Why do I want a PhD?

A Doctor of Philosophy degree is the highest academic degree anyone can earn. They used to say a Ph.D. requires such extended study and intense intellectual effort, that less than one percent of the population gets the degree. People show respect for a someone who has a Ph.D. by addressing him with the title "Doctor".

They say that to earn a Ph.D., one must master a specific subject completely and he must extend the body of knowledge about that subject. A Ph.D. student is expected to pursue structured, supervised research. He will also needs to write an extended thesis, demonstrating evidence of the capacity to pursue scholarly research. The results of that research should make an original contribution to knowledge and be of a standard appropriate for publication.

Sounds daunting, doesn't it. Today it seems there is a surfeit of Ph.D.s. In my youth, very few have post-graduate degrees in the circles I move in. Ph.D. holders then really look and act the part. At present, many universities offer Ph.D. courses and many obtain the degree. But often you will hear people whisper "hoy, may PhD yun!." "Ha? yun? hindi halata" is whispered back often in disbelief. Stereotypes are distorted, images cheapened.

I breezed through my masters degree, hardly worked a sweat. The solid undergrad plus the extensive work experience helped a lot. By the time I hit the momentum to learn more, the game was over. I got my post-grad in record time. It's been a year since and I still feel the challenge. Besides, a Ph.D. sounds right for me - 'Perry Hugo - Doctor'. What can I say? I hate stereotypes and I'm cheap.

All hoping it'll be a better year.

I share the optimism of 91% of Filipinos that 2008 year will be a better year. How low can we go anyway? There’s no way but up. My personal emotional roller-coaster ride in 2007 scraped nadir right on Christmas week when I learned my name was mentioned in a contract mess. I hope the culprits will be judged guilty in the cases filed against them because that’s what they are, guilty.

For a better year, I resolve to:

• Start pursuing my Phd
• Work smart not hard, or better yet, work hard at working smart
• Give more time to tutoring my sons
• Lose the flab, and get some abs
• Be more discerning, as somebody maybe advising me cryptically when he set my password to 'trustno1'.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It's the last day of the year and yet this is my first post for the year. Why do I blog at all? Others find blogging cathartic, some blog to document their lives, some do it to shout out their opinions, a few make money off their blogs. Except for the profit angle I could say I blog for the same reasons as others but I do primarily because it's an IT thing. I just have to know how to do it.

I was on an emotional roller-coaster ride this year. My father died. I did well in my masters class and I got my post-graduate degree. An uncle died. The job challenge went from exciting to ho-hum. The wife went on official travel, making me a solo parent for a week. The comatose company that my friends and I put up years ago had a De Niro-style Awakenings only to revert back to deep sleep. These are enough fodder for blog posts, but i posted nada.

Then on Christmas eve I received info that my name was mentioned negatively in online newspapers. I checked it and sure, there was not just one but at least two references to me. The fact that it's negative and appears on search engines (Google this or this) make me doubly mad because it means it won't go away easily no matter how untrue. The news can give the impression that either I'm in the scam and/or an incompetent analyst.

It is reported that a rich electric cooperative whose billing system I helped revise, entered into an anomalous contract with an IT company. The contract was onerous, the IT company failed to deliver despite receiving full payment. The coop's new board and employees sued the old board that approved the contract. An audit showed that the old board approved the contract based on the mere recommendation of a certain Perfecto Hugo. But wait, I never evaluated any proposal for them. I never recommended anything regarding any project. The job I did was billing system revision, nothing else. Clearly there is some misrepresentation here, and falsification. Documents were fabricated and antedated to suit the board and in effect attribute something to me. My beef is now that anybody who searches for me online will be led to the untrue, unsavory, unflattering news reports.

I talked to the current president of the coop and the current GM. They are shocked that the supposed recommendation I made was a fake. They thought all along that it was real albeit biased recommendation to favor the winning contractor. Maybe be they even thought the recommender was part of the scam. On paper it looks like, as they say 'malinis ang pagkagawa'. The decision was covered by proper evaluation/recommendation. The winning company appears legit, although undercapitalized and registered just days earlier before receiving the contract.

How could a board of directors completely unknown to me use me? They didn't even know my full name. I signed their logbook as Perry Hugo. They didn't know my affiliation with e-novention. My only connection to them was their IT consultant who got me to do the billing system. He was the computerization consultant. But he has denied being part of the scam. Does that mean he didn't know why they gave the contract to the days-old company? He swears he'll never use me that way. He admits though now, when confronted regarding the fake recommendation, to getting most of the budget for the billing system. What will I believe now? Occam's razor should be used, I think. All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Improving stats and otherwise

It's been a while since my last post. Tiger Woods won another major slam, putting him closer to Jack Nicklaus' record. Hindi yata talaga tao.
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Manny Pacquiao again won convincingly. As a tribute to the great event, I posted round 3 of his fight versus Morales on YouTube. They shot it down after 106 views, acting on a complaint from HBO saying it is copyright infringement. The last time I checked YouTube, there were still 1,248 videos of the same fight, some with more than 4,000 views. Just my luck to be singled out and threatened with a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
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Philippine life has not improved since. But this delusional government believes otherwise. It says unemployment is down. The government brought unemployment down not by creating more jobs but by not counting the unemployed properly. So if you see lots of tambays on the streets, they may be not working but they are not unemployed. It is a very imaginative unemployment reduction. Unemployment is down by more than 2 pts on a sub-par economic growth (compared to our neighbors) and a very high population growth (again compared to neighbors). How did GMA do with her promise of a million jobs a year, anyway? They are silent on that while they gladly report the new unemployment figures. Perhaps we should ask the government to reveal also the number of 'discouraged' workers who are left out in the counting of the unemployed.