Stats and Info

• DOH Philippines Ncov Tracker: https://ncovtracker.doh.gov.ph/
• COVID 19 PH Govt Portal: http://www.covid19.gov.ph/
• DFA Travel Advisories: https://www.dfa.gov.ph/dfa-news/statements-and-advisoriesupdate
• Worldwide Ncov Tracker: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
  Mobile version here.
• Metro Manila Checkpoints Map: https://www.safetravel.ph/
• Worldmeters stats: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ – includes stats per million population.
• FT graphs of disease trajectory per country: https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441
• Testing Rates, around the world (Mar 20): https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645/covid19-testing-rate-select-countries-worldwide/#statisticContainer
• Stats geeks only. Epidemic Calculator: http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html

PH Medical News

• Research Institute for Tropical Medicine: http://ritm.gov.ph/
• Department of Health (slow load): https://www.doh.gov.ph/
• RT PCR Testing centres in Manila, with cost: https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/list-prices-covid-19-pcr-tests-metro-manila

Opinion Pieces of Note

• The Hammer and the Dance: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
• Current state of COVID-19 testing: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/why-testing-for-coronavirus-antibodies-will-matter.html
• NCOV-19 and Food Safety: https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavirus-a-comprehensive-guide.html
• Dr John Campbell Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg

General News

• Rappler News: https://www.rappler.com/
• Manila Bulletin: https://mb.com.ph/
• ABS-CBN: https://news.abs-cbn.com/
• Philippine Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.net/
• Philippine News Agency (Govt News): https://www.pna.gov.ph/categories/national

Fact Checking

Use these before spreading panic with your social media posts

• AFP Philippines Fact Check: https://factcheck.afp.com/afp-philippines
• Rappler Fact Check: https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/fact-check
• Snopes (worldwide): https://www.snopes.com/

Online Shopping with home delivery

• Metromart: https://www.metromart.com/
• Rarefood shop (Meat): https://rarefoodshop.com/
• Veggies (delays expected): https://thegreengrocermanila.com/
• Veggies: https://hifred.ph/shop/
• Session Groceries: https://sessiongroceries.com/
• Freshdeals: https://freshdeals.ph/
• Probinsaymart (bulk veggies) https://www.probinsyamart.com/
• LazMart Groceries: https://www.lazada.com.ph/lazmart-onlineph/ (delivery time of 3 weeks)

Medical Delivery

• Mercury Drug: https://www.mercurydrug.com/gamot-padala.html
• Medexpress: https://www.medexpress.com.ph/
• Rose Pharmacy: https://www.rosepharmacy.com/ (delays likely)
• Watsons Online: https://www.watsons.com.ph/call-and-delivery-info (NCR only)

I understand what captchas are for, and why we need them, but they seem to be getting out of control. I recently visited a site which had the captcha displayed here.

For the record the first word wasn't 'stirred'. I saw the option for an audio captcha and wondered how you pronounce 'Ohehyahtah'. If that indeed was the second word. Too good to miss. I pressed the button and found that the audio captcha is just as bizzarrely impenetrable as the text. The mp3 file of it is here, and it reminded me strongly of an early David Lynch film]. Back to the text: after refreshing the words two or three times I was eventually able to get to the next stage.

The next stage involved typing a random string of letters into a box – approximately 200 characters. The web page did kindly suggest that I could cut and paste them into the box, which I did, but really, what this did was turn a quick attempt to give someone some feedback on their blog into a task akin to hacking into NASA.

Security shouldn't be that hard. It should be as unobtrusive as possible. Roll on the next anti-bot paradigm.

Now every so often I complain about my job. No, really. I do. But then something happens to make me realise how lucky I really am. And one of those moments happened just yesterday.

I'll set the scene. Its just after two major typhoons have torn apart the Philippines. Its wet and rainy and the residual wind occasionally rattles the windows. I'm slogging away in front of my computer on a fairly mundane task, and having a bit of a hard time concentrating. I look out of the window. And I see some rope going past. Rope with a knot in it.

This particular rope  doesn't look very safe to me, but then again what do I know. I'm not a sailor, and this could be some kind of special frayed knot type thing which is actually very safe. Interested by now, I take a look out of the window.

Oh my. What's that? This is the view from nine floors up. Its seems to be a makeshift structure for hauling building materials up the side of the building. Perhaps someone is having some renovation done. Or maybe its … gulp … a stretcher for hauling bodies down from an apartment. Crazy idea, that's a bit fanciful. Well back to work for me then.

Until. After a while … (scroll down)

Are you serious! Well yes apparently they are. Having descended from the top floor these fearless workers have worked their way down, scraping away the typhoon detritus, and filling in the cracks in the building. Apparently I was right on both counts: it was used to convey building materials and bodies. Live ones. They don't seem at all concerned by their predicament, laughing and joking with one another.

