Caught on video

Did you know 1: Making the rounds of Makati offices (during lunch break) is a 37-minute amateur video that not only includes very explicit scenes between a couple but also with a third party.

The video (which the disgruntled boyfriend released after he broke off with his girlfriend) has since been copied many times over. In the process of being passed from office to office, the video has been digitilized, making the, uh, sounds and sights clearer.

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Did you know 2: Foundation for Upgrading the Standards of Education president Salvador Escudero III is in the process of registering a stylized design of the Philippine flag as his personal trademark with the Intellectual Property Office.

Sonny Escudero, who has been wearing this trademark on all his shirts for years, was the principal congressional author of the Flag Law, which defines, among other things, how to demonstrate respect for the Philippine flag.

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Did you know 3: Newspaper owner Dante Ang is putting up early next year an afternoon paper – and a broadsheet at that – to complement the Manila Times, which comes out (like all other broadsheets) early in the morning.

Here’s Mr. Ang’s logic. There’s a market (both readers and advertisers) for non-tabloid stories that take place between the time a morning paper and an afternoon paper hits the streets.

Right now, these stories are incorporated in tomorrow’s issue of the morning paper.

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HSBC president and chief executive officer Warner Manning can’t say no to children – his and others. That’s why he has fully supported the bank’s funding of four world-class Children Learning and Resource Centers (better known as READiscovery Centers), one of which will be launched this Thursday.

As always, HSBC partners with a local group. This time around, it’s the Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation, which has a board made up of easily recognizable surnames in good works (such as Ines Delgado and Lizzie Zobel de Ayala) and in business (such as former Finance Secretary and current president of the Asian Institute of Management Roberto de Ocampo).

The READiscovery Centers are part of HSBC’s Empowering Schools to Excel program.

Another program that aims to provide books (for fun reading, not textbooks) to public schools has been recently organized by Pfizer, with a little help from Rustan’s Coffee Corp. which has provided space in all Starbucks outlets nationwide as drop-off centers for used books.

Oh yes, Powerbooks, which is also owned by the family of National Bookstore matriarch Socorro Ramos, is donating books to the projects. Of course, the children’s books are brand new.