Analyze this

Last week, one of the country’s most popular travel-related events, “Travel Mart,” opened its doors to thousands of Filipinos who clearly love to travel far and wide and are willing to brave cramped corridors, wall to wall body crush just to get the best deals in town. Statistically speaking what are the chances that everyone who goes to such events actually get served?

Given the success and obvious demands for trade shows such as Travel Mart, Agri-Link, MIAS (Manila International Auto Show), it defies logic and commerce that these events are staged only once a year! Why not twice or three times a year? If the events actually generate sales, did it ever occur to the associations and participants to restudy their terms of engagement and pricing instead of staging a one-of-kind event that serves only the most determined lemming on the cliff.

The fact of the matter is people will save, spend and travel. But aside from being a dispensing or booking booth, what have the operators done to redefine or align their business models with their clients? When was the last time an honest to goodness survey, study or interactive conference took place to bring both sides to the table to improve the industry and businesses?

Just as a teaser, I once told a travel agent-friend that if he could manage it, my family would be willing to make “lay-away” payments through the year so we could go to a selected destination like Batanes or go home to the Netherlands. This would be customer-centric and increases the possibility of hitting the target instead of the funds being re-channeled or re-purposed!

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I just spotted a radio advertisement in Tagalog airing what innocently sounds like a “reminder” to listeners to be careful in selecting who to vote for, to choose someone who would carry on the gains of government and not to vote for someone corrupt or a thief. The delivery is very straightforward and seems innocent enough until you accidentally change stations and hear a candidate reminding people not to vote for his opponent who has been branded as “Magnanakaw” and “Corrupt.” Then you begin to wonder if it was purely coincidental or actually a subliminal advertisement supporting a candidate?

In the movies, the producers at least make an effort to tell you that their characters are fictional and any similarity to actual persons is purely coincidental and not intentional. In the advertisement regularly aired on radio, the alignment is uncanny and suspect. Was it a scriptwriter injecting his personal opinion or political alignment into the advert?

I leave it to the Comelec and the public to decide the fate of mudslinging candidates, but if advertiser aligns and word their advertisements with the slogans of a candidate that maligns opponents, the first thing that comes to mind is the possibility or suspicion that the advertiser is a supporter using his advertisements to promote the candidate while going around Comelec rules. Unlike having a streamer or billboard inside your property, advertisements aired every 15 minutes in several major stations is broadcast nationwide into our homes, our offices and our cars. There is a public interest issue that the KBP, the Advertising Board and the Comelec should at the very least look into.

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As I surfed the channels earlier, I came across a feature of FOX News that talked about a study on grade school students that were observed to perform and behave much better in a school that “pushed back” the starting time for classes. The study is not new. We heard and saw the same thing in the news about two or four years ago and the same results were achieved.

The problem is tradition, legislation, logistics and the DICTATES of the grown-ups’ world, lock young and vulnerable students to traditional schedules where many are forced to wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. in order to make it to school by 7 a.m. so that their parents can still make it to office by 8 or 9 a.m. It is always the voiceless and the dependents that become victims of the grown up convenience.

In a related matter, I’ve heard many people talk about a correlation between improper nutrition that causes stunting of brain and mental development that is linked with generational poverty. The synopsis is because poor kids don’t eat properly, they stay poor because of their poor mental development. The irony is that many rich kids are not getting the right nutrition because they spend most of their time sleeping, dressing up and being fed in transit!

If poor kids drop out of school, it is a matter of survival and nutrition and then they get their education by learning in the streets. The rich kids on the other hand don’t get a break either, because their achievement and performance driven parents send them off to tutors and more after school activities instead of letting them get enough rest! Everybody blames obesity in kids as a result of junk food, but have you ever stopped to consider that grown-ups compensate for sleep loss with binge eating?

How stupid is it that we put our children through the grinder, waking them at ungodly hours for an entire school year and then give them the longest “summer break” in a country that is constantly in summer and then throw in the longest Christmas as a dessert!

Why not develop a trimester program or a full year program similar to what grade school and high school kids will face in college and in the real world. By spreading out the school year we can easily adjust for typhoons, political closures, holidays and also spread out their vacation through the year.  There are more than enough studies telling us how to have better students, brighter Filipinos and how to create an educational system that produces real thinkers and performers not just “graduates.” Make this a campaign issue; make it a personal concern instead of simply allowing a system that is still largely based on what the Prayles and the Thomasites set up.