Real Deal or Real Ill Will?

Philippine Airlines (PAL) recently offered The Real Deal Promo where international fares were at rock bottom prices. 

I don’t recall seeing PAL airfares this low.  Imagine going to many destinations and back for less than half the regular fare , it doesn’t get any better than that.  You are almost tempted to ask, is this too good to be true?

The answer is YES!

I am not referring to the prices. While the promo was true to its claim regarding ticket prices (e.g. roundtrip to the US incl. travel tax is just about P25,000 or $520, roundtrip to HK is just P5400 or $110), the PROBLEM WAS HOW YOU ARE EVER GOING TO BOOK AND BUY YOUR TICKETS.

The promo was exclusively offered for just 2 days and you have to purchase the tickets online.    So come midnight of Apr 27, I opened the PAL website ready to make my online purchase.    And I couldn’t believe how slow the site was.  I had to try a hundred times within 4 hours during the wee hours of the morning before I was even prompted for payment.  And after keying in my credit card details, the screen went blank on me and soon gave me an error message.   I got anxious over it, worrying whether I should re-book at the risk of double-charging or not.

The following morning, I got confirmation from my bank that no payment from PAL was effected.   I then tried to book online again but the same thing happened.   Seeing how hopeless it will be to try to book online, I called the PAL customer service hotline.   After about 2 hours of trying to connect my call, I finally got my booking reference number and was told that I could just go to my preferred ticketing office to pay. I said to myself, this is okay.  I will still get the online fare rate and I can manage to sneak to the ticketing office the following day with my sister in law after dropping off my nephew to school, and be back in time to pick him up.

I could never be more wrong.  When we finally got to the ticketing office at around 11am, we were astounded to see the sheer volume of people waiting inside.   If my estimate is right, there were over 3000 people who wanted to transact on that day.  People were everywhere trying to ask what to do next and were given conflicting instructions.  Some were told to just get the customer queue stubs;  Some were told to just write their names in a piece of paper. 

After lodging our names in the paper, I thought that maybe this will take me about 2 hours considering there were 25 counters open, so I can manage a 2-hour wait.   Again, I could never be more wrong.   The 2 hours stretched to 9 maddening hours!!!  Throughout that time, I saw people ultra-pissed at the lack of system in the way PAL is managing the surge in customers.   People were lost.   They didn’t know where to go, where to list their names, where to get their tickets, where to sit down to wait, who to approach, etc.  The people who came after lunch were advised that for as long as they are there before 5pm (closing time), they shall be served.  PAL will do overtime or overnight just to accommodate everybody who came before the cut off date.

But at around 5pm, PAL announced that they cannot serve everybody and that those whose names were listed in pages 4 onwards would have to come back the following day. That's insane!  Imagine, after waiting for hours and hours, you will be asked to just come back the following day and go through the same ordeal all over again?   Thank God our names were listed in page 2!

I cannot believe how unprepared PAL was for this promo.  First, they under-forecasted the public response.   This is a big no-no.  If you are going to offer something good, you better be sure that you have the sufficient capacity to actually fulfill that promise.   It is always better to over-prepare than to under-serve.  Their website was ill-prepared for the surge in hits and traffic.  Why make the promo online if the system can’t handle it?   There may be cases of double booking and those poor people will have to wait 2 weeks or more before charges can be reversed.   

Second, PAL should have had a back up plan.  Obviously, there wasn’t one.  The phone hotlines were forever busy, the ticketing offices were undermanned, the customer care people were not there to help manage the complaints.   At the very least, they could have offered free coffee or water to people waiting.  They should have provided for extra chairs inside the ticketing office.  They ought to have opened up a few telephone hotlines to answer queries.   There should should have been regular updates in the PA system on what was currently happening. There ought to have been at least a flow chart at the entrance of each ticketing office explaining the step by step process for the real deal promo ticketing.   These things are fairly easy to do; I don’t know why they haven’t thought of them. 

