20.5.08

Di Mo Lang Alam

Jeanne is listening to Up Dharma Down's "Oo". Over and over.

Jeanne points an angry finger at no specific direction everytime she sings the line "sana'y di ka nalang pala aking nakilala".

Jeanne is aware that "Ghost" by the Indigo Girls is a much better song but she's saving that for when she feels this way over something that she is be proud of enough to not be cryptic about.

Jeanne will be moving on to listening to Ne-Yo's "Go on Girl" in a few hours.

Jeanne realizes that she should stop referring to herself in the third person because it's starting to get really annoying.

posted by jeanne @ 07:21 0 comments

Amazing Race Boracay Part VI: "One last trip into trollville and then we're outta here!"

After we got the money we went back to the ticketing office to find troll #1 back at his desk. Here we go again...

He pulls up my itinerary and I could feel his despair when he saw that the return flight had already been deleted which meant he couldn't do the exact same process the other agent [who knew what he was doing] did. I actually had to tell him that all he needed to do was add the new flights.

Troll #1: "Ano ho ulet yung booking class niyo?"

Me: "Booking classes for the return flights are on page 2 of the printout from your website..."

I pray to God that the reason he kept looking for it on the first page was because he didn't hear me....

Me: "Page 2. You have to turn the page in order to get to page 2."

Troll #1: "ayun. S class."

In my head: "Jesus, Mary, & Joseph... unang ticket palang ito!"

Anyway, after doing the exact same thing for joie's and millette's tickets and after deciding to just rebook melay's and karen's because they couldn't process their exchange and it would end up cheaper anyway, the ordeal was finally over. We rented a van to take us to Kalibo where we spent the night at this resort/hotel to wait for our flight the next day.

If this was the real amazing race, we would've been eliminated. Not just eliminated, we would've been one of those teams that were so far behind that they wouldn't even wait for us to finish the leg at all. But I am (I think we all are) incredibly proud to say that we didn't fight with each other throughout the whole thing. I'm always disgusted whenever I see friends start yelling at each other just because they're put in a high-stress situation. I know this wasn't a race for a million bucks or anything like that but still... people have ended up ruining friendships over much less. It's monumentally cool that the complications that we had to iron out didn't ruin our vacation. It just enabled us to have more fun. :p

posted by jeanne @ 06:02 0 comments

Amazing Race Boracay Part V: "You will never convince me that any piece of plastic is as good as cash... not after today..."

After pooling all our money, we realized that we were only short two thousand pesos. We asked the locals where we could find an ATM and they were very sure that the closest ones were back in Boracay. Melay and Joie had credit cards so we thought "Yeah!!! Problem solved!" but our hopes were dashed when we were told that they didn't have the machine that you swipe credit cards on. Gaaaah. I really don't understand how a place which is 30 minutes away from and actually contains the airport that people most often prefer to use in order to get to a major tourist destination, can NOT HAVE an ATM. If they have ATMs in Kalibo and they were able to find a way to connect those ATMs to the ATMs in Boracay [which is an island, you know, as in it's surrounded by water] why couldn't they find a way to put ATMs here? Did they think that it wasn't worthwhile?

Anyway, fortunately we had friends who were still in Boracay and they had access to those elusive ATMs. :p So we borrowed money from one friend and Muffee, who had a flight later than our original ones, was going to bring the money to us. Our friends were so wonderful that they decided to lend us a little more than what we asked for in case we needed to eat before the ones who had bank accounts were able to get to an ATM. They were even sweet enough to ask whether we were sure that the place we were going to stay at in Kalibo was nice enough and if it was possible for us to have fun there. We had a few hours to spare while waiting so we relaxed a little bit and had lunch. I was thinking that I hope that guy who was able to help us would still be there by the time we were ready to finally book our flights.

posted by jeanne @ 05:55 0 comments

Amazing Race Boracay Part IV:

"So this is how it feels like to be an irate customer..."[Mahaba ito pero pina-ikle ko na to. Mas mahaba pa dito yung actual na discussion namin.]

I asked him to show me how he came up with these figures, so he went back into the ticketing office. Fearing that it would take him another 45 minutes to get back to me, I followed him to see what the heck he was doing. I watched him try to re-compute the amount for one freaking ticket three times without being able to come up with same number twice.

Troll #1: "Ma'am kase hindi ho fixed yung prices ng ticket nagbabago po sila."

Me: "I know what "prices are not fixed" means. Thank you very much. But are you freaking kidding me? I saw you check the prices, they were the same every time."

So he tries to compute it again...

Me: "I'm just trying to understand how it's possible that I would be paying this much more when the base fare for the flight is lower than what I had before. Your math just doesn't make sense."

Troll #1: "Ma'am based po kase yun sa booking class niyo dati. Tingnan niyo po dito. Sabi pag nasa Y class..."

Me: "S class ang return ticket ko, hindi Y."

Troll #1: "Ay sorry po. Pag nasa S class... ganito po yung tax."

Me: "Okay. But I booked this ticket online myself. I saw the the amount that it charged for the taxes. It's almost the same as that. It's not two thousand pesos more, which is what it would need to be in order for you charge me this much to exchange my ticket."

then another idiot tries to help the poor guy out...