Unfortunately I have a knowledge of the laws of physics which makes me entirely unsuitable for this kind of job. Consider the fact that when you lean against the building, the gantry swings away from the building. Well that can't be much fun. Lets take a closer look at the construction shall we? (scroll down)

So here we see that the whole structure is made from welded together rebar. Well OK you can't see it properly in this bad photo, but you'll have to take my word for it. The welded rebar forms the frame. Onto this, bamboo is lashed — with string — and the whole thing is covered by a sheet of plastic material, presumably so they can't see the ground while they're working and freak out. Then, and here is the kicker, the structure is hooked onto a large hook at both sides, and as far as I can see there was nothing to stop the rebar frame from coming off the hook, should a wind blow suddenly, or should the structure tip to one side.

Brave guys. I will never complain my job is boring again. ]]> https://play.datalude.com/blog/2009/10/high-jinx/feed/ 0 https://play.datalude.com/blog/2009/10/attack-of-the-mutant-lamppost/ https://play.datalude.com/blog/2009/10/attack-of-the-mutant-lamppost/#respond Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:24:54 +0000 http://play.datalude.com/blog/?p=153 Read more]]> So I was working from home the other day, around mid-morning, when I heard a mighty crunch from outside. I looked out my window and was confronted with the scene to the left.

I snapped a picture, and watched as a crowd started to gather, and then after about 5 minutes, the driver emerged from the car, shaking his head. He made a great show of examining the lamppost and chatted happily with the assembled crowd.

Two things disturb me about this photo. The first is that I can't figure out how he managed to crash. There was no traffic around. Traffic on that road only goes about 15km/h. The lamppost was clearly visible and easy to avoid. I can only conclude he lost control of the car, or suffered some kind of seizure.

The second thing is … the lampost is in the middle of the road! I've been looking at that for the past year and it never struck me as odd until now. I am clearly innured to this sort of general strangeness.

Anyway, the conclusion to this story is that a couple of hours later a policeman wandered by and took notes. Then a guy arrived with a tin of yellow paint and painted the base of the lamppost yellow. Apparently then, the guy just hadn't seen it.

I'm continually startled by the way people use email in the Philippines. Using a Yahoo address is phenomenally popular, even for business. I could forgive a mom and pop company from using momandpop@yahoo.com.ph, but when you get top management handing you cards saying ceo_888@yahoo.com.ph there is something clearly very wrong.

In no particular order, here are a few reasons why you should NOT use yahoo for your business email address.

• It looks tacky. It looks cheap. It gives the sense that your company is run on a shoestring and has no marketing department.
• Getting your own domain is cheap and easy. You can get an email/webhost in the US for USD 3 a month, and a domainname for USD 9 a year. If you really can't bear to part from your Gmail or YahooMail, then set up your own domain to point to their service. Gmail doesn't even charge for this, and Yahoo's charge is minimal. At least you'll seem to have control of your own destiny.
• Information leakage. Despite Google's and Yahoo's best assurances, there is no guarantee that your vital business documents will stay secret. While I believe they try hard to protect your information, there is always the chance of a rogue administrator inside the company reading and using information in your account. If you run your own mailserver, this is not an issue.

So do yourself a favour, get your email hosted properly somewhere. You know who you are.

That's not to say there's no beer at all, mind. There is canned beer, which has always been inexplicably more expensive than bottled beer — around an extra 30%. And of course because of this, its the only beer left on the shelves. And there is foreign beer of course, but who in their right mind would pay 120 pesos for a can of Heineken, when the local brew is a sixth of the price and tastes much better.

I'll investigate further. Questions will be asked. Hang in there fellow Manilans.

There are a number of factors which are conspiring to make Linux a viable alternative:

• The fact that Linux, via distributions such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse et al, are now easy enough to install and intuitive enough for the Everyday User. I set my girlfriend up with an account on a spare laptop and just let her play. Soon enough she was asking for it on her laptop as well.
• OpenOffice. Enough said. Hardly anyone uses the full feature set of Word, so why do we slavishly upgrade every time a new version comes out? Well actually we don't …
• The nightmare of Vista. Hardware incompatibilities galore, a confusing new interface with more eyecandy than improved usability, increased hardware requirements. The security enhancements which, ahem, aren't really all that more secure, are they?
• Open source = no license fees. Can't argue with that.
• Reduced downtime due to viruses.

All of these are great reasons, as well as the more emotive reasons for doing it. (Hate Microsoft!; Can't afford a Mac! Irritated with bloatware!). However while Linux is great for me, I still spend more time fixing it than most people are prepared to spend.

