The world wants Obama to be the next US President. This is probably attributed to more media exposures the Democrats were enjoying starting from the Obama-Clinton campaign. As a non-US citizen observing the upcoming Presidential elections of the United States of America, I could say Democrats Presidential bet Barak Obama got more media mileage than Republican’s John McCain since the pre-campaign period. Watching CNN, reading the papers - these mostly covered Obama-Clinton campaign trails, and only recently that John McCain enjoyed more or less a balanced attention by media.

While the world wants Obama to be the next US President, it is still not certain whether Americans want him to be President. While it seemed that many Americans speak of Obama as seen on cable TV - voting a President in the US is unlike voting a President in the Philippines. In the Philippines, everyone can vote, and the most popular candidate who gathered the most votes wins.

The US is using an indirect voting system - the citizens elect an “elector” who will represent them in electing the President. These electors, supposedly persons of integrity and wisdom form the so called Electoral College. Normally, these electors are associated with organizations, groups or tickets that support a particular candidate. And the ticket that wins the most votes get all the electoral votes for a particular State. Thus winning the US Presidency doesn’t need to be winning the most States but rather, win in States which have the majority of electoral votes. There are a total of 538 people elected to the US Electoral College, and a candidate has to win 270 of these electoral votes to win the Presidency. In the current stats, Obama is leading McCain 46-43, with 11% still not decided. That’s about 247 electoral votes for Obama, and about 231 for McCain. The remaining 60 electoral votes can still make either the President. The figures kept on changing lately, while Obama is advancing, McCain might be able to get a good run in the coming weeks.

Here are my personal observations why: WAR-PEACE:

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It can’t be denied that China has been the center of attention for big multinational companies in recent years. In the Philippines, several manufacturing operations of multinational companies were either shutdown, or downsized - limited only to certain products, and most were transferred to China due to these simple reasons: Labor and raw materials cost are cheaper, thus reducing production costs and therefore increasing PROFITS.

While the move maybe a prerogative of each company concerned, however, with the recent issue on risks to health on certain products from China, it is high time our government be serious in its campaign of protecting its citizens against such dangers and from these “irresponsible” traders and manufacturers who are only after profits and are totally disregarding consumer safety.

Many years ago, a popular shoe/apparel company was criticized by many for transferring most of its production in China and later found out that it was employing minors/children and were not even given proper safety gears and were subjected to excessive working hours with very low pay. And several months back, a popular US toy maker was forced to recall thousands of toys made from China, after it was discovered that one of the components used to assemble the toys posed dangers to kids’ health.

And who knows that tasty looking apple or banana in your table right now was sourced in China and was wiped with “formalin” or formaldehyde, a chemical used to preserve cadavers, to make it fresh looking for a longer time? That isn’t a wild idea knowing that some “genius” in China found out that Melamine is rich in protein thus it makes a good ingredient for milk and dairy products? We are not trying to dis-credit China here, but if the claim is true that the Chinese authorities were aware of this long before the news broke out, then every one should be cautious on everything that comes from China.

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So Graham Langdon is selling Entrecard. He made his announcement in his Entrecard blog, and the starting bid was put at US$100,000.00 at the Sitepoint Marketplace. Whether Langdon is serious or not, it seems his decision to sell the blog network site with over 80 Million impressions per month, and over 100,000 blogs exchanging ads using 125×125 banner widget is something that he doesn’t want to do if only circumstances would allow.

According to Langdon, his desire to keep the site up and running would cost him a lot and giving it to a company with enough resources and money is just the right thing to do to continue serving the thousands of blogs in its network. But with the failed negotiations with Venture Capitalists lately left him wrecked, and he’s still not back to his feet, and he’s come into a stalemate and could not keep up with Entrecard’s growth.

Graham Langdon isn’t new to selling a site which started to be some brilliant idea and became successful. He sold milliondollarwiki.com for some nice amount of money (not sure if he made about US$50,000.00) from that - and it is supposed to stay alive for 15 years but now it’s dead. Some people are thinking that Langdon may have come to realize the slow demise of Entrecard’s popularity and is seeing the opportune time to sell it - while it still bites. Many issues and controversies were hurled against Entrecard recently, but its loyal members (including me) stick to it and even wrote lots of articles about the benefits of using Entrecard and how to improve the EC dropping community among others.

I have not been active with Entrecard dropping and advertising lately. I have not been to the Forums site. I used to be a regular EC dropper and ‘forumer’. But due to tight and busy skeds, I have skipped dropping save for some sites that have dropped on my EC widgets, and of course my friends’ sites as well.

Graham claims Entrecard is currently enjoying 80 million impressions, 85,000 uniques, 3.25 Million page views, and US$2,000.00 revenue per month. Figures that each interested buyer has to verify. Do you think Entrecard would be a good site for anyone with the money to buy?

What is Entrecard?

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People were camping outside the Ticketnet Booth waiting for the ticket sales office to open and start selling tickets for the UAAP Final Games between the Ateneo Blue Eagles and De La Salle Green Archers. And all tickets were sold-out in less than 3 hours. Some people were already at the Ticket booth the night before.

And you might wonder where did all the UAAP Finals tickets go? I am sure Coach Norman Black of the Eagles and Coach Franz Pumaren aren’t hoarding tickets - for years, its the Scalpers that are taking advantage and are definitely raking thousands of pesos from these tickets. And ‘re-selling’ UAAP tickets have gone hi-tech lately; its all in e-Bay and other buy and sell sites. Some scalpers have finally found a place to sell their hot merchandise. Wala na sigurong tatabi sayo doon sa Araneta at bubulong sayo, “ticket Sir?”

For a General Admission ticket, which costs Php55.00, is currently selling at Php300.00 or higher. There are several tickets currently up for bidding at eBay Philippines. Upperbox B tickets (Php75.00) is bidding at Php2,000.00 as of this writing, while Upperbox A (Php220.00) is now selling at Php6,000.00 and may still go up since lots of people are actually participating the bidding. During the UAAP 71 Game 1 last Sunday, 21-Sep-2008, two Patron tickets worth Php350.00 each were posted for bidding at eBay, with a starting price of Php25,000.00 each - and there were takers!

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Every medical representative and sales people know that Doctors are one of the most lucrative groups to conduct business with. While some may strongly deny this statement, but it’s an open secret in the medical world. But that might change - or at least be regulated soon.

Just like any other Profession, members of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA), a self-governing regulatory body of all medical doctors in the country recently released their “controversial” Code Of Ethics. Controversial in the sense that - to many Doctors, it will disallow them from engaging in various activities, most especially “marketing” and ‘business’ activities of different health and medical products and companies.

I was driving home late Sunday morning listening to a radio program on DZMM, an ABS-CBN AM radio station. The host was Dr. Gary Sy - the most “un-ethical Doctor” in the Philippines. That was what he claimed he is anyway. He was discussing the newly released Doctor Code of Ethics of 2008, and it aroused my interest on some sections of the said Code of Ethics.

One notable section is on Media appearances, including hosting programs on TV and Radio, or writing a column on print media.

“A physician should only make a general opinion and shall refrain from making a specific diagnosis, therapy or projection to individual cases in his appearances in the broadcast media..”

Another section is perhaps the most controversial - where Doctors like Gary Sy have been engaged for quite some time. Dr. Gary Sy is popular for his “natural” medical product endorsements, ranging from Virgin Coconut Oil, other ‘natural’ health supplements such as Ginseng, ginko biloba, ampalaya among others most often endorsing a particular Brand or Manufacturer.

“A physician shall not commercially endorse any medical or health product.”

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