Troll #2: "ma'am hindi po kase kame nage-exchange ng ticket. Babayaran niyo po talaga lahat ulit."

Me: "What! Are you telling me that it's not possible for me to use the money that I've already spent on this ticket towards purchasing a new one?"

Troll #2: "Opo."

Me: "Eh bakit may rebooking penalty pa kayo kung ganun? Sinong pipili na magbabayad nung rebooking penalty kung babayaran din pala lahat anyway?"

Troll #2: "Kaya nga po mas maganda na gumawa nalang ng bagong booking para hindi na kayo magbabayad nung rebooking penalty. Yung no-show fee nalang. Tapos refund nalang po yung hindi nagamit."

Me: "Listen, I read your fare rules. And it says nothing about what you're telling me right now. It say's here that flight changes are allowed with the payment of applicable fees and any fare difference. Bakit kailangan pang i-state yung fare difference part kung hindi niyo rin isu-subtract yung dati ko ng binayaran?"

Troll #2: "Eh ganun po talaga kase."

After this I texted Melay saying "hindi marunong umintindi ng tagalog tong mga to."

Me: "Eh di lawyer na kailangan ko dito? Kase fare rules are there for a reason. Hindi ba para siyang terms ng contract. It's supposed to tell me what I can and cannot do with the ticket. I was actually pleasantly surprised that it said that you allow flight changes and that the tickets were refundable even though your fares are cheaper than PAL's. I was expecting your rules to be much more restrictive because your airline is trying to make flying cheaper. That made me quite happy that I was flying using your airline.

Now, based on what you're telling me, it seems that everything that's written here is nothing but a hoax or worse, that I misinterpreted them in some way. That's deeply disturbing for me because I used to explain these rules to other people for a living. I used to exchange tickets, for different airlines, based solely on how I understood their fare rules. Now you're telling me that if I had exchanged these tickets based on what I've read that I'd be getting a memo because I was an idiot who couldn't understand plain and simple English."

Troll #2: "ma'am kayo po bahala. choice niyo po yan."

At this point my Melay walks into the ticketing office. I was ecstatic. Finally, another human being, someone I can talk to. My head was about to explode trying to explain things to the trolls that I've been dealing with.

Me: "Melay... Do you know what they're telling me now? Wala daw kwenta tong mga tickets natin..." blah... blah... blah.

After I finished making 'sumbong' to Melay [Sorry. Saying "telling on them" just doesn't produce the same mental picture as saying "sinumbong ko sila kay Melay." :p], their supervisor finally approached us and asked "Ano po ba ang problema?"

Melay told her what was going on. The supervisor explained that it was the system itself that was going to compute how much we needed to pay. I told her that that wasn't what her agent was doing. He was getting prices for new tickets and then doing some sort of magical mathematical procedures on it to get what he was quoting us. She then tried to explain again that the system was new and it was responsible for computing charges. Instead of getting into a game of "how many ways can you say the exact same thing using different sentence constructions?" with this person, I just asked the agent to do the procedure that she was describing. And guess what? He didn't know how to do it. Hehehe. Another person, who seemed to be off-duty, had to step in and do it for him.

While working with the only competent Cebu Pacific employee in Caticlan [too bad I was too stressed to remember to get his name, we didn't forget to thank him though] we were able to finish getting accurate and mathematically verifiable price quotes for all 5 tickets in less than 10 minutes. Now the only problem was whether we had enough money.

posted by jeanne @ 05:26 0 comments

Amazing Race Boracay Part III: Sh#tm@th$rf!ck*ngf+cksh^t!

You've never had a shitmotherfuckingshit moment until you've been denied check-in for your flight when your traveling using an airline that does not allow you to do same-day standbys for free, thereby, forcing you to have to deal with people whose incompetence are on a higher level than what you might have thought was possible.

It was the day we were supposed to fly back to manila. We arrived at Caticlan airport to find that our check-in counter had already closed. It was obvious from what the agent at the check-in counter was saying that there was nothing she could or would do to help us so we went to their ticketing office instead to check what our options were. They gave us one, we go on standby for other flights that day but we have to pay for the fare difference + penalties. We asked them to compute how much we would have to pay and after adding up everything, it amounted to... well... a lot. It's was the amount of cash that you can't reasonably ask people who are on their way home from a vacation to still have in their pockets. Anyway, that obviously wasn't going to work so we put our heads together and came up with booking a monday flight from Kalibo to Manila because that was bound to be much cheaper.

After checking for available flights and finding that there were flights with base fares (not including taxes and surcharges) that were much much lower than what we paid for for our original return tickets, I asked their ticketing agent to compute how much it would be. After 45 minutes, he showed me what he came up with and I was shocked. It was even more expensive. Oh my God, he doesn't know what he's doing. Shitmotherfuckingshit!

posted by jeanne @ 05:21 0 comments

Amazing Race Boracay Part II:

"You may not be allowed to drive while you're drunk but you can still attempt to rescue people trapped under tents and shoot some hoops."

