Entries Tagged 'Philippines' ↓

It’s been reported that another American has been deported. He was wanted in the US for the killing of a pregnant woman. Ok, good riddance and glad that he was caught so he can pay for the crimes he committed, but sometimes there is no accounting for brains. He was caught because he went to the embassy to renew his passport.
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Go back a few years ago and you couldn’t use your PayPal account in the Philippines. Not for sending payments, not for receiving, not even for logging into your US account and checking your balance. nothing, nada. A little more than a year ago, they added support for sending paypal transfers. This opened the floodgates for use of PayPal in the Philippines. Now support has went one step further.

Now visit the PayPal website and you can see this:

# Members in Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Estonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Philippines, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Uruguay, can withdraw funds to credit cards that are withdraw eligible. You should allow 5-7 business days for your funds to post to your card, but may take more time, depending on your bank’s policies.

Woo hoo! You can now withdraw Paypal funds to your local credit or debit card. It takes 5 to 7 days, but you can do it. This should be a huge boon for e-commerce in the Philippines. Way to go PayPal!

Is ZTE in bed with GMA? That’s the question on many people’s mind as the Philippines is dealing with a new corruption allegation against the incumbent administration in the Philippines. It seems that a contract for a government broadband network has been signed for a lot more than other bids and then the contract has gone missing.

The government will be compelled to defend the contract in front of both the Supreme Court and the Office of the Ombudsman. Controversy over the contract occurred after it emerged that two lower bids weren’t properly considered and that the actual copy of the original contract had gone missing.

Furthermore:

* ZTE defended the deal, telling the Manila Standard, “We have been quiet because we know these are all baseless accusations.”
* Finance Secretary Margarito Teves said he met with ZTE executives twice – one instance last year at his residence in Ayala Alabang, the other only a few months ago at the Wack Wack Golf Club in Mandaluyong City.
* An unnamed businessman is willing to testify before any investigation that Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr. offered a rival firm of ZTE $US10 million to withdraw from the national broadband network tender.

This doesn’t bode very well for the government and also severely affects investor sentiment in the Philippines.

Ok, way to go again, AFP. You really know how to let me known the truth about operations against the Abu Sayaff in the southern Philippines. It seems every time there is clash, a number of soldiers die, but the number of Abu Sayaff members is always higher. I was just doing some calculating and it seems that there are a lot of Abu Sayaff members in the Sulu area of Zamboanga, Jolo and Basilan because thousands have been killed it seems.
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I am looking through a lot of job ads for Call Center workers in the Philippines. It seems like it’s an up and coming job area. It’s said that many of the jobs have left the US, but it seems like the jobs are wanted by Filipino workers. Pay isn’t that bad by Philippine standards and working conditions are about the same as they are in the US.

I guess I will be doing some more exploring of the call center in the Philippines if I can get some time to do some looking. Any input?