I pity the ground staff who had to bear the brunt of the customer complaints. This can already be classified as a crisis – a customer bad will crisis, one of the more terrifying things that can happen to a your customer relations strategy.  Apparently, there was no crisis management and no customer care management neither. The real deal turned out to be a real ill-will.

Fortunately, I am more relaxed and less uptight lately, so I waited patiently and passively compared to other customers.   Had I been caught in a bad mood, I would have left immediately after being given conflicting directions.  Patience indeed is rewarding.   I got our tickets.   I saved quite a lot, especially since we booked 6 tickets in all.   Unfortunately, I am not that grateful.  I didn’t ask for this promo anyway as a special favor.  PAL offered it, they are duty bound to honor it.  That is precisely why I have decided to rant about my real hassle from the real deal promo in this post. 

 

 

 

A Fork in the Road

As we journey journey through life, we will come across a fork in the road.   These forks can be life altering as our lives will ultimately be a function of those road choices that we make. Sometimes the choice is obvious, but often times, we won't be as lucky.  There will be days when we'll just have to flip the coin and leave the decision unto chance.

I am at one fork in the road today.  And I have to make a choice between becoming:

An Underpaid Writer

or  

An Overpaid Gofer

This is a very obvious choice for me.  I'd choose to do the job that underpays. 

Not that it was an easy choice to make; I badly need money too, but then I thought, now is the perfect time to do something completely different from what I have been doing in the last 12 years of my life.  While the years that I have slaved away in the corporate sector have been a soul-enriching experience for me, that sense of fulfillment has eluded me.  And so, I must look for contentment in other places.  This career shift is going to be one of my many leaps of faith.

An underpaid writer is in the league of starving artists and social workers, people who pursue their passions and their dreams.  Mostly, these are happy, contented people compared to the financially stable androids who drudge away in the corporate sector.   If I could be half as fulfilled as these people, I would know I have made the right choice.  

Sure, I'd be paid a pittance, but I don't mind; it will stay pay off some of my recurring bills.   Besides, I am new to this career.   My friend Ben said that maybe after a few writing projects, I can work my pay scale up.  Yes, it is like throwing away the 11 years I have devoted to my old career.  I am going back to square one.   I am starting over.

 

I guess I am becoming old.  I never saw this coming (me not taking the practical route).   Even I surprise myself lately.   I am turning over a new leaf.   

Callousness of Authorities to Those Who Grieve

Let me move away from silly things for a while to write about something more current and sensitive.

I was completely shocked to see the news tonight about how the QC police has arrested relatives (sisters and brother) of Ted Failon's wife for obstruction of justice.   Whether Ted Failon's wife committed suicide or not, the fact still remains that she was in her death bed during the arrest.   It was known that the wife has already received extreme unction and that her BP was already very low, 50/95.   Everyone knew it was a very critical case, and she could expire any minute.   

Everyone except the QC police.  Couldn't they have given the relatives courtesy to be beside their sister as she moves on to the next life?  And the manner by which they arrested the "suspects" was contemptible.   Did they have to use brute force?  I am glad the Commission on Human Rights saw something wrong in the way the QC police is handling this case.  

Click on this link to see the arrest of the relatives and view the video below for the CHR's reaction to the arrest.

But don't get me wrong.  I am not taking the side of Ted Failon's camp here.   There are fishy details surrounding this incident and there might be foul play involved after all.   But there is due process.   You don't presume someone is guilty, and from the looks of how the relatives were forcibly taken, they were already treated like criminals.   

Just how callous can you get?  Can being face to face with deaths on a regular basis desensitize you?

I remember a time when I accompanied someone whose mom has passed away the night before to the City Hall to file for a death certificate.   We wanted to know what the procedures were for filing and we approached a certain lady in the concerned department.  Then the lady said, where is the body?  My friend said that the body was taken to a province in Rizal, her birth town and where she will be eventually buried.   Then the lady chastised him because they shouldn't have moved the body without the proper papers.   She was asking him all sorts of questions which my friend couldn't answer for obvious reasons: he was still in shock and in grief for just losing his mother.  

