My Laptop; An Elegy

My Laptop, I barely knew Thee.

I was very happy the day I got my laptop. It was a Christmas present from my German family, who had all chipped in to get it for me. I badly needed one for work, and heaven heard my prayers. I have a desktop, inherited from a friend, and the sound wasn't going right. I needed Skype for my business, you see.

You had a built-in camera function, great sound, and free Windows. What more could I ask for?

Oh, you were so shiny and new that I was scared witless every time you got a scratch. I think the biggest scare was when some rainwater splashed on the laptop and it wouldn't switch on for a few hours. I called people I barely knew to ask for advice!

I called you mine and put a big, fat sticker on the front. My name. You were mine.

Oh, how cruel was it that you were taken so early from me. Last June 2, while we were away during Himmelfahrt weekend, you were taken stealthily from our apartment, Charger included. I tried to look for you on E-bay and second-hand shops, but in vain.

Oh Laptop, I cherish the short months we spent together, and I thank you for your service. Adieu.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies

I am JUST SO FRUSTRATED with DELTA AIRLINES that I am just about to be SICK!

Really, airlines should just stop outsourcing customer service since they really couldn't do anything. These 1-800 numbers are just out to pilfer money from their customers without really giving any service!

It all started when I tried to book a flight to Las Vegas to see my parents. According to the DELTA website, Customers traveling with infants are charged 10% of the ticket, along with any taxes. The ticket I wanted to buy cost 303€, and a whopping €200 in taxes. I wanted a final figure, I didn't want to end up paying 1000 $ for the flight. But the call center told me that I would have to book the flight first and then call them again to add Antonio's name to my entry. I booked the flight and called the call center again, and asked for a final figure.

They took my call. I gave them my credit card number, my three digit code.

Then my call was dropped.

I started panicking at this point. I just gave some stranger my credit card details and still didn't have a figure of how much the flight was actually gonna cost. It was already almost 1 a.m., and calls from Germany were forwarded to the American call center only until this time.

After a fitful night's sleep, I called Delta in Atlanta, not an 800 number (thanks, Adam!) and cancelled my flight. My confirmation number doesn't appear online anymore, but I'm still waiting for my refund to book a new flight. I maxxed out my credit card in the whole fiasco.

But wait! There's more! I called Atlanta to follow-up and "Amy" told me that I will not get a refund cos I'm in Europe! She gave me a customer care number and it took me 45 minutes to iron out this mess. Turns out my refund application isn't on queue, and it would take 3-4 WEEKS, not 5-7 business DAYS as promised, to refund my money.

Meanwhile, I still have no flight, no e-mail confimation that I've asked for a refund despite x requests, and time is running short before the costs of my flight skyrocket. THANK YOU DELTA.

The Mess We're In...

One thing that made alarm bells ring in my head was the price on my sister's electric bill. The month wasn't even over, and she got another electric bill. That's two bills in one month. Each for three thousand pesos. Golly. In Germany, my electric bill is 15 euros per quarter. That's half of her bill. And I live in a first world country, where everything is supposedly more expensive.

I asked my sister about her electric bill, and she just shrugged her soldiers. Eight people, one house. Air conditioning. What can you do? she seemed to say.

A trip to the grocery store just showed me how impossible life in Manila is becoming. I had three thousand pesos with me, confident that with 50 euros in my pocket, I could buy a week's worth of groceries for a household of eight. My jaw dropped when I bought 1/4 kilo of potatoes in SM for thirty fucking pesos. Dude, that's fifty euro cents for a tiny plastic bag of potatoes. In Germany, I could get a kilo for that. Rice, 50 pesos per kilo, Sugar too. And to think that we produce sugar!

My sister told me that prices of goods went up after Typhoon Ondoy (you know, that typhoon where the guy was floating on a jetsam of trash), and stayed that way.

I don't know guys. I think we're being screwed over.

Hopefully, Filipinos have reached a saturation point wherein they would say enough and try to actually put our fucking country in order? So I would be confident enough to say, hey, screw Germany, I wanna go back home?

But that is a dream. I think that we're getting there, though. When the rich start complaining about the status quo, you know you're getting somewhere. I think I would drop dead if I get a P 41 thousand peso electric bill. That's 650 euros! For a house!

A lot of people are saying we should go nuclear. Guess what people? Former President Marcos did build a nuclear power plant. Sorry to Cory Aquino fans out there, I have love for the yellow too, but she mothballed the opening of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BPP). I remember that RJ Miranda even did a commercial to push for its opening. But it was the era of Chernobyl, there was no way that the BPP was gonna get opened. I remember the outcry against the opening of the BPP. I don't know if our country would also have been able to maintain the power plant in a condition that would not endanger our country.

Shortsightedness is another reason why former President Ramos entered into deals privatizing the supply of electricity and why we are indebted to private American companies that make a tidy profit of selling electricity to power distribution companies for P 11 per kwh!

Per Yahoo news: http://ph.news.yahoo.com/mb/20100408/tph-meralco-hikes-power-rate-020e1c8.html

Meralco's higher generation charge for this month's billing was mainly due to higher cost of supply procurements from the WESM which reached as high as P11.36 per kWh, and the fuel cost accounting for the condensate shift of its contracted independent power producer First Gas because of the maintenance shutdown of the Malampaya gas facility from February 10 to March 13.

A few months after a mega typhoon that dumped a month's rainfall within six hours, Manila is again suffering from the effects of El Niño. Same as last year, drought, rationed water. Why? Goddamn it open the fucking Wawa Dam already. Why do people think that La Mesa Dam has enough water for the 13 million people living in the Greater Manila Area? And now they want to tap Laguna de Bay? Geez, they allow tilapia farms to pollute the water. I don't know if that is such a great idea.

Reading the news in the PH makes me so sad, it's no wonder that my sister's TV is tuned on 24/7 to Wowowee, and Manny Paquiao makes the front page. I think that it's the Pinoy way of preventing ourselves from putting a pistols against our heads. Geez government, why don't you just kill us already?

Wait a minute, we are the government! I think we just did.