Spent the day in Cebu City, which is on Cebu Island, about 500 km south of Manila.
Cebu is nice. It's much smaller than Manila, just a million people or so, and it lacks the high-rises and the squalor. There's less traffic, it's cleaner, people seem more relaxed. I didn't get to play tourist for more than half an hour, and that was in the local shopping mall at lunchtime, but I liked it.
Also, I had two particularly good interviews. One was with a private medical clinic located in that same shopping mall. Like, between the sporting goods store and the NafNaf outlet, right across from the fresh-juice-frogurt place? Walk-in diagnostics, complete with X-rays, sonograms and a well-stocked lab. Three doctors, bunch of nurses.
But the clinic was just a pied-a-terre and a proof of concept. These guys were innovative medical entrepreneurs: their real goal was to make a buttload of money outsourcing the management of other private medical clinics. Businesses run by doctors are not always run well, right? So the mall-clinic guys would provide better management, better IT, and a bunch of tricks like rationalizing procurement, and they'd run your clinic for you so much better that you'd both profit.
Honestly, it was one of those interviews that makes me just smile thinking about it. You know? Like, maybe we can do some good here, but at the end of the day the Philippines might be just fine without us. That's sort of paradoxical, but there it is.
Recent Comments