By the SERDEF Media Bureau
(first published in the Philippine Online Chronicles, August 11, 2012)
I saw this picture posted on a friend’s Facebook account:
Isn’t it amazing? Don’t you wish Mariwasa, Royal Ceramics and other bathroom fixtures suppliers would sell this water saver? (Although second thoughts made me worry over dirt sediments that might accumulate inside the water closet.) That got me thinking about other products and services that would be nice and useful to have but are, to my knowledge, not yet available in the market.
Here are some from my personal wish list:
(Warning: Some of what follows may look funny or tongue-in-cheek but I really want to have them.)
- Teflon re-coating service – I have lost count of the Teflon pots and pans that have lost their non-stick feature because of wear and tear. Almost every year, I have to buy a new set (or at least a new frying pan which I find indispensable to my daily cooking).
- Hot and spicy kasuy, tamarind balls and other snack foods, the way the Indians and the Thais make them, so I don’t have to wait to get them as pasalubong from friends and family who go abroad.
- Anti-energy drinks – I don’t need Lipovitan, Red Bull and other energy drinks but rather their opposite, in order to beat a chronic insomnia. I know in other countries there are so-called relaxation beverages under the brands Slow Cow, Dream Water and Chill. Would an importer please bring them here? Or, better, would a food and beverage manufacturer produce a local version?
- Pot and and pan covers – Yes, covers, without the pots and pans themselves which tend to outlive their lids. Every housewife knows how covers tend to break (for those made of glass), lose their handles, or entirely get lost somehow.
- Stick-like-crazy gum for figurines – This is gum one could stick on the bottom of figurines and other breakable home ornaments and make them steady, stable and impervious to wrong moves of little children, playful kittens, and even of harassed housemaids and housewives. I saw this at National Bookstore once but it was gone when I looked again.
- Adhesive wall hooks that would really stick. Alas, many of those available in the stores would fall off after a few weeks, if not days.
- Knives that stay sharp forever … uhm … if not forever, then at least a couple of years naman. It’s such a hustle to take them to a Hortaleza knife-sharpening service to make them functional again. And those metal bars that’s supposed to sharpen them, one doubts if they really work. Which brings me to:
- Itinerant manghahasa services – Back when the world was younger, these micro entrepreneurs would push carts with machines on it and go around neighborhoods to service knives, scissors and nippers gone dull that need to be revved back to duty. And while we’re at it, what about the come-back of itinerant umbrella, shoe and bag repairmen? Suggestion to these mobile vendors: Go around neighborhoods during weekends when working moms are home.
- Rent-a-back service – A service popularized by Anne Tyler in her book “A Patchwork Planet” where the main protagonist makes a living renting his “back and muscles” to old folks and others who can’t move their own porch furniture or bring the Christmas tree down from the attic or out of some storage area. As far as I know, no one has taken up Tyler on it – at least in these parts.
- Clutter management expert – Another business created by the imaginative Anne Tyler in another of her novels. And oh, I so, so need this. But I can’t help but wonder if I could just usher the expert into a room, leave her there, and come back with my things all sorted out and all garbage trashed – without my supervision? Wishful thinking, of course.