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 TWEET FROM THE BALL MILLS


Out of sight, out of mind

                                                                                             

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ

OVER the past seven years, I had forgotten all about MWBuzz.

I just don’t know how it happened. Or how I did it.

It’s just I did not feel a thing when I wrote the last story and posted it on that edition that turned out to be the last. It was July 2014.

I was in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea, making a living so that nothing occupied my mind except making some money for my wife and a young daughter who was then based in Baguio City. My daughter is now 20, and a beautiful young girl.

When I came home to Manila in September 2016 for good, having ended my work contract with the daily newspaper I worked with for 23 years, there was nothing much to do. I was then 68 and was looking at how the days that would come one after the other would play out in my life.

An online kitaan, (pay in, payout, that thing, you know), drew my attention. And as if a flash of some luck, the company called Yeheey, the online kitaan, which later drew over 200,000 “Php1,000-investors” in just 14 months, wanted to hype up its online money-making to sustain the inflow of Php1,000 pay-ins so it could continue paying out the first batch on “investors”. Remember that pyramid thing?

The owners called me for a meeting, having found a working number in my Facebook account.

Well, the owners wanted to hear from me how they could keep the interest of the investors. They had read my postings on Facebook which drumbeat the “success” that Yeheey had struck out from its investors.

I told them, “why don’t we come up with a monthly online newsletter?”

I explained the importance of a newsletter to Yeheey’ 200,000 investors spread across the globe – from the Philippines to the US, to the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. The newsletter would keep them abreast of the many things that Yeheey’s executives had planned to do to keep the money flowing out to the member-investors.

I told the executives my plans, and they were sold to it. 

And also, I told them my price, and they looked at each other quickly, and said, “of course”. So, it was a done deal.

One of the editions of Yeheey! Online Newsletter.


I produced the newsletter called Yeheey! Online Newsletter. It was a one-man job. 

Yeheey! was packed with company news stories and features about the prospects of Yeheey! as an online money-making venture. Many “member-investors” reacted to the stories positively. And the members felt assured of their investments. Overseas members – the OFWs --wanted to make more money, so they sent more pay-ins, expecting more pay-outs.

As the membership grew, Yeheey! Online Newsletter continued with its job of drumbeating its money-making activities.

But good things would end one day. Just like that of Yeheey!. The owners, all the along, had been scheming each other. Until one day, there was no more money to pay out to the over 200,000 members. Money just dissipated in thin air!

One by one, the owners disappeared, only to surface online with new faces and with different money-making schemes. New “kitaan blues”.

Meanwhile, the members waited, patiently at that, for the next payout date, which before regularly arrived via ATMs, Palawan, and Cebuana. That date never came. Just like the thousands of Yeheey members, I waited in vain for my payout. It just didn’t come. I lost big.

One night, out of the blue, I got a call from my buddy here at MWBuzz – Percy Ostonal, from Michigan, USA. I last talked to him five years ago, after which we had a falling out over something silly and I deleted all things about him in my head. But I forgot to delete a phone number he used in calling me. He has proposed something I never expected: let us revive MWBuzz. Maybe even after sevenyears of being mothballed, MWBuzz would still interest many Mambolenos, especially those overseas.

My first question to him was: how do we get the stories. You are in the US and I am holed up here in Manila, and we are supposed to write about Mambulao! That’s crazy!

The last and final edition of MWBuzz in July 2014.


Percy recalled to me that during the four years that MWBuzz was coming out, both of us were away from Mambulao – he in the US and me in Port Moresby, PNG. And MWBuzz came out twice a month for four years, delivering news stories and information that many overseas Mambolenos and those in the Philippines but away from their hometown came to enjoy reading one edition after another.

So, going straight to the story, we – Percy Ostonal and I – resurrect MWBuzz today, August 14, 2021.

Come up now, my Baby! You’re having a blast.

HAPPY READING, FOLKS!

 

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ

Editor-Administrator

MWBuzz

August 14, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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