Of ‘noon days’ and ‘fly days’

Sigh. At the height of the unpopularity of then President Estrada with the business community in 2000, the peso’s differential with the Thai baht that was between P2 and P3 – was called the "Erap factor."

Today, the baht is trading at less than 40 to the US dollar while the peso is hovering at the P56.2 level – okay, between P53 and P54 at its true value (according to Bangko Sentral Governor Rafael Buenaventura).

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Did you know 1: The Wilson-Greenhills branch of McDonald’s is a major training center for Golden Arches Development Corp., which is headed by managing director Kenneth Yap.

That’s where the company’s new hires are assigned to hone up their customer relations skills.

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Did you know 2: Despite the mid-week work respite, yesterday’s sales were below target at SM Megamall.

You see, many shoppers were discouraged by the rerouting of traffic along EDSA and headed elsewhere to cool off.

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The concept of private sector-led community-based business centers is being proposed by Association of Development Finan-cing Institutions of Asia and the Pacific secretary-general Orlando Peña to member-institutions such as Planters Development Bank (which has a capital base that is bigger than many medium-sized commercial banks and is (not surprisingly) the country’s biggest private sector development bank.

Loosely based on a German model for the less developed former East Germany, community-based business centers have been spearheaded by corporations such as Mercedes Benz.

Basically, the idea is to get members of the community toge-ther and to find out what business a community can get into, based on the skills of the residents. Entrepreneurial activities that support the core business add more employment for the community, which, of course, eventually lead to an improvement in their quality of life.

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On the campaign trail, Foundation for Upgrading the Standard of Education president Salvador Escudero III stands out. He is not only the shortest among the senatorial candidates under the slate of Fernando Poe Jr., he is also a licensed veterinarian who has chosen to concentrate on educational issues – and public school teachers have certainly benefited from this focus.

One of things Sonny Escudero has pushed for is the assignment of teachers to the area nearest their home. You see, the practice before was to reward senior teachers by assigning them to the cities while new teachers are given the remote areas, regardless of where they live.

As a result, students in many areas of the country have a teacher only for 3.5 days of the week instead of the standard five days. This is because the teacher arrives at the school by noon of Monday and leaves by noon of Friday. For this reason, students (in all seriousness) call Monday "noon day" and Friday "fly day."