Let's aim to be the Manny Pacquiao of shipbuilding, tourism and entertainment

LChampions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.  T. Alan Armstrong

CEBU CITY — Congratulations to Sarangani Con-gressman Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao. I believe that whether he wins or loses, he is a winner due to his inspiring example of guts, grit and determination. I hope we can all be inspired by his passion, professionalism and global competitiveness which we can apply to other endeavors and also for other sports beyond boxing.

Instead of our many politicians and their companions spending money to junket in Las Vegas to watch Manny Pacquiao live, why didn’t they or the government years ago invest more in our sports program to boost our Asian Games participation?

I believe it is sad that the Philippines will be sending our smallest contingent in 25 years to the ongoing 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou (once spelled “Canton”), south China from Nov. 12 to 27. Our Philippine contingent will have 188 athletes, compared to others I read in Asia like 242 for Singapore, 260 for Vietnam, 349 for Malaysia, 394 for Kazakhstan, 401 for Iran, 599 for Thailand, 806 for South Korea, 726 for Japan. Where is our fighting spirit?

Hopefully, we can invest more in our athletes now and produce a few Manny Pacquiaos in different sports for the 2012 London Olympics.

Philippines is now 4th Biggest shipbuilder in the world

One field where the Philippines is becoming a Manny Pacquiao or globally competitive is in shipbuilding. Yes, that is not a typographical error, we do have world-class shipbuilding facilities in the Philippines that produce high-value exports by Tsuneishi in Cebu and Hanjin in Subic.

Cebu business leader Jon Ramon Aboitiz told this writer: “This year, the Philippines will become the fourth largest shipbuilder in the world, next only to China, South Korea and Japan. We are now already No. 1 in seamen, with already 260,000 Filipino seafarers who sail the seven seas. We’re a superpower at sea. Here at Tsuneishi, we have over 11,000 direct and indirect workers, and we plan to hire 2,000 to 3,000 additional workers in the next three years.”

On Nov. 10, The Philippine STAR had a scoop with its front-page report and color photo of the biggest ship ever built in the Philippines which was launched that morning at the 147-hectare Tsuneishi shipyard in Balamban town of western Cebu province. President Noynoy C. Aquino, the Japanese ambassador, Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia and other local politicians, leaders of the Aboitiz family (Aboitiz Group owns 20 percent of the shipyard), Japanese executives and many workers witnessed the ceremony christening the bulk carrier M/V Tenshu Maru. It has a deadweight or maximum load of 180,630 metric tons.

The ship-christening ceremony was the first time President Noynoy Aquino has stood alongside Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia, who didn’t support Aquino during the last election. The President was 45 minutes late for the scheduled 10 a.m. ceremony, while the foreign and local VIPs with numerous shipyard workers were all waiting since 9:30 a.m. President Noynoy Aquino was also the only person in casual attire, while foreign and local guests were all in barong Tagalog; at the start of his speech he apologized for thinking the affair was “smart casual” in attire. His speech cited the shipbuilding milestone, reiterating an optimistic future under his administration which he said was in stark contrast to the past era of “lying and cheating.”

Instead of later joining the VIPs to ride an elevator-like gondola up to the top of the ship to witness the changing of the flags, I walked up the steel stairs from the ground to the topmost part of the ship only to realize it was equivalent to 12 floors of a building! After that arduous climb up and later down under the noonday sun, I was so hungry I felt I could swallow an entire horse for lunch!

Aim to be the Caribbean of Asian tourism

Another recent milestone which highlights another field where the Philippines can and should be a Pacquiao-like world champ is tourism, with the Nov. 10 inaugural of SM Group founder Henry Sy’s 400-room Radisson Blu Hotel as Cebu’s newest upscale hotel. President Noynoy Aquino was also guest of honor and cited SM Group’s “culture of excellence.” It is the first-ever Radisson Blu hotel in the entire Asia Pacific region.

Let us leverage our society’s being the only former Spanish colony in Asia and the only former American colony, with the Philippines’ unique, fun-loving culture almost totally different from those of workaholic and Confucian-influenced China, South Korea or other nations, so East Asians and other tourists can enjoy our archipelago as ideal relaxing destination. We need to improve peace and order with genuine police reforms, and we need to upgrade basic infrastructures.

With love of music, our cheerful, easygoing lifestyle, warm tradition of hospitality, fantastic beaches and no-winter tropical climate, the Philippines can and should aspire to become the Caribbean of Asia, like Barbados and Jamaica is to North American tourists. If Macau and now Singapore can beat Las Vegas in casino and entertainment revenues, we in the Philippines decisively can also!

This is no joke. If serious, staid and workaholic Singapore can amazingly reinvent itself as an entertainment and arts hub by dint of hard work and strategic planning — since they’ve apparently realized there’s no business like show business — then the Philippines can easily and naturally become the Manny Pacquiao of world entertainment and tourism, if only we could seriously improve law and order as well as fundamentally upgrade our basic infrastructure!

World wrestling champ Dave Batista’s advice to the youth

This writer admires Manny Pacquiao’s physical and psychological stamina, his inspiring “rags-to-riches” triumph over poverty, but I don’t admire boxing due to its being a huge lucrative industry which I believe cynically exploits the poverty of many poor young people of the world. Why is it that most of the young men pitted against each other in boxing are mostly the poor from developing nations like the Philippines, Cuba or Mexico or from the depressed inner cities of America?

When I chatted with the part-Filipino and part-Greek world champion wrestler Dave Batista in late 2009 at a lunch arranged by Xplode energy drink at Crowne Plaza Hotel, he told me that if he had not been poor and unschooled, he wouldn’t have wanted to go into wrestling. Batista is also a Manny Pacquiao fan. Batista told me to tell STAR readers that young people should study well in school, treasure their gift of education and not follow his difficult career path. He said that if he had had a real choice, he wouldn’t want to be in wrestling but to become a professional in some other field. 

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