Take last week for example. A standard Update to my OS suddenly starts installing a different kernel – it decided all of a sudden that I'd like a laptop kernel. This would have been alright in itself, but then suddenly

• my display driver doesn't work. I install it again.
• My microphone stops working in Skype. I try for a few hours to get it going again, but can't. I use my spare laptop to do Skype calls.
• My VMware server doesn't work. I try to re-compile it, but in the end can't get it to work,

So I roll back, eventually to the desktop kernel. I reinstall the display driver. I manage to get VMware back up. The Skype Mic problem is still with me.

I've still no idea why I was given a different kernel. I'm experienced enough after 4 years with Linux to get it back working again, but that really shouldn't have happened in the first place. And its things like that which I think is hampering the progress of Linux.

No more. I think I'll just make my own ID card now — no one said they had to be official. Enter … auto badge generator page … http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/badge.php

Love it.

The more astute readers will notice that its been over a month since I posted anything. Clearly the blogging apathy has hit, which any blogger will recognise as something which happens once the lustre of your shiny new blog begins to dull. But there are more sinister forces at work. I fear I may have been infected by the Philippines Treacle Syndrome.

This deadly wasting disease is most prominent on a Friday afternoon. It causes ordinary tasks to take several times longer than they usually should. Here are some examples:

Buying Ibuprofen in Mercury Drug:

You walk into the store. There are 6 staff in the shop, and 2 customers. You stride to the counter, behind which are 4 of the staff. They instantly stare intently at pieces of paper in front of them. Some try to run out the back door. Some duck under the counter. Eventually one will have to talk to you …

"Hello Sirmam. Welcome to Mercury Drug"

"I'd like some Ibuprofen. The generic brand if possible"

"How many pieces?"

"How many in a strip?"

"Ten pieces in a strip"

"OK, give me one strip then"

So far so good. There is a searching process. I've been in this branch of Mercury before, and I know where the Ibuprofen is. However the staff seem less sure, and may take several minutes to locate the pills.

"There sir. Advil. 100 pesos"

"Thanks, but I asked for the generic brand."

"Oh" She goes to search for another few minutes. "There sir. 60 pesos."

You hand the money over and she takes it to the cashier, who has been calmly sitting there doing nothing for the last 10 minutes, since you walked in. The cashier starts, and stares intently at the pills, and at the receipt. She puts it down, and shouts something to one of her colleagues in the back. A reply, obviously satisfactory. She can now ring up the sale. She passes the change and the receipt to the original counter staff, who brings it back to you.

Executive summary: You just bought 10 ibuprofen which took three staff members and 10 minutes.

The rationale, as far as I can gather, is that it simply isn't worth trying to streamline a process. Its far cheaper just to throw more people at it. As a result, staff get used to standing around in a semi-stunned state, and getting paid for it, so they have little motivation to do things quickly.

Last time I'd got there at around 11, and had to wait until 3.30 for my visa, which had effectively taken up a whole day. This time I hopped into a taxi at 7.30, before the inevitable traffic jams had a chance to build up, and was there at 8am when they opened. My first surprise was that I wasn't allowed in the building. At all. Two months ago I'd had no problems when I turned up wearing shorts, but since then they'd put up a cheaply photocopied notice saying "No shorts or sandals", and were refusing to let anyone thusly attired in the building.

Seeing as this is a country where I can go into the Mandarin and Peninsula hotels and top restaurants and bars wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, this struck me as a strange development. In addition, the country is hot, and the Immigration department is fairly run-down and has poor air-conditioning. As I complained, whined and grumbled outside, I was in good company. There were around 20 of us outside in the same position. We filled out our forms and tried to figure out how to proceed.

The guards outside were clearly enjoying themselves. They offered us a number of options.

1. Go home and come back with trousers and shoes (Cross town in rush hour — around two hours if I'm lucky. )
2. Go to the shops and buy some (this particular advice was given with a recommendation to go to the port area, which wasn't even open at that time in the morning).
3. Pay one of the guys hanging around to process the application for me. Aha, so that was it. A scam to get some more money out of us.

When I discounted these three options as untenable, I was offered a fourth option. The guy with the gun who had been shouting "STAY OUTSIDE!" to a bunch of confused and nervous looking Korean tourists, leant closer to me and said "COME BACK TOMORROW", in a particularly aggressive tone, fingering his gun. He looked surprised when I retaliated with "WHAT did you just say?", and backed off a little. Obviously I'd interrupted his playful terrorism of innocent tourists.

By this time I'd arranged for my a friend to take time off work and drive across Manila in the rush hour traffic to deliver trousers and shoes to me, thus spoiling their day as well. I talked to the other guy for a bit longer and established that I could get someone else to hand in the application for me. I double checked: "So I can ask … that guy over there to hand this form in for me?" He nodded.

