For tonight’s special guest on Straight from the Sky, we have with us Dr. Augustus Ceniza Ouano, PhD, a balikbayan who has returned after 37 years of living in the United States. My good friend, former talkshow host Bunny Pages, brought Dr. Ouano to the Fernan Press Center for our taping. To be totally honest, I have always wanted to feature a balikbayan for our show, but I wanted someone who had done something that we should all be proud of. Since I didn’t know who Dr. Ouano was until he came to our temporary studio, let me just say that I found myself a jewel within our midst.
Dr. Ouano is a PhD in Chemical Physics, a field that only a handful of Filipinos ever ventured … in fact he is the first one that I have ever met. But I learned that Dr. Ouano is no ordinary Filipino for he once worked under a famous CEO, Jack Welch, when Mr. Welch was only a department head of General Electric (GE). Dr. Ouano studied in Purdue University in Indiana (the same school that my grandpa Capt. Valeriano Segura studied in) and ended up working in Big Blue … that’s the International Business Machines (IBM).
But he was no ordinary employee of IBM for he worked in the research group in what is now Silicone valley when the term Information Technology (IT) was unheard of yet. His research team helped reduce the size of the hard disk to miniscule levels, via micro-electronics or nanophysics. He even worked in a clean room that was less than a 100 parts per million (PPM) or lesser!
But I don’t want to steal his show in this column, let me just point one more thing… Dr. Ouano wrote a very passionate book entitled. “Motivation and Opportunity” which he will launch this Friday. Few men would openly declare their love for their wives and write about it. But this book is more than a love story; it also gives us a glimpse of his research days in IBM where the fruits of his work are the size of your laptop computer and your cellphone. So please watch this rare interview on SkyCable’s Channel 15 at 8:00pm tonight.
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While the world’s attention is tuned to the Beijing Olympics 2008, the concern of many people I met is not about the Olympic Games, but whether the problem in Mindanao would not escalate into a shooting war? Although the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has supposedly agreed to leave the many barangays that they occupied last week when the government was supposed to sign that stupidity, called the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), a lot of those reports are however often erroneous. I would like to believe that the only reason why the MILF “agreed” to leave the barangays they occupied is so that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) would not attack them. But can we trust the MILF to leave those towns? I’m sorry, but I don’t trust these people at all … they didn’t leave, they’re just not visible!
What the Arroyo administration did through presidential adviser on the peace process, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, is rekindling old rivalries between Christians and Muslims instead of solving the problem in Mindanao. We have already said it here many times before that the key to better governance is a shift to a federal system of government, so we can become like our neighbor Malaysia. Unfortunately, too many influential pundits in Metro Manila are anti-federalist. They love the unitary form of governance, where Manila is the Philippines and the Philippines is Manila!
We in Cebu have shown the folks in Manila that we can be a better country and we can stand on our own and would grow faster economically if we are federalized. Alas, all are just too comfy with their respective comfort zones. Local government units (LGU) are happy with their internal revenue allotment (IRA), which unknowingly gets smaller every year because politicians are enacting laws to create new provinces, towns and cities, even if they don’t meet certain criteria. I have always questioned why small islands like Camiguin or Siquijor became provinces, when in truth, there are even more people in the biggest barangay in Cebu City than in these “provinces”?
Just take a look at our infrastructure needs. Whatever happened to that parallel road to Escario Street, which starts from V. Rama Avenue ending at the University of the Philippines (UP-Lahug) campus? No budget! If you didn’t know, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) don’t even have any asphalt just to fix potholes because of lack of funds. What about the widening of H. Cortes Avenue in Mandaue City? That is nothing but a pipe dream! All these we can prioritize if we turned into a Federal State.
But what does it take for our political leaders to look seriously into federalism? Should we Cebuanos start arming ourselves and force the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) to negotiate with us just like what it did to the MILF? What if we demanded a Cebu version of the BJE and call it Cebu Juridical Entity (CJE)? Would something like this get the attention of the national government? If it does, then perhaps this is where we Cebuanos should be going! Wake up guys! We need to move forward!