Quality

My favorite New Year’s Eve noisemaker competed with the sawa – the string of firecrackers as long as a full-grown python – that my neighbors set off to welcome 2011.

The rifle-length noisemaker is made of plastic. It has two parts – one shaped like a horn, and the other like a bicycle tire pump that you attach to a hook-shaped protrusion at the narrow end of the horn. Grip the toy by this attached portion and then start pumping with your other hand. The sound is like a gaggle of geese honking together at the top of their lungs because someone is trying to prevent them from a-laying their eggs on the eighth day of Christmas. At the stroke of midnight I pumped like mad, competing with the sawa and “Goodbye, Philippines” explosions, and laughed throughout.

On the horn is engraved the name “horn play.” That’s nearly as imaginative as the names of two hotels in San Fernando, Pampanga: one is “Hotel” while nearby is “Hotel Hotel.” Our paper’s artist recently got lost looking for his hotel accommodations.

“Horn play” was retailing for P150 each on the sidewalks of Quiapo on Dec. 31. Several of us in the news desk ordered and got a bulk discount; the price went down to P100. One pump snapped as soon as an editor tried to attach it to the horn. The same thing happened to one of two horns that I bought. The pieces were put together with tape and super glue, but some of the fun had already been spoiled.

In the sidewalks of Manila, P150 for a simple plastic toy is no bargain basement price. But the sound the toy made was hilarious; everyone who heard the honk couldn’t help laughing. The toy is new so perhaps only a few thousand were sold during the holidays. In the next New Year celebration, through word of mouth and perhaps a bit of publicity, over a million of those toys could be sold. With better quality control, the manufacturers can sell 10 million.

I liked to think that “horn play” was made in China, where cheap means you get what you pay for, rather than in the Philippines. But the Chinese are becoming more conscious about quality control. Several of the most spectacular pyrotechnics products during the New Year’s Eve revelry were made in China.

This year one of our nation’s New Year’s resolutions should be to take to heart the admonition of AIM Prof. Rene T. Domingo that quality means survival. Caveat vendidor; let the seller beware.

We not only rang in a new year the other night but also a new decade. In the decade just past we were overtaken by Indonesia in terms of per capita income, with Vietnam projected to do the same by 2014.

In the past four decades we saw our country, once second only to Japan in per capita income and many other human development indicators, overtaken by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in terms of foreign direct investment.

This must be the decade when we reverse this trend and catch up.

This must be the decade when the Philippines regains its competitive edge, when “Made in the Philippines” becomes synonymous with quality, when the Philippine brand becomes world class.

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That brand must be manifested in both goods and services. The quality of our workforce, especially those overseas, has often reaped praise. But the quality of a number of goods and services in our own country can use a general upgrade.

My elder brother, for example, went to Baguio with his family after the Christmas celebrations, and came back before New Year’s Eve still fuming over his experience in a city café.

A coffee lover, he had enjoyed the java in the café after jogging around Camp John Hay. So the next morning he and his family decided to get the “Big Breakfast” – touted to be big enough for two – at the same café.

“For two” was one cup of coffee (you pay extra for another cup), cold sausages (confirmed by the manager with a poke of her finger before she took the sausages back to the kitchen for warming), two waffles with one small pat of butter (P15 for a second dab), and no senior citizen discount for our mom (her discount went to pay for the single cup of coffee). Worse, the coffee for breakfast was not the same one previously enjoyed by my brother. The name of the place? Everything Nice Cake Shop and Café.

My brother was still fuming during our family’s traditional New Year’s Day lunch. I told him that’s what he got for being a cheapo and believing there’s such a thing as breakfast for two for the price of one. And at least the place had a nice name.

Of course I could laugh about it because I wasn’t a customer at Everything Nice. But I do understand, between my gales of laughter, why my brother became apoplectic. And I would understand if the café would not have repeat customers. Will the café owner understand it?

The café owner should look at Baguio’s most enduring products. My mom brought me Good Shepherd’s ube jam and peanut brittle, Baguio Country Club’s raisin bread, and a broom or walis tambo from the market. These products have been among the popular pasalubong from Baguio City since my childhood. They owe their market endurance not to hype or misleading come-ons but quality.

Even these products must be able to compete. There’s now a chunky, delectable ube jam made in Tagaytay by Almira, and other raisin breads baked in Metro Manila.

Baguio’s broom makers at least know how to stay ahead. Some of their recent innovations are so artfully done the brooms are used not for sweeping floors but as home décor.

The nation can use that kind of competitive innovation. Half a century ago, the Philippines was near the top in Asia. We became complacent and lost our competitive edge, and was left behind by almost all our neighbors.

At the start of a new decade, we must resolve to regain lost ground.