That lady in the City Hall showed no sympathy at all.  She seemed pissed even that he couldn't provide the details she was asking.   She even raised her voice at him. I couldn't believe how she treated my friend.   I was angry at that lady for being utterly insensitive and callous to someone who just suffered a great loss,  and yet, all my friend and I managed to do was hold back our tears and walk away.   

Just how can you lose empathy?  How can you remain unmoved by pleads of compassion or moments of helplessness?  How can you lose your heart?  I don't understand.  I really don't.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

I read this beautiful piece of inspirational writing a decade or so ago and I chanced upon it while going through my old stuff today.   This is the story of Portia Nelson's Life in 5 short chapters.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost...I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

Bit it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in....it's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter 4

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter 5

I walk down another street.
I just thought I'd post and share this while we do our own reflection this Holy Week.   Wherever chapter you may find yourself in right now, just know that there is always a Supreme Being out there who will show you the way out of your hole and guide you as you walk down another street.  Have a meaningful holy week everyone!

You are What You Eat

You are what you eat.

Whatever we shove in our mouth does more than satisfy our hunger, it ultimately affects our state of mind and health.   Simply put, if you eat good, healthy food, you'd get a good, healthy mind and body.  Eat junk food and you are in deep shit (deep fat, actually).

This is what our mothers and every diet book written tell us.   Even  database marketing practitioners subscribe to this adage as they customize promotional offers for customers based on what they buy in grocery stores and eat in restaurants.  But nothing could be more literal in the interpretation of this maxim than the pictures below.  Pictures truly are worth a thousand words.

Photo courtesy of allposters.com

Photo courtesy of trendhunter.com

Photo courtesy of worth100.com

Photo courtesy of  allposters.com

Photo courtesy of trendhunter.com

I wonder if eating too much chocolate will make one chocolatey-dark?   And if "you are what you eat" is literally true, we now know the culprit for the orange peel looking cellulite covered thighs:  those darn oranges and lemons! 

But as for me, the image below is so, so true.   I eat a lot, and sad isn't it that everything I eat goes to the hips?

Photo courtesy of etsy.com

Wry Humor or Racial Slur?

There is fine line between wry, sarcastic humor and plain old racial slur.    And many times, writers writing in tongue-in-cheek fashion cross the line either knowingly or unknowingly.

Case in point: An article recently appeared in a Hongkong online magazine that slammed Filipinos for claiming ownership of the Spratly Islands.   This was written by Chip Tsao, a Hongkong-based columnist and broadcaster.   Here is his "The War at Home" article from his column published March 27, 2009:

March 27th, 2009

The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout “China, Madam/Sir” loudly whenever they hear the word “Spratly.” They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, “Long live Chairman Mao!” at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that’s going a bit too far, at least for the time being.

Chip Tsao is a best-selling author and columnist. A former reporter for the BBC, his columns have also appeared in Apple Daily, Next Magazine and CUP Magazine, among others. 

In the interest of fairness, I want to put the article and the writer in perspective.   I did a quick Google search on Chip Tsao and found that he is really known for his irreverent humor. His column is named Politically Incorrect after all, so the readers are already being forewarned that it is not for the thin-skinned and faint-hearted.  This is not the first time that his article sparked controversy.   Back in 2005, he found himself in a quagmire after writing about interracial dating in Hongkong.  It was not the first time either that he wrote about Filipinos, he featured an article about Filipino wet nurses as an alternative source of milk in Hongkong when the melamine milk scare broke out last year.

But hard as I try to be more tolerant and understanding of his writing style, I cannot help but feel that his article has struck a sensitive chord among us Filipinos.   I guess unknowingly, he went overboard with this one.   My reaction to his article was not anger at all, it was sadness. I felt I was Louisa, being looked down to, being discriminated against, and haplessly allowing my employer to take advantage of the dire economic situation I am in.  Reading the article was like being taken back to the few times when I have been at the receiving end of discrimination during trips abroad.   