I approached the other tourist who was dressed within the "rules", and he agreed to take the form in for me. He queued for 5 minutes and then came back. "They're having none of it mate," he said, "They need to see you in person." I involved the guy who had told me this was OK. "He said it was OK," pointing to the guard, "Didn't you?". He agreed that he had, and that it was still OK. He made some signals to the cashier. The tourist tried again for me, but soon returned. "They won't take it."

So what was I to do now? I complained at length to the guy who had told me it was OK, and eventually he caved in and took it inside himself. He returned after 3 minutes with my documents and an invoice. The invoice was for P 3030 — double what the visa had cost last time. And in fact it hadn't solved the problem, because I still had to go inside and pay, which he wouldn't do.

I retired to a local cafe to wait for my trousers and examine the invoice:

• Visa application fee – P 500
• Visa application – P 1000 (yes these two are itemised separately to increase the cost)
• Legal research fee – P 30 (good value that one …)
• Express Fee – P 500 (Well I hadn't asked for that, but I supposed it was OK as I didn't want to be hanging around too long)

These previous items were the items I had seen before. Now it got intriguing.

• Certificate Fee – P 500
• Express Fee (Certificate) – P 500

The certificate was a piece of paper printed on a cheap inkjet, which said they'd checked my name against a blacklist (presumably the legal research alluded to above). The Express fee … I've no idea why that needed an express fee on top of the express fee already charged – the whole process had only taken the guy 3 minutes after all. In fact, yes I do know what all this was about – it was another scheme to extort money from foreigners. (I'll do a post on the Airport Fee some other time). On the certificate it said that I'd requested this certificate for VIMS clearance. I asked a travel agent what VIMS clearance was. They had no idea. "Its new" was all they were able to tell me. Apparently the Immigration Department hasn't even told travel agents about their fiendish new scheme. There is, at the time of writing, no mention of it on their website either. (http://www.immigration.gov.ph)

It was now 10am and my trousers had arrived. Time to go and pay for it all and finish this off, so I could get on with my life. I walked up to the entrance. "Nice trousers" said the guard, trying to goad me a little further.

Inside there were 5 cashiers, and only one seemed to be operating. The queue was about 10 people long, and no-one was queueing at any of the other booths. I joined the back and started to shuffle forward. By the time I got to the front, there was only one person in the queue behind me, which seemed odd. As I reached the counter, the lady found something urgent to do with papers in front of her, and staunchly avoided eye contact. I waited politely for one minute, two minutes, three minutes. "Hello" I said. Nothing. "Hello?," a bit louder, but no reaction still. "Hello … Hello? … Hello?", I put my mouth right up to the hole in the glass and screamed "HELLO?": hard to ignore, yet she still didn't look up or acknowledge my presence.

There was now one guy in the queue behind me. He looked at my papers, and told me to queue in the next lane, where there was no cashier. I was determined to get this lady's attention. I dropped my papers through the glass, and they landed on her pile of documents. "Where do I pay this?" I asked. She finally aknowledged that there was a person in front of her, and pointed to the next line with her lips, returning my papers, and immediately talking to the guy behind me.

I queued up at the next line and waited for someone to appear. After 2 minutes a guy turned up. "Next counter," he said.

Now somewhat fuming, I queued up at the next counter. When I got there, I found that indeed it was the right place to pay. I asked what the VIMS fee was. "Its new" she said. "But what is it? What does VIMS stand for? Why am I being charged for it? I didn't have to pay this last time, so could you explain why my visa, which used to cost 1500 Pesos two months ago, is now 3000 Pesos?" She shrugged. I handed over the money. She handed back the documents. I looked in the passport. "There's no visa in here," I ventured. "Next window," she said.

By now, visibly shaking with anger I moved to the next queue. A guy was sitting there with a large rubber stamp and a pile of passports. He ignored me. This time I dropped my papers onto his desk immediately and he looked at them. "3030 Pesos," he said. Fighting to control the red mist seeping across my field of vision I told him that I'd just paid at the previous window, as indicated by the receipt which was the uppermost of the sheaf of papers he was holding, and that I'd like to get my visa at his earliest convenience. "Come back at 1.30," he said, giving me back my receipt.

"But what about the express fee, you've charged me P 500 for? Twice?" I was now hyperventilating. "Come back at 1.30," he repeated. "That is the express."

I found my way outside, numb, furious, shaking and defeated. I returned two hours later for my passport and retrieved it after only queueing twice. I would have to return in 38 days' time to do the same thing again. Who knows what fees they might have introduced by then.