The Adventure Begins

I left my home in Irene, Texas at 6:00am March 16 for a journey half way round the globe. It would be 30 hours before I would step foot on Philippine soil. I am not sure which was more difficult, the 14 hour non-stop flight from Dallas to Tokyo or the seven hour layover in the Tokyo airport.

I was exhausted when I arrived in Manila, but there was still an hours worth of hassle ahead claiming baggage, going through customs, immigration and getting ground transportation to the Heritage Hotel.

The Heritage was where I learned my first lesson about Philippine economics. It is an old hotel but very nice and rated five stars. It would not have been noticeably different than checking into a five star hotel in America but for one thing, there was no power to spare.

In order to turn your lights on in the room you had to slide your room key into a slot and leave it there. If you left the room you took your key and it was a given the lights would be turned off.

Electricity is a valued commodity in the Philippines and it is not wasted. I some cities, particularly in the southern cities like Davao where I was eventually headed, they schedule daily "rolling brown outs" where power is turned off for preplanned intervals because there simply is not enough to supply the demand and it must be rationed.

I turned off the lights and went immediately to sleep.

Boracay

When I awoke I had to spend a few minutes getting my bearings. My watch was off by 14 hours and since I had crossed the international date line it was now March ??, well I wasn't really sure. I guess it didn't matter as long as I didn't miss my next flight.

This flight was a short commuter flight to a small village Caticlan, Malay where I departed the plane and took about a five minute ride in a van and then boarded a boat to a remote island of Boracay.

On Boracay 64 people were gathering to learn how to outsource in the Philippines at the Boracay white sand beach, one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world according to the guide I had been sent by John Jonnas who was hosting the meeting.

I had met Jonnas several months earlier and contracted with his company to teach me the ropes of the outsourcing business. Little did I know at the time it was going to lead me on an adventure half way around the world.

The boat ride lasted about 20 minutes and it was another 20 minutes to the resort. I checked in and decided to kill the rest of the evening at 'de Mall which seemed to be the center of all shopping in Boracay. The conferences started the following morning.

I caught a tricycle (a motorcycle with a sidecar) from the resort to 'de Mall and walked around looking for an interesting place to eat. Suddenly on my right was a dwarf decked out in green (I just realized it was St Patrick's Day) waving me into an eatery called the Hobbit House. There was some nice live music coming from inside and I looked at the menu and it looked good. I went inside.

What is Exploitation

Once inside it occurred to me there was nobody working inside over about 3.5 feet tall. Everyone in the place was a dwarf. I looked up on the wall above the entrance on the inside (not visible from the outside) and it said "The Hobbit House" - Home of the smallest waiters in the world.

For a moment I thought to myself, "Is that exploitation or is that opportunity?" Then it occurred to me - I had to ask myself the same thing about outsourcing. "Was it exploiting or providing opportunity?"

My waitress brought my steak and I ask her name. "Irene," she said with the biggest grin.

"I can remember that," I said. "I live in a town named Irene."

The Hobbit

As I sat there enjoying my dinner my mind went back to the mid sixties when I first read the book by J.R.R.Tolkien.

I remembered the ending of "The Hobbit" when Bilbo Baggins was conversing with Gandolf the wizard and Gandolf says "You'll return to your home, place your souvenir ring on your mantel, publish your story, which you believe has come to it's end."

To which Bilbo responds "What do you mean believe has come to it's end? It has . . . hasn't it?"

Next Jonnas teaches Outsourcing 101 as we continue with "An Eye for An Eye Only Makes the World Go Blind - Outsourcing America".