Moreover, the Philippine government is not the Filipino people. I have long hoped and waited in vain for our incumbent president to relinquish her post, and many share this same sentiment.  I sure do regret ever voting for Glora Arroyo, that was a big faux pas on my part.   There are many things that this government did that I am not very proud of and I understand the negative image we may have among other nations.  But just because there are a few bad apples, it does not make the entire bunch bad.    There are a lot of good apples out there, Louisa, whether she is fictional or not, is one of them.

I will not stoop down to Chip Tsao's level by lashing out on the Hongkong Chinese.  I will not even judge Chip Tsao’s character too.  One or two articles gone wrong do not make him a bad writer nor a bad person for that matter.   I would give him the benefit of the doubt and would charge all these to simple poor judgment on his part.   I hope this article does not unmake him, but his fate does not rely on my hands.  Too many Filipinos are outraged by what he has said.

I am magnanimous in my forgiveness.   I hope this speaks of the character a Filipino can have.   

Japanese Nama Chocolates

Nama.  Nama Chocolates.

If you are to learn just one Japanese word, make sure that it is Nama, the Japanese word for Fresh.  Put nama beside chocolate and voila, you have one of the best chocolates in the world.  

(Photo courtesy of dessertcomesfirst.com)

Nama Chocoate is simply a Japanese kind of fresh chocolates. The Japanese, being the great innovators that they are, actually had the chocolate eureka moment back in the 1980's when nama chocolates were a craze in Japan.   What makes Nama chocolates truly unique is the cocoa butter and fresh cream content.    By Japanese standards, nama chocolates should have a minimum cocoa (kiji) content of 60% and cream content of 10%.   

Because of the high fat content, Nama chocolates have a sinfully rich and smooth consistency.  A small bar of nama chocolate is dusted on the outside with cocoa powder that releases a slight bitterness when it touches your tongue, but instantly after, the chocolate begins to melt and you soon taste the sweet and creamy chocolate goodness that automatically send triggers to your brain to release those endorphins.   Who wouldn't feel loved when savoring nama chocolates?

Freshness is a key element for nama chocolates.   They have to be stored in a cold temperature, otherwise, they would lose their fine consistency and texture.  Nama chocolates often come infused with liqueur.  But the added flavors are not overpowering. The taste is very subtle.  Don't expect to get real vibrant flavors though, just soft and delicate sensations in your mouth.  

One of the major players in the nama chocolate market is Royce. I first got to try Royce in Singapore last year.   My sister's friend, Myles, said she stumbled upon a Royce Store in Suntec Mall and she took us there for us to sample what she said was "the best chocolate she has ever tried".  It was an instant hit for me and my sister.   

Around quarter 4 of last year, Royce opened its first store in Rockwell Power Plant Mall here in the Philippines.  But unfortunately, I was not able to get myself a box or two for health and wealth diet reasons.  (Each box retails for P580).  So when my sister in law asked me what goodies I wanted from Japan, I simply told her Royce Chocolates. Thank God, they found a Royce store in the Narita airport.  It is much cheaper in Tokyo too, around 660 yen, or just P330.  

Royce Goodies from Tokyo

Now, close to one year since my first encounter with Royce in Singapore, my taste buds had a second date with Royce. Imagine all that pent up demand (no, make that desire) that were unleashed on the first bite. I had to restrain myself from finishing the entire box in one sitting.

Fortunately, there is a less expensive alternative to Royce, that is, Sachi nama chocolates. These are sold exclusively in Heavenly Chocolates in Roces Ave, Quezon City.  Each box retails for only P350.  I understand that these brand of nama chocolates is all about strong, vibrant flavors.  I will definitely check this out soon!  Photo courtesy of clickthecity.com