health and medical bills, burial, small business loans and then a wide range of social services (adoptions, youth issues, domestic issues etc...) 

It is agreed on Tuesday that Judith and Paulo Velasco (City Planning) will take us around to tour  2 or 3 of the barangays in the morning. A barangay (formerly called barrio), is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a  village, district or ward.  There are 18 of these in Santa Rosa and going from 100,000 people to 300,000 over the past 20 years is not without growing pains.  There are lots of services to provide for the growing amount of people coming in to the area and limited money to deal with the demands. 

Many people come looking for work because Santa Rosa is considered a growth area and has some bigger business in the general outskirts(Toyota, Coca Cola ) but certainly not every one has success in finding what they are looking for. 

Some roof damage at a local business from the recent storm.

The road are very narrow the further we go in to the barangays. The community is packed in quite tightly...there is not a lot of space and the places are built together alternating between residences and businesses....sometimes both. It is about a lane and a half wide and most of the vehicles are motorized tri-cycles, bikes and anything that has wheels. It is a different life.

There is a lot of activity going on. Micro businesses within.

 

Various modes of transport

Paulo and Judith take us to the lake to show us where some fish farming is taking place and a planned port may eventually be built

Judith Hasil, The Team, Waya and Paulo

So, it was good to get to see a lot of the area. We were able to see 3 of the closest barangays and there were 15 we did not see.  There are lot's of people who potentially need the help of the services provided by Judith's team. It is also easy to see that a visit to the CSWD from these areas is not an insignificant commitment, to be used only when needed.
 
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Team Overview

 Dateline Monday July 21

As mentioned earlier there will be 4 teams of 3.  Here are pictures of each team and their respective clients and projects.

Our team is working with The City Social Welfare and Development Office of Santa Rosa

Brian Kulak(U.S), Carin Diniz(Brazil), Mark Gallant (Canada) 

Client main contact is Ms Judith Hasel

The City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) is the office responsible for delivering basic services, and pursuing projects and programs that cater to the general welfare of the citizens of Santa Rosa, as devolved by the national government.

Goal
To improve the process flow of the Social Welfare Information System (SWIS) and access to social welfare information for those most vulnerable in the community.


Team 2 LINK IT  Team (Laguna Industry Network for Knowledge, Innovation & Technology)

James Hunter (UK), Becky Ju  (U.S) Sridhar Vijayaraghavan (India) (Dream Team)

Tony from LINK IT. Tony is a leading Businessman in the area

LINK IT would like assistance in strategic and business planning for a Technology Business Incubation and Business Process Outsourcing Centrum (TBI/BPO Centrum) that helps develop the Medium- and Small-to-Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the area. They hope to make a significant contribution to the socio-economic development of the province and region through the creation of expanded business opportunities and employment.


Objectives 
 To help develop the expertise of LINK IT in strategic and business planning for the set up and operation of an incubation/accelerator facililty. To support LINK IT in identifying specific areas for opportunities and market segments that support focused business planning and strategies


 Team 3  Traffic Management Planning, City Planning and Development Coordinator's Office

Vivek Agarwal(India), Anne Taylor (U.S), Nick Lowman (Australia),Client Ermin Lucico(City Planning Office)

As one of the fastest growing economies in the Philippines, the City of Santa Rosa has experienced increasing urban and regional development projects and activities that have had significant traffic implications for the area, particularly where malls, housing, schools and industrial and commercial establishments have been constructed.

 Goal
Support the City of Santa Rosa with critical traffic management planning for the future which
responds to and anticipates the needs of its residents.

 Team 4  Client: Santa Rosa City Police. Record Management Analysis and Marketing for Social Change

Luciana Pavanel Siciliano(Brazil),  Juan Martin Gomez Doynel (Argentina), Ioana Aldea Topler(UK)

Police Chief  Pergentino Malabed

The Santa Rosa City Police Station is located in one of six cities in 30 municipalities/cities in the province of Laguna. It comprises 167 police personnel servicing the 326,124 population of the city (2012). Their mission is to “Enforce the law, prevent and control and crimes, maintain peace and order, and ensure public safety and internal security the active support of the community”.

Goal
To support the police in increasing their capacity and ability to use technology, and to better support constituents involved in the criminal justice process.

