Today has been a historical day for the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) after it had experience its first ever ‘circuit breaker’ activation - a 15 minute halt in day trading which occurred 11.23AM-11.38AM (GMT +8) local time.

Since this is something new for us Filipinos to hear or watch in the news, I thought it might be interesting that I write something to explain it in layman’s term. Even if only a very little percentage of our 90M population do live trading with a broker.

…Click here to read more

(Note: My compiled lists of Melamine tested products were getting a lot of traffic for the past few weeks now. I’ve also received a number of messages from concerned readers questioning the reliability of these listings. So just in case you’re also doubting the accuracy of this and this articles, I suggest you confirm what I’ve posted here directly from my source, BFAD’s website. Thanks!)

Last Oct. 15, I posted a complete list of products that has been tested by BFAD for melamine content. Since then, 2 updates has been released with 2 more products being found to be positive for melamine.

Here’s the updated complete list of the milk-related products already tested by the Department of Health (DOH) and BFAD to be positive/negative with Melamine as of October 22, 2008.

Positive:
1. Mengniu Original Drink Milk
2. Green Food Yili Pure Milk
3. JollyCow Slender High Calcium Low Fat milk (1 Liter)
4. Lotte Strawberry Snack Koala Biscuit
5. Lotte B+W Koala Biscuit
6. Lotte Chocolate Snack Koala Biscuit

…Click here to read more

If you belong to the typical masa, there’s a very, very slim chance that you’ll bump with them while your walking down the street or doing your weekly grocery chore. The chances of seeing them might get higher though if you work in one of Manila’s CBD (i.e. Makati/Ortigas/Fort), more especially if you work on one of their company’s building (yeah, elevators, lobbies, or parking lots).

Yet, these people are so damn rich that their total net worth assets amount to US$9.87B (if I got my computation right) and their presence could be felt by almost anyone, anywhere in the country - from real estate development to malls and fast food, down to the beer you drink.

The people I’m talking about? The richest of the rich people in the Philippines as surveyed by the annual Forbes Magazine’s The Phillipines’ 40 Richest listing.

Here are the top 10 richest people in the Philippines. You can view the complete list on Forbes Magazine Website.

1. Henry Sy & family - $3.1 billion
2. Lucio Tan & family - $1.5 billion
3. Jaime Zobel de Ayala & family - $1.2 billion
4. Andrew Tan - $700 million
5. Tony Tan Caktiong & family - $690 million
6. John Gokongwei Jr. & family - $680 million
7. Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. - $610 million
8. Enrique Razon Jr. - $525 million
9. George Ty & family - $435 million
10. Inigo & Mercedes Zobel - $430 million

I received a text advisory from Globe yesterday informing me that from October 15 to December 31, 2008, I could make 20 minutes Globe-Globe or Globe-TM calls for only 20 pesos. Wow, that’s only 1 peso per minute!

According to the instruction, you should simply change the 0 at the start of the number that you are calling with 236 (For example, if you’re calling say 09171234567, you should dial 2369171234567 instead) and the promo rate will be use for that call. Calls will be automatically terminated after all 20 minutes have been exhausted.

If you’re familiar with Globe’s 235 promo, which I am a heavy user of, this Tawag236 promo works the same but with the better rates. And this is a good thing because the promo will run during the Christmas and New Year holidays.

So Globe has now three 023x special call codes namely:
236 - 20 pesos/20 minutes
235 - 10 pesos/3 minutes
232 - 0.10 pesos/1 second

See, kaya naman pala ng Globe ibaba ang rates nila… Maybe they’re feeling the pressure of competition from Sun. But I hope that they’ll make lower call rates a permanent, standard thing on this land of text messages.

(Note: A more updated listing of Melamine tested products in the Philippines has been posted here)

(2nd Note: My compiled lists of Melamine tested products were getting a lot of traffic for the past few weeks now. I’ve also received a number of messages from concerned readers questioning the reliability of these listings. So just in case you’re also doubting the accuracy of this and this articles, I suggest you confirm what I’ve posted here directly from my source, BFAD’s website. Thanks!)

Here’s the complete list of the made in China milk-related products already tested by the Department of Health (DOH) and BFAD to be positive/negative with Melamine as of October 15, 2008.

Positive:
1. Mengniu Original Drink Milk
2. Green Food Yili Pure Milk
3. JollyCow Slender High Calcium Low Fat milk (1 Liter)
4. Lotte Strawberry Snack Koala Biscuit

…Click here to read more