A man who bears watching

There's a new-hire at Ayala Land, Inc. who bears watching. Since the start of the month, Tristan de la Rosa has been running sales and marketing, a position held by Victoria Añonuevo before she was made president of ALI Sales, Inc.

Mr. De la Rosa started out his career at Procter & Gamble, where he handled such brands as Camay (at a time when being a Camay Girl like Toni Rose Gayda automatically made you the prettiest girl in town) and where everybody wanted to work under him (because, for one, everybody knew he was on the fast track, and, for another, because he trained his people well).

He eventually moved on to General Foods, which posted him to New York. Mr. De la Rosa's most recent career move is interesting for at least two reasons.

One, everybody knows ALI president Francisco Licuanan III is retiring (as soon as he can find his successor) and will stay on only as an Ayala consultant.

Two, it is no secret that one of the unwritten requirements of Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II, the president of ALI's mother company, Ayala Corp., in hiring his top managers is a long job stint in the United States. This way, the manager brings back and shares his foreign experience and expertise.

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Some people are wondering what Social Security System president Corazon de la Paz has in mind with the return to work of executive vice-president and chief actuary Horatio Templo. The six-month suspension of Horace Templo and senior investment officers ends on Sept. 30.

A much-loved career officer, Mr. Templo was suspended because of certain investment decisions. Everybody knows, of course, that the value of stock market purchases – which has always been less than the 30-percent ceiling of total investments mandated in the SSS charter – may go up or down in the short term but tend to be on the upside in the long-term.

At any rate, Mr. Templo has been kept busy in the last six months by some short-term work for, among others, United Nation-affiliated organizations.

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With the annual tourism convention set for mid-October, tourism-related organizations have asked the Civil Aeronautics Board to permit regular flights from Cebu to Palawan, the site of the convention. The Cebu-Puerto Princesa flights will be, of course, only for the duration of the convention.

Philippine Airlines president Avelino Zapanta and Cebu Pacific Airways president Lance Gokongwei have no problems with the idea.

Right now, participants from the Visayas and Mindanao have to fly north to Manila first and then take a plane south to Puerto Princesa.

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The Sept. 25-26 talk on additional Manila-Dubai flights has been postponed again. The proposed air services consultation talks were originally scheduled for last April 29.

In a short note dated Sept. 4, Foreign Secretary Blas Ople recommended the postponement to Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza "in view of the need to prepare for the impending RP-Japan talks and the RP-US talks."

It currently takes three to six months for a Filipino to get a seat on a flight to Dubai. That's to get to their job. The same waiting time is required for those same OFWs who want to return home to the Philippines, particularly during the Christmas holidays.

Here's the problem. There are only six flights a week to Dubai. Emirates has three flights on its own and another three flights which is leased from Philippine Airlines (read: PAL no longer flies to Dubai).

By the way, there's an estimated 103,000 OFWs based in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is the capital.