For our special presentation on our talk show “Straight from the Sky” we bring you a discussion about one of the most talked-about companies in Cebu, the International Marketing Group (img) whose business mission is to educate people on financial literacy in order to get them to save money and earn more rather than spend more.
To talk about the img, we have Executive Vice Chairman Ginalyn Labrado and her husband Rey Labrado with their Green Jacket members led by Jess and Joan Faller, Dino and Jessica Estorgio, and Ace Aguirre CEO-marketing director. Our conversation with the img executives focuses on financial literacy and teaching ordinary folks how to use money to work for them. img has been around since 1998, however, it has really grown by leaps and bounds, and today, img now carries the Kaiser Medical Group and Manila Bankers Life. It also owns MyTV channel 30.
So watch this very interesting show on img and the Green Jackets on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.
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Last Saturday morning, my big bike group, the Road Brothers, held their Christmas Party with a short ride from Cebu City to White Sands Resort in Mactan. It was truly an uneventful ride and we had 100% attendance and enjoyed the party. Until we decided that by 3 p.m. some of the group thought of heading home as it was nearing the rush hour of 5 p.m. So we left White Sands around 3:15 p.m., and lo and behold, I have never ridden in such humongous traffic congestion from MEPZ all the way to the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge. We did want to use the Marcelo Fernan Bridge simply because traffic was already at the foot of the bridge.
I’m writing this because I was on my motorcycle and was able to follow other motorcycles passing so many cars along the road. Traffic started to lessen halfway along the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge until the corner traffic light to turn left towards SRP. All told, I arrived home at 4:40 p.m. The ride took more than an hour and thirty minutes on my motorcycle! Later I learned that our friends who used their cars took nearly three hours to get home.
If you think that Saturday was a day of leisure in Metro Cebu, you are horribly mistaken. Sure this is what is called December traffic, but shame on our local government officials that they have not really done something to at least reduce the traffic going in and out of Mactan. This is why we are really waiting for the third bridge to be finished. But in the meantime, Lapu-Lapu City and Mandaue City should solve their traffic mess; otherwise, foreign tourists will no longer visit us in Cebu. The only thing positive that I can say about last Saturday was that it didn’t rain!
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Still talking about problems in Cebu that have never been fixed, something happened to me last Thursday at around 6 p.m. I was driving my car and it started to rain hard. As I was passing by the University of San Carlos Talamban Campus, thanks to the rain, traffic ground into a halt. It probably took 20 minutes before the car in front of me started to move. To be perfectly honest about it, I already knew what caused all the vehicles to stop moving. It was due to the flooding of the road near Family Park, a phenomenon that has remained unsolved for two decades.
This situation made me realize that the Family Park falls inside a Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) testing facility. In short, if there was any group or entity that should stop the flooding of Banilad Road, it should be MCWD, just to prove that when it comes to water, they can handle it. This issue is right in front of MCWD.
At this point, I challenge MCWD people to fix this perennial problem and solve the flooding as they can very well use this water for Metro Cebu that has a serious water problem. Come on, if MCWD cannot even solve this water issue, how can we expect them to solve our many issues regarding water in Metro Cebu?