Rodel E. Dagumampan

Just today I was surprised that tomorrow, Monday, August 27, 2007 is National Heroes Day, a legal holiday here in the Philippines. Getting people into work on legal holidays mandates us to pay double. I know it is normal and a fact every firm has to face but not until I became an employer, prepared schedules, and work items I realized it gets very very costly.

Just this month of August, we have here 3 holidays that all fall on weekdays, Ninoy Aquino Day, Kadayawan Festival, National Heroes Day. Since we don’t have work on Saturday and Sunday, the least three weeks of the month was slashed with 1 days each. Sigh…

“Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has admitted full responsibility for the city government’s failure to anticipate the problem of lack of road right of ways in building the city’s P247 million urban drainage and flood control project.”  Read more…

On my first month here in Davao City, this is one of the first thing I have noticed. Flooded roads during heavy rains and defective drainage system.

Visible areas where roads are always flooded are Torres Street, Jacinto Extension, roads inside Vicenta Subdivision, road near Bioessense Spa and several roads near Rolling Hills Subdivision. I pity those beautiful houses located at lower part of Vicenta subdivision near the Convention Center, its really impassable by walking during and after heavy rains. Torres Street is a major spot for tourist and food hunters as this is where several restaurants are located but it was disappointing roads was too muddy during heavy rains.

There are times I can’t help but complain how these road developers expand roads without the drainage system fixed first.

I once had a funny experience, on my way to Banoks at Torres St. when I have to ask a car owner to give me a lift to pass the flooded roads from Mariner St. to Torres St. near Bo’s Coffee.

But despite of, at least now I know and I hope everybody knows that the city government are already working on these. We’ll see.

I don’t mind my sleepless night because of the live bands that played one week straight in Landco car park, just few meters from my place at Dona Vicenta. Its still brings fun and entertainment to a lot of people and just shows Davao is a safe city to live in.

Friday was a non-working, I decided to treat my team mates out for simple dinner and drinks at Venue, but I am sure its only me and jason. Rommel one of our developer don’t drink, don’t smoke either. LOL, aren’t you informed that smoking is a primary qualification?. Anyway, I gave him two cans of Cali hehe !

Sunday was the festival proper, but it was very bad I missed the float parade because I was slept due to sleepless saturday night. At 7:00PM, I visited Matina Square. Hmm… very nice place! It was very lively that time as there’s a dance competition. While I might be the only one speaking tagalog there, its still nice place to meet lot of people, mostly young and students. Its like Baywalk with mixed design of Greenbelt and Metrowallk. I believe this place is for teens and younger peeps like me LOL.

Anyway, I got some shots of the parade near SM City.

While I am not true Davawenyo or Bisaya blogger, I am excited to join the first Mindanao Bloggers Summit. Here I’m looking to meet new people, new friends in this event.

Fellow .NET bloggers and web developers based in davao city, lets meet up here. Let me know how I may contact you by replying to this post or by sending me email thru rdagumampan[AT]gmail.com.

I really admire initiatives like this, and I hope this improves Mindanao’s reputation and at least in some way yield positive results.

1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit Sponsors:

• Join the DigitalFilipino.com Club!
• BisayaBloggers.com
• Davao’s Food Huntress
• NoKiAHOST.COM P5/day webhosting
• Globe Broadband
• Act for Peace Programme
• Web Design Philippines
• Lane Systems
• Snap Graphic & Sign
• Orange County Real Estate
• Web Developer Philippines
• Eric Clark Su
• Fwendz Diner
• Artcom Printing Services
• Cubepixels Design Studio

Not too soon, but see you all at the event.

My friend gwen just celebrated her birthday. While you always insist that you’re just 23, Irish told me your real age haha. Happy birthday gwendale! Keep those smiles, stay simple, pretty, and sweet.

We open positions to all aspiring/experienced developers and designers graduate, undergraduate, or was not able to pursue tertiary education, it doesn’t matter. We are looking for passionate people who are willing to learn, be trained and can get things done. People who value simplicty, code quality and take ownership of it. Who can work on a team.

We are a very young small start-up team headquartered in Davao City, Philippines. Temporarily we will be working in a small box-type office but will relocate once we found a better location. We offer above averarge salaries, flexible working hours, and very nice computers.

Take a look, this seat might be yours.