Objectives

• To equip police personnel with effective records management skills.
• To support the Santa Rosa City Police with their plans to enhance their current records management system.
• To support the personnel with leveraging social media for improved community relations.

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City Hall

Up very early in the morning to get ready to catch the shuttle to City Hall for the kickoff event. I get a few shirts ironed up and try to sneak the iron and board back to the front desk on my own. The doorman/bellhop hears my door open and tackles me before I can return it myself.  "Not on my watch" I think he was saying and proceeding to take them to save me the trip. Still being looked after tremendously. :-)

There is a large public ceremony down at City Hall and we have been invited to attend and observe before we meet our clients.  We take a few team photos before heading out

 

 
Unfortunately our shuttle missed the memo and we miss the ceremony piece but when we arrive there are still hundreds of people around the entrance. The place is teeming with activity and even though it is not like we are the guests of honor we get a very warm welcome as we go in to the building.
We are summoned to meet with the mayor for 15 minutes before the Kickoff.  She does not have time to attend; there are ribbons to cut and babies to kiss but we get a photo opp with her and some of her key staff before heading up to the conference room.  She is insistent on ordering us some Jolibees food (The Mcdonalds of the Philippines) which she will send up. Sensing a theme of weight gain possibly coming. This will not be the last time we will be eating there! 

The meeting is attended by all of our new clients, the local IBM team and extended staff

Client picture. Notice Jolibee's bucket.

We introduce ourselves to the client and thanks to Nick Lowman's  prodding  and prep, each of us for the first time since we started meeting, manages to set a time limit and keep it.  Would you want to listen to this guy for much more then 2 minutes?

Matt Foley - Motivational speaker

Off to lunch and will start the one on one sessions this afternoon. 

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Santa Rosa...Tres Bien!!

 July 20th, 2014 

Had a great sleep to catch up on the extended flight from Halifax to Manila. I was out like I had been punched by Manny Pacquiao. Got up, enjoyed the hotel breakfast and took a quick walk. Very busy area even on a Sunday morning.  Lots of "Jeepny" drivers offering me a ride but I will take a pass for now! Maybe later with a group since this is a "must do". This is a very unique way to get around for many Filipinos, along with motorized tricycles and the pedal versions.

We check out and head to our final destination of Santa Rosa shortly after 10am checkout.  We have a couple of vans, lots of luggage and Waya is driving as well. My buddy Brian and I join Waya and Jeanette Bruce (She represents Australian Business Volunteers as a Project Manager)  in her vehicle. We make great time on the highways from Quezon City to Santa Rosa but as we hit the city it slows down noticeably. 

Traffic is considerably slower going through downtown Santa Rosa. We look at the bustle of people and vehicles and ratio of cars to non cars seems to have shrunk. We notice some of the little things and signs along the way. After seeing a barber sign advertising a haircut for 100 pesos (approx $2.50 ) I comment on where to go to get a good haircut. Waya cautions against going for the lowest price and jokingly points out to a big "styling spot"  as we pass it....called "Tres Bien". Hey should be good enough for me and my fancy boy ways. We continue to drive along for what seems like another 30-45 minutes....we should be getting to the hotel now. We head up the street and Brian sensing a franchising opportunity points out another "Tres Bien" spot.  "Gosh darn it" says Waya (I am paraphrasing this). It appears we may be lost(there is only one "Tres Bien" apparently) but on the plus side we got the tour of Santa Rosa twice; Waya must think we are special!

A few conversations with Tricycle drivers and a few 180's later and we are back on track and at the hotel to join the rest of the team for 13:00. Not since Gilligan's Island has a 3 hour tour been so much fun!

We finish lunch and then start the rest of the Team Orientation after check in.  Waya and Jeanette take us through a last run of the 4 projects we will be working on and what to expect and the final logistics. We will be attending an event at City Hall tomorrow to introduce ourselves to the mayor and our customers so the should be action packed day.

Waya and Jeanette take us out to do some shopping, get supplies and treats us to a Filipino meal at The Kanin Club in Nuvali shopping area.  It is a terrific meal and a great cross section of foods. I forgot my camera so I am hoping to add a few pictures of some of the items later.

Great way to cap off the day and memorable for many reasons. Thanks Waya! The work begins for real tomorrow, so time to get ready.  Our home base over the next 4 weeks will be at Santa Rosa City Hall. More to come on the nature of the projects and the people we will be meeting along the way.

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