You plan to move to the Philippines? Wollen Sie auf den Philippinen leben?

There are REALLY TONS of websites telling us how, why, maybe why not and when you'll be able to move to the Philippines. I only love to tell and explain some things "between the lines". Enjoy reading, be informed, have fun and be entertained too!

Ja, es gibt tonnenweise Webseiten, die Ihnen sagen wie, warum, vielleicht warum nicht und wann Sie am besten auf die Philippinen auswandern könnten. Ich möchte Ihnen in Zukunft "zwischen den Zeilen" einige zusätzlichen Dinge berichten und erzählen. Viel Spass beim Lesen und Gute Unterhaltung!


Visitors of germanexpatinthephilippines/Besucher dieser Webseite.Ich liebe meine Flaggensammlung!

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Showing posts with label Living in The Philippin es. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Living in The Philippin es. Show all posts

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Rest In Peace!

Rest In Peace!

Ten years ago, I was still a freshman, when it comes to Internet and blogging. When I started my first own blog as German expatriate living in the Philippines, a very special social network came across my path. The Facebook! I started chatting with some media friends from allover the Philippines.

Actually I started with "Friendster". Friends from the whole globe! Facebook was introduced to me as new site for college kids.

Nowadays, May 2018, we're experiencing different headlines, when we it comes to social media networks. Despite scandals over fake news and data privacy, one thing is for sure: the social network Facebook is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

Fast forward to April 2018: founder and CEO of “The Facebook,” Mark Zuckerberg, sat before US Congress trying to convince lawmakers his social network, initially set up as a way for students to stay in touch with each other, does not pose a threat to the stability of Western democracy and does not treat its users’ personal information with disdain.

The hearing saw him admit that his company had not done enough to prevent the service it provides being used for fake news, foreign interference in elections and data leaks. In March, it emerged that a political consultancy called Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from millions of Facebook users without their consent. The scandal rocked Facebook to its core and has forced its founder to reconsider how it does business.

In the latest round of his grand apology tour Zuckerberg faced the European Parliament this week (it's Friday, May 25, 2018 while writing this piece!) and faced even tougher questioning, just as Europe is poised to introduce new laws that will give it some of the strictest data privacy rules in the world: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Actually, during the first year, I found Facebook’s evolution and societal function both equally fascinating and disturbing.

The biggest question of all that gnaws at the back of my mind is whether there is any stopping Facebook in the future?  It looks increasingly like the answer is no.

“Friendster failed for simple reasons: the time wasn’t right,” says Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Not only is it about the readiness of people to participate in a social networking site, but it’s also just about the nuts and bolts.”

Friendster and MySpace helped blaze the trail for Facebook's global popularity, but they failed to achieve even close to the same success as their successor.

The kind of engineering that allows Facebook to function every day simply wasn’t available back in the early days of the new millennium. But by 2004, internet speeds had increased and the coding that underpins websites had become more sophisticated. The technical limitations of earlier social networking sites like Friendster and Friends Reunited cleared the runway for Facebook.

But despite technical barriers, those other sites paved the way for Facebook at a time when people were still a little wary of putting too much of themselves out on the internet. In the 1990s, internet users were warned against even sharing their first name online, but now words like “oversharing” and “selfie” are so common they are recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Facebook - bone or ban? Fact is, Facebook is becoming that de facto, online identity provider. I am with Twitter and LinkedIn. But bear with me, most time, I spend being online in Facebook.

Once the mid-2000s rolled around, Facebook was also able to hire a lot of talented engineers from Silicon Valley, which helped it put together the kind of website infrastructure that could scale-up with an exponentially growing user base. Your Newsfeed doesn’t curate and customise itself – its launch needed engineers to cook up algorithms that picked the most valuable updates from your friends’ updates.

But Hwang points to another serendipitous factor in Facebook’s global rise: mobile phones. In a lot of developing countries, people only have cheap mobiles to access the internet. In fact, a lot of these users think Facebook is the internet.

“We can’t discount the power of mobile,” says Hwang. It’s made “social networks much, much more pervasive. You have social media at all times in your pocket, which makes it this powerful platform for news and conversation that operated in a slower way in the desktop-only era.”

People are describing Facebook and its nine lives.

As Facebook’s popularity has spread, so too have predictions of an imminent “tipping point”. One 2014 study from Princeton University forecast that Facebook could lose “80% of its peak user base between 2015 and 2017.” This prediction was made long before the Cambridge Analytica scandal did so much harm to the company’s reputation. So, how has Facebook managed to accumulate the business equivalent of a cat’s nine lives?

For starters, it has become so engrained and intertwined in the digital ecosystem of the 21st Century that it is hard to now untangle it. Oxford’s Hogan points to a concept he calls “interoperability.” This is where a Facebook login is often required to use and operate other online services.