*

Available positions are listed:

.NET Application Developers / MidLevel / Trainees
As part of our pioneer team, you are expected to have hands-on experience on .NET Framework, C#, Sql Server and ASP.NET. Advantage if you have basic know-how of e-commerce systems and online retail application design.
Responsibilities:
- generally, you will be part of the analysis, design, development and testing of a shopping cart software.
- participate in estimating effort and schedule for the development of each feature of the product.
- participate in code reviews, rotational functional and performance testing of the system

Applicant Qualifications:
- at least SOME knowledge/experience developing web and windows applications on .NET Framework and Sql Server.
- knowledge/experience of the .NET Framework, C#, ASP.NET, Web Services and Windows Forms.
- at least some knowledge/experience writing t-sql, stored procedures, triggers, views, indexes and query optimization.
- at least some knowledge/experience on shopping cart systems, online payments and secured pages.
- adherence to standards and disciplined coding. basic to in-dept understanding of object oriented programming.
- knowledge/experience on any of the following tools and utilities is an advantage but not required: resharper, issue tracking software, wiki, and subversion.
- self-motivated, creative, and willing to work in startup environment.
- willing to work fulltime, 5days/week M-F in davao city, philippines.
- willing to work on rotational QA activities such as function and regression testing, usability testing, and code review.
- fresh graduates are also welcome to apply.

starting salary range depends on experience, just send your resume and we’ll see.

Html UI Developer / Expert Level
Responsibilities:
- you will be working closely with the graphic artists (freelancer/inhouse) in managing the html projects and transforming designs into xhtml, x-browser compliant pages.
- you will be working closely with the .NET Developers in transforming xhtml pages into a working dynamic ASP.NET pages.
- you will be using Mozilla Firefox as main testing platform, with IE6 and IE7. you are expected to utilize the best tools available like FF web developer extensions and IE DOM Explorer.

Applicant Qualifications:
- well-versed and technical know-how on nuts and bolts of XHTML, CSS, Javascript.

- knowledge/experience on cross-browser tags and/or table-less designs.

- at least some knowledge/experience of search engine optimization techniques.
- self-motivated, creative, and willing to work in start-up environment.
- willing to work fulltime, 5days/week in davao city, philippines.

starting salary range depends on experience, just send your resume and we’ll see.

Graphics Designer
Responsibilities:
- you will be working closely with the Html Developer in managing the html projects and transforming designs into xhtml compliant pages.
- you wiill be given opporuntity to learn new tools like Microsoft Expression Suite.

Applicant Qualifications:
- knowledge/expertise in logo design, visual identity and e-commerce web page layout.
- knowledge/experience in using Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop and other design tools.
- at least some knowledge in flash animations, image and text effects.
- at least some knowledge in digital photography.
- willing to work fulltime, 5days/week in davao city, philippines.
starting salary range depends on experience, just send your resume and we’ll see.

Please send your applications and referrals to address: rdagumampan[xATx]gmail.com

* dual screen setup is a benefit if you performed well, also when function and UI testing.

A lot of great things happened this week. We had a good build on our product and several major issues has been resolved. We are four now, and we’ll try to hire one more developer to join our team. This has been a great week, and as always, I want it to end with a therapeutic massage.

After a full “humba” dinner at Whaw Restaurant, I tour around downtown to try someplace new. I Visited NetFront internet cafe near Ateneo and just few steps is the BodyBliss massage. I was surprised they offer 1:45 mins full body massage for Php 250.00 only. The place is small and nice, but I doubt if foreign customers especially westerners can fit their spiral stairs.

I had a combination of Thai, Sweddish and Shiatsu. It was actually my first time to try Thai massage, it was good and I like the stretching and bending. It throws away my stress everytime I took a deep breath. But as much as I wanted to sleep more, I think they don’t allow it. I am not sure as I did not confirm. It would have been even better if they gave me at least 1-2 hours sleep.

Too dark upstairs, I don’t have shots. I took some pictures of the reception.

Visit BodyBliss at CM Recto Fronting Aldevinco Davao City .It is just beside NetFront Internet Cafe and 5 minutes walk from Marco Polo Hotel.

Last night I was at Quezon Boulevard here in Davao City. FYI this is the place where you can buy cheap but quality bed frames and wood furnitures. I decided I need to change my bed frame because its causing me bad sleep and back pain. It sucks really, Makro where I bought it, as it is used to be, sells substandard furnitures.

But I was not able to get off the multicab because heavy rain. Yes, it rains here everyday! I can’t help but think, while in Manila we are praying for rain to the extent of seeding clouds but here roads were almost flooded everyday.