Kris, Erap jokes in HK

By the end of the year, overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong will be able to access jokes about former President Estrada, TV host Kris Aquino, and assorted 15-second celebrities through their cell phones.

Here’s how it works. The jokes come from content provider, Wolfpac Inc., an award finalist (and the only one from Asia) in last year’s GSM annual meeting in Cannes.

The jokes are carried by Smart Communications, Inc., which has tied up with Orange, a HK carrier under Li Ka-Shing’s Hutchison Group.

If successful, Smart will launch the service in other OFW communities worldwide.

As everybody knows, Smart is a subsidiary of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., whose president and chief executive officer Manuel Pangilinan was once the highest paid dollar expatriate (of any nationality) in Hong Kong.

Wolfpac is the baby of Jun and Myla Villanueva, who test their ring tones and games through their children.

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Watch out for this soon-to-be-released circular from Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Elisea Gozun.

Under this circular, owners of private property will no longer need to get DENR permission to cut and/or sell the trees – and these include endangered species such as narra – planted on their property.

To make her statisticians happy, however, Bebet Gozun will still require the property owner to inform the DENR what kind of tree he/she is planting and how many.

Right now, there is an ongoing lobby for Ms. Gozun to include in the circular trees planted by private individuals/corporations leasing public lands.

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Since August 2003, Convergys Corp.’s Customer Management Group president John Freker has okayed the setting up of an average one call center a month in the country.

Said another way, the global leader in contact center BPO expects to increase employment from the initial 300 in August to 3,000 a year from now.

Convergys Phils. is headed by vice-president and country general manager Marife Zamora, who received 500 walk-in applicants a day during a recent two-day in-house job fair.

Ms. Zamora’s problem with new hires is the opposite of her counterpart in India. You see, understanding the American psyche is a breeze for Filipinos who watch American sitcoms and movies, read American magazines, and have relatives in the US.

Most Filipinos, however, have to work on their mid-America accent typified by Jack Freker, who spent part of his career with Cincinnati-based consumer giant, Procter & Gamble.