“Just today I went out to buy concert tickets,” Hogan says. “I had to log into Facebook. I don’t use Facebook, but I had to dust off my login. Facebook is becoming that de facto, online identity provider.” I am sure, you experienced the same my dear readers.

Facebook also taps into basic human needs, according to psychologists. Even with social media movements like #DeleteFacebook, mass privacy concerns or even just calls to leave the site on the back of pedestrian design tweaks, people just can’t stay away.

“Almost everybody comes back,” says Catalina Toma, associate professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin. “Social networking sites tap into what makes us human: we like to connect with others.” Yes, we don't go out and meet friends somewhere for a chat or a beer or coffee. We are connected with them via Facebook.

But there are tangible benefits beyond those that keep people hooked.

“Lots of studies show the more people use Facebook, the more social capital they derive – resources that we get from just being connected to other people,” says Toma. “There’s emotional support, asking for advice, asking for recommendations.”

For many Facebook users, the pros outweigh the cons: tracking down long-lost friends, getting leads to a job, expanding their business. They can deal with the glamorized glimpses. All this keeps people coming back for more, despite the onslaught of what Toma calls “glamorized glimpses”. These are the carefully curated peeks into the lives of everyone else, who all seem to be doing better than you. “They feel worse, but they cannot stop,” Toma says. I strongly have to agree!

Facebook is bound to have a grip on our lives. “Social media companies seek to exploit one’s attention for profit,” Hogan says. “It’s not even ambiguous. It’s exactly what Zuckerberg said in Congress: ‘Where do you get your money?’ ‘We get it from ads.’”

Right place, right time: the rise of internet-connected mobile devices in turn fueled the rise of Facebook.

But even after the Cambridge Analytica disaster – Zuckerberg eventually published an apology to the 87 million Facebook users whose data was inappropriately shared  – there’s still no stopping the social media steamroller.

“Facebook’s business is still going to accelerate,” says Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University who wrote The Big Four, a book about how powerful a tiny handful of technology companies are becoming. “Consumers talk a big game but where is the first place they go to express their rage? Facebook and Instagram. And with 2.2 billion monthly active users, advertisers have no choice but to be on Facebook.” That could change, though, as advertising dollars follow young users who abandon the platform.

Still, there’s plenty of stability with older people – even among senior citizens. The site’s true future could boil down to what world governments decide to do, if anything, about Facebook’s growing influence.

“I don’t think the question is [what is] ‘killing Facebook’,” says Sherry Turkle, professor of the social studies of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I think the question is what would get people to an appropriate use of Facebook. To the extent that we ‘knew’ about it before, we found ways to put it out of mind. Now, we can no longer do this.” We’re now all too familiar with the dangers of data leaks and fake news.

Let's face it: there’s also the simple fact that Facebook has a monopoly. “Facebook’s sheer size and cash on hand means that they can either acquire or effectively shut down any competition,” says Galloway, pointing to examples like WhatsApp and Instagram, which were eventually absorbed into the Facebook behemoth.

For now, Facebook is still so entrenched in our daily lives, there’s not going to be an immediate escape.“What’s more likely to happen is that people start to realize the markets and economy might be better off – by stimulating innovation, creating new jobs – if we were to break it up and have multiple firms instead of just one,” Galloway says. That’s the more likely outcome than Facebook just crashing, burning and disappearing altogether, according to the experts.

For this to happen, governments will crack down on regulation to make Facebook less powerful. And while Facebook’s success has satisfied our human needs for connections, its sheer size, massive user base, and staying power has brought with it unprecedented scrutiny – like the kind we’ve seen this week in Europe.

Rest in peace, Facebook? Surely a big NO!

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Disaster-Proofing Davao Oriental


TO DISASTER-PROOF an entire province, the local government must take the lead in ensuring mitigation and adaptation measures are in place.

Since Davao Oriental can no longer claim to be typhoon-free, the province has revisited its Provincial Development and Physical Framework Plan to better equip its municipalities when worse comes to worst.
 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) where both have found a common ground that Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation (DRRCCA) should be integrated in the local development planning.
modification and rezonification so that the areas determined as not so sound for habitation will be off limits to people.


"And as our firm commitment, the province is helping LGUs (local government units) to chart out their respective Municipal Comprehensive Land Use Plan while mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation measures in their respective development plans," said Governor Corazon Malanyaon, in her speech during a recent forum.

The Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) 11 has helped the province along with Department of Science and Technology (DOST) 11 and Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) to map out the geo-hazard areas, which is now followed in the establishment of resettlements.