It was around 10:00pm on our last night in Bora. Melay, Muffee, and I were really drunk because we had been drinking since the start of happy hour. I think each of us had had a quarter of a case of beer. When friends who had opted to rest instead of getting drunk after island hopping finally decided to join us, we thought that a quick dip in the water might sober us up a bit.

We sat where the water was shallow(i think the water would barely reach our ankles if we stood up), because we were 'happy drunk" not "suicidal drunk", and just let the waves roll over us while we talked. A few minutes later, there was this unusually strong gust of wind that caused these three huge tents on the beach to blow over (one after the other). When we saw that, I think it was Muffee who said, "May tao kaya dun? Tulungan natin." so we stood up and sprinted to where the tents had fallen. By the time we reached the tents, I was so dizzy that all I can see were these gray blobs which I'm assuming were people trying to put the tents back up. I just heard Melay say that there were no people trapped under the tents so we headed back into the water.

When we got back to our friends, happy hour was over but we still had enough energy so we left the bar and went to play basketball where I saw the funniest free-throw shooting I've ever seen. After basketball, the grandmas went to bed while Melay and I looked for a place where we could eat and have coffee.

posted by jeanne @ 05:16 0 comments

17.5.08

Amazing Race Boracay Part I: "The sign was THIS BIG, you moron!"

About a week ago, my friends and I went to Boracay. We had sooo much fun and the pictures that people have yet to upload [People! Upload the pictures na... pretty puhleeease...] will show that. However, there were several interesting portions of the trip that we weren't able to capture on film...

Karen, Melay, and I were supposed to take a cab from Pasig all the way to the airport. But when we found ourselves still stuck in traffic along Shaw at 11:00 when our flight was scheduled to depart at 12:10, we decided to get on the MRT instead, get off at Magallañes station and then just get a cab there to go to the airport.

We had a hard time getting a cab at Magallañes so when we met this man who was also headed for the airport, we struck a deal with him that if either of us found a cab, that we would just share it so we can all make our flights.

While in the cab we started interviewing our new friend. We asked where he was headed, what time his flight was leaving, which airport terminal was he leaving from, etc. Everything was going fine until we reached a fork at this overpass or flyover. The cabbie asks us "Airport po ba tayo?" ("are we going to the airport?"). We all say "Yes!"[In our heads we were all saying, "DUH!!! Weren't we all just talking about our flights?"], he stops for a few seconds in front of this HUGE green sign that said AIRPORT with an arrow pointing to the left, then turns right. Ehehe.

It was 11:15 and there we were, stuck in traffic again and headed in the wrong direction with no u-turn slot in sight. In our desperation, we risked life and limb crossing Osmeña highway so that we could then get another cab on the other side.

After finally being able to check-in, our airline informed us that our flight was delayed and won't be boarding till 12:50. Harhar.

posted by jeanne @ 05:48 0 comments

4.5.08

"Passion-Suckers"

Been reading some of my past posts lately. It's kind of fun reading about the things that were of such a great concern for me that I actually had to write about them.

I used to blog a lot. There was a 6-month period there about 2 years ago when I would post something new almost everyday. Now I'm reduced to blogging about my blog. Bleeeccch... How pathetic is that? What the fuck happened to the life that I used to find so interesting?

My theory is that being in "actual official relationships" have a way of sucking the passion out of me. Every time I'm in one of those things, I get lost in a snowstorm and instead of trying to find my way out, I dig a hole in the ground and just hibernate until it's over. Which is really silly because, as far as I know, humans are incapable of hibernating. Bears, frogs, and a lot of other animals do that but humans don't. And why the heck did I come up with a snowstorm metaphor anyway? Like I've ever been in one before?!? I've obviously been watching too much Discovery Channel lately. Ehehe. Anyway, where was I? Oh, passion-sucking relationships, right.

Some may argue that I've been in relationships with the wrong people. The thing is, I've always been lucky enough to find myself with people who seem right because they are sooo "good-on-paper". None of them were just "experimenting" and none of them were what you would consider high-maintenance. They weren't psychos(at least not while they were with me) and they didn't make me go psychotic either. But then again maybe that's the problem.

So now, I resolve to never get into another one of those silly things again unless I'm absolutely certain that I feel the overwhelming desire to be in there. If I have any doubts at all, then I'll just walk away. Problem is that based on the data I've gathered so far, I KNOW that if I like anybody that much, then there's a 99.99% probability that I won't stand a chance in hell with them. [If you know me well enough, then you probably know what I'm talking about*. If you don't then first, "Why they hell are you reading this?!? You are in dire need of a hobby if you're wasting your time on this!" and second, if you want proof, discussing how I came up with the 99.99% probability thing will take a while and I'm not in the mood to get into that right now because I'm too sleepy and I'm a little bummed because I've just been ignored by one of those people that I could possibly like enough to make me choose frostbite and hypothermia over hole-digging.] Isn't knowing that automatic cause for doubt? So does this mean I'm supposed to walk away from everyone?

Oh well, at least I'm wide awake now. The snowstorm's over and I'm headed to the beach. Yippee! :p

*compare Nice and everyone else that I've ever really really liked to a girl whose name starts with a letter E.

posted by jeanne @ 05:37 0 comments

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