NU12 #9 - #10 - Spentrep -Kevin Toledo - what pisses you off at the neighborhood?

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NU12 #9 - #10

NU12 #9. What pisses you off at the neighborhood? What do you suggest? – Kevin Toledo

Don’t Block the Driveway, Please!

Since we moved in Manila, we would always have trouble on dealing with parked cars in front of our gate blocking our drive way without even leaving a note on where we could find or contact them. Those instances really piss me off! To further add to insult, some of the owners of these blocking cars are not even apologetic. We tried placing a “Don’t Block the Driveway Sign” but it seems people don’t really care at all. As a solution, I’d like to try to place a proximity sensor in our gate to detect the front of our driveway that would trigger an alarm with a voice recording saying “Don’t Block the Driveway Please”. The sensors would be set in such a manner that it would only trigger the alarm if it detects that 15 seconds has already passed since it detected the car that has stopped in front of it, that way the system would differentiate a car that is just passing by from a car that is actually starting to park in front of our driveway. It could also be set that after 40 seconds that the car has been parked, a wake up alarm to one of the person in our household (depending on who will be handling it) will be triggered as well in order for him to advise the car owner who is attempting to park that parking is not allowed in front of our driveway. This system can solve problems of homeowners similar to our case, and I believe such systems is not really expensive as sensors now a days are affordable. 3.5   <there are LTO and MMDA laws that make it illegal to park blocking driveways, even if you own the drive way>     

NU12 #10. What pisses you off in your office/ What do you think must be done? - Kevin Toledo

Time Consuming Biometric Finger Print Clocking & Attendance System

This year, our office adopted biometrics system in replacement of the manual employee clocking system. This system was adopted for efficiency of getting time records and for safety purposes. I really support the idea as it should indeed provide efficiency and record better data. However, it did not really provide efficiency and it pisses me off where the finger scanning really takes time before it could identify the employee’s finger print. There are also times that these finger print scanner would actually fail to recognize finger prints. Further, whenever a group of people logs in or out at the same time, it would always create a queue and before the last person could log in his/her finger print, minutes have already passed. This could really be troublesome when someone comes in the office with just a limited time and he/she is still at the end of the queue. Even if the employee actually arrived before the required reporting time, there are big chances that he/she could be late because the finger scanning process takes time.

The problem lies with the system provider where the software or hardware being used to identify our (employees) finger prints really takes time.  This doesn’t justify the cost of availing the service and the technology. As a solution, I recommend that the system and technology provider must upgrade whatever software it uses in order to improve its finger scanning process, or better yet, change the scanning unit since it may be defective after all.   

Another solution could be putting up another finger scanning unit in parallel to the existing unit in order to avoid queues.

Food trip report by Kevin Toledo Spentre

 Kevin Toledo
SENTREP S20
Prof. Jorge Saguinsin

Food Trip so far was the most enjoyable experience for me in Entrep Class. The class really looked forward for this activity wherein it even took us time to decide on where to hold this food trip activity. The class agreed to have it along Makati Avenue, particularly in the A. Venue area. At first I was hesitant to go there considering that  our working budget per person is limited to P500 only, and we had to try out 3 kinds of food/place. I did not know that there is actually  a food bazaar in the area as I was earlier suggesting that we should just go in in a place with food bazaar like Mercato. So, it made sense to me that the class had decided for a perfect venue where accessibility was not really hard for most of us. First stop was at A.Venue Food Tent. As I earlier said, I was surprised that there is actually a food bazaar in the area. A. Venue Food Tent's concept is a food bazaar where varieties of street food that are safe with proper sanitary preparations are sold. This concept is really good as this is where you can buy value-for-money food that guarantees safety, where enough tables & seats are provided as well. The street food idea can make us feel excited about the thrill that these food could bring to our taste buds considering that it is usually unsafe to buy real deal street food. As I entered the Food Tent, I managed to observe that people actually go there. It even got my attention that a lot of foreigners are actually buying food there as well. There were a lot of food to choose from ranging from the Filipino street food like isaw, kwek-kwek, and even the Vigan empanada to the other foreign cuisines such as Mediterranean (kebab), and Italian (pasta). We had Vigan empanada, Isaw, vegetable kebab, and gulaman for drink. All the food actually tasted good, I even had 2 orders of the Vigan empanada, which my taste buds really missed. Last time I ate those was 10 years ago, the first & last time I went to Vigan. There was also no question to the food preparation and presentation, as I have noticed as well that the food were being prepared with sanitary considerations such as wearing hair net and or  toque. Over-all the experience was great, and indeed it was value for money food experience where we just spent around P70 each for good and exciting food.

  For the main course, we walked along Makati Avenue and stumbled upon a Korean restaurant, called Dona-Dona Korean BBQ Restaurant. When we checked the menu, we realized they are actually serving authentic Korean food. The group decided to have the dinner there. The people/staff were very warm to welcome us and really provided enough attention to us from choosing the food we will order to serving it and attending us until we finished eating. The owner even assisted in serving the food to us. I actually liked the food. The set-up was very typical Korean restaurant where they provided a lot of appetizers, especially the unlimited Kimchi. Also, the experience of letting the customers grill their food was a plus factor. The only set-back I noticed was that it was really hot inside as they did not have exhaust equipment for each grill in the table. But overall, I could say that the restaurant was very good as they have a decent price, service was really good, the food tastes great and the grilling experience is superb. After eating at Dona-Dona, I was really surprised that the group still have cash left for dessert. We tried to look for a decent pastry shop where we could have dessert and find nothing, so and we ended up having dessert at Goldilocks. We ordered 2 small cakes and coffee for everyone, and even managed to buy some polvoron for everyone. I should say that Goldilocks was a good choice considering that we have little money left to spend for dessert and their food really tastes good. I noticed that its location was very strategic where no other pastry shop can be seen in the area. Generally, the Food Trip experience was really fun, exciting, educational and relevant. Hope that there should be more of activities like this in the MBA course.