The government is also working on restoring the province's environmental resources, particularly the programs on mangrove rehabilitation, coastal cleanup, dumpsite development and watershed rehabilitation.

When Pablo made landfall, it flattened most of Baganga, Cateel and Boston municipalities, leaving 457 deaths, 3,020 injured, 64,032 families affected, and P5.846 billion in government infrastructures, private structures and properties lost on its wake.

Also, the rich agriculture, tourism, trade, and service sectors incurred P8.5 billion damages while 30 percent of its coral resources were lost and 132,105 hectares of forest lands were destroyed.

With the plan now in place, at least the province can cushion the impact of typhoons, the same intensity or even stronger than Typhoon Pablo that wreaked havoc the province on December 4, 2012.

Rehab on track

With the means of livelihood destroyed, the province sought out the intervention of Department of Agriculture (DA)-Davao to help affected families get back on their feet.
The programs that were implemented include extension of 100 percent rice seed subsidy to more than 8,000 farmers in Baganga, Cateel, and Boston for a total area of 9,876 hectares, provision of seeds for corn production benefitting more than 7,000 farmers, and provision of seeds for vegetable production.

Also, part of the intervention was the distribution of cacao seedlings in the towns of Boston and Cateel benefiting almost 2,000 farmers, and seedlings for cassava production in affected towns to 5,742 farmers covering a total of 430 hectares.

On the housing, a total of 6,729 families received temporary shelters and emergency shelter kits containing basic construction tools and materials.

"These were provided by convergence of various local and international agencies under the Shelter Cluster. Meanwhile, the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development), who aside from constructing bunk houses as temporary shelters also helped bring aid to families whose houses were partially damaged through the distribution of Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA) in the form of cash," she reported.

The first and second releases amounted to P158.7 million, which benefited around 15,881 households.

Transition shelters were also put in place for a total of 5,359 families. 

"These shelters not only provided our people with the most basic comforts of a home, but mainly protected them especially from health risks due to poor hygienic conditions in congested emergency shelters," she said.

The governor added that there were close to 10,000 permanent homes completed and undergoing construction under the Modified Shelter Assistance Program of the provincial government and DSWD.

"No less than 5,000 construction workers, that include masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, have been employed in the implementation of this massive housing project," she said.

Rise of hot chili

Jose P. Calub, officer-in-charge of Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Davao Oriental, during the DTI-Davao Media Interface at the Marco Polo Hotel Davao on Friday, said they are supporting eight major chili producers in Davao Oriental.

"Nakita namo na resilient ang (We saw that chili is more resilient) compared to other crops during typhoon," he said.

Right now, they are in the thick of things in helping these producers comply with the requirements to secure a certification from Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).
"So that when the Asean Community takes effect, our chili producers are ready," he said.

In Davao Oriental, most of the focus is centered on the three towns hit by Pablo -- Cateel, Baganga, and Boston.

The agency is also set to construct three facilities through the Shared Service Facilities (SSF) that are compliant with the regulations of the FDA.

With this initiative, a total of 1,000 families have benefited from the "Hot Pablo' Livelihood Project covering 100 hectares.

The beneficiaries, comprised of farmers and processors, were assisted in terms of production, skills development, product development marketing and branding.
The trade office has also observed a high local demand for chili, as evident on the sales generated from the trade fairs where processors have actively been participating in.

Last year, chili processors generated P6 million from joining trade fairs.
To address the immediate need of farmers to earn a living, Malanyaon added that livestock and draft animals such as carabao, cattle, goat and chicken were distributed to families.

There were also a series of skills, productivity and entrepreneurial trainings to strengthen livelihood projects such as bamboo (furniture, construction materials and baskets) processing, coco-bead and coco-furniture processing, driftwood furniture and novelties processing, bead making, rubber nursery and hot chili production and processing. 

These initiatives were facilitated through the support of some government agencies and Rural Entrepreneurship Advocacy for Change (Reach) program of the Provincial Government.

Other livelihood programs that are currently being pushed are; Driftwood Processing (Boston, Baganga, Cateel); Rosary-making out of coco-beads (Cateel); Carpentry Workshop and Material Recovery Facility (Cateel and Baganga); and Fiber-board Processing Facility (Baganga).

"These livelihood projects under the Debris Management supported more than 11,000 beneficiaries," Malanyaon added.

Given the intensity of damages caused by Pablo in the province, it will take a while before it can get back on its feet.

"Our 'Building-Back-Better' agenda is still a long way to go. But having a solid support from the national government and other development collaborators, and having put in place operational mechanisms, we are positive that we can harness more resources and partners... we can do more... and we can do better in the coming years... Always with that undaunted spirit 'to Move on and to Move up' as our mantra goes," she added.