I haven't written much about my service options in Manila other than the ones provided to me by the local carrier here, Global, so I thought I'd go into the intricacies of my setup now.

Local calls via Global are costly and can burn up a 500 p ($10) phone card in about ten minutes, though all incoming calls and texts are free. Outgoing texts are cheap at about 2 cents a message, so texting is the preferred method of communication here. Wireless Internet access on my phone is cheap at 5 pesos (10 cents) per 15 minutes, but if you get disconnected, which can happen often, you get charged again for a new session. Neither maintaining a constant Internet connection nor an intermittent one is practical or desirable as I discovered one night when I burned up about 200 pesos while my phone was tucked away in my pocket. So, I've disabled Internet access on my phone and will only enable it if I need to access something or if I'm extremely bored and don't have access to a computer.

Communicating with friends and family back home is another story altogether. As luck would have it, I received an offer from Skype for a free month of their Unlimited World service just before flying to Manila. I had until July 31st to take advantage of it, so I activated it when I arrived on the 23rd and have been using it ever since. Unlimited World allows you to make computer-to-landline calls in over 40 countries worldwide. While I can communicate with almost everyone I know back in the states using Skype's free computer-to-computer service, and do it with video, I wanted to be as accessible as possible. Once my month expired, I signed up for Skype's unlimited US and Canada plan for an additional three months at $2.80 a month. I also rented a Skype phone number local to New York at a price of $12 for three months. And, of course, I can still Skype for free when calling another computer.

Since I suspended my AT&T service, I haven't been able to use the GoVoGo voice mail service I mentioned previously. That's okay. Voice mail is included in my Skype package. Out of curiosity, I called my AT&T cell number and received this message: "The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time. Please try your call again later." Cool. So, for three months, anyone trying to call that number will hear that message. Anyone who needs to get in touch with me already knows I'm out of the country, and they know how to reach me, so I'm not concerned. By the time I get back to New York, a lot of the undesirables, such as telemarketers, will have written me off and stopped trying to call me.

Enter Google Voice. The thing that appeals to me about this free service is that you have a lot more control over how your calls are managed. It has a lot of cool features I'm not going to get into here. You can check out the link above if you're interested. So, after reading a little about it, I was sold. I requested an invitation to the service.

A few days after I made my request, I received an invite. I clicked on the link Google sent me and it sent me to a page telling me Google Voice isn't available in my country, only the US at this time. It would have been nice if I had received the invitation before I flew to Manila, but what could I do? I really wanted to activate my account because I didn't want to risk the chance of it expiring before I get back home, if it expires. I didn't want to have to wait for another invite. It turned out that my company, in addition to providing me with a laptop for work, also provided me with VPN access to their network in New York. I logged into the New York network--problem solved. Google Voice now saw me coming to their site from a New York IP address and allowed me to log in, choose my new phone number, and access all the features of the site. Once registered and set up, I was able to access the site even when not logged into VPN.

I still wanted to make use of the service, though, and Google Voice won't forward to international numbers yet. Since I'm not using my AT&T account here, that wasn't an option. But since I purchased a New York number from Skype, I was able to set Google Voice to forward to that number. Now, I can get both Google Voice and Skype on my iPhone, so I'm pretty happy.

Labels: Google Voice, GoVoGo, international calls, Skype, SMS

The photo you're looking at is from day 1 when the Manila call center went live. That was three weeks ago. We started taking twenty percent of the total call volume that week. This week, we were at fifty percent and seemed to handle it. Earlier in the week we certainly noticed the bump. The shuttle van got me into work a half hour early, and the CSEs bombarded me with questions as usual before I had a chance to boot up my laptop. We had an outage one night after 5 a.m. when I was the only mentor available, and five or six CSEs came up to me asking me questions all at once. Bry, one of the analysts we're training, laughed and said, "Wow. You're queuing, man."

"Yeah," I said. "I am."

I was tired, but the humor wasn't lost on me, and these guys have it in abundance.

Working down here hasn't been without its challenges. Readers of my blog are well aware of my sleeping and commuting issues. The shuttle service we use changed van drivers this week as well as the schedule, which I'd thought we'd had squared away. Edgar, the previous driver, picked me up at Rockwell at 10:30 p.m. and Three World Square at 8:00 a.m. I was getting the service I expected, and I was happy. Then Zek, Edgar's brother, who also happened to be taking over his shift, informed me the other night that there was also an impending schedule change. They were to start picking people up at Rockwell at 8:15 a.m. because of heavy traffic, meaning they wouldn't pick me up until 8:30 or 8:40. I wasn't happy at all. I have to work an extra hour a day more than I did in New York, so being inconvenienced with my commute is not something I'm going to accept in silence. When I got into work that night, I was somewhat irritated, but I kept my cool and approached Mike Peterson, the Global Technical Support Manager for the Manila office. He was sympathetic to my dilemma, which I appreciated because he's a guy who knows how to get things done. He spent the next fifteen minutes on the phone straightening things out, and once again the van is picking me up at 8:00 a.m. Thanks again, Mike!

While my commuting problems seem to have been resolved, my insomnia has actually gotten worse. This past week, I haven't been able to get more than two to four hours sleep per night. I can't explain it other than my body is naturally inclined to stay awake during the day. I've been taking melatonin, but I need something stronger. I went to the drug store in the mall and asked if they had any heavy duty sleeping pills, but I couldn't get anything heavier than melatonin and herbal extracts without a prescription. This is a real problem that is self-perpetuating. Because I'm so sleep deprived, I don't have a lot of energy to do much in my free time, and I haven't worked out since Monday. The exercise would do me good and help me regulate my sleep. I finally received my membership card to the Rockwell Club. It only took them a month to get it to me. Now, I consider myself pretty laid back for a native New Yorker, but that is just unacceptable. In New York, I would have had the card the same day. Now that I finally have it, I have access to the workout facilities without having to get a guest pass every few days. There have been days I blew off my workout just because I was tired and didn't want to deal with the hassle of getting the pass again. Now I have no excuse, so hopefully that will help a lot.

I haven't really done any traveling since I arrived other than what I've already mentioned in my previous posts, but I heard of a three-country trip between Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I may go with a couple guys from the company sometime in September. That should be a fun trip. I also want to look into extending my layover in Hong Kong a few days on the way back to New York, but I'm not sure what I'm doing regarding that yet.

Labels: call center, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam

This is for all those geeks out there who are fascinated with this kind of stuff as well as anyone traveling in the Philippines who wants to get Internet access on the iPhone.

Since I've been in Manila, I haven't had the constant 3G Internet access I had in New York, which is crippling for an iPhone, as any iPhone owner will attest to. So, I finally decided to look into the options Globe, my prepaid cell phone provider in Manila, offered. I was pleased to find that mobile Internet access was available, and it was cheap, too--20 pesos an hour or just over 40 cents. Great. Now, I just had to figure out how to enable it.

Just opening up Safari or email wasn't enough. I fished around Globe's website some more and found a 24-hour support line. I called it and spoke to a woman who told me that while they do have Internet access for iPhones, since I didn't buy mine here it wasn't supported and they couldn't guarantee I'd be able to use it.

"Okay," I said. "So, how do I get Internet access then?"

"Sir," she said, "you need to change the APN settings in the phone, but I can't assure you it will work."

"All right, so what are the settings?"

"You need to download them via a wi-fi connection onto your iPhone. Do you have a pen?"

"Yes, go ahead."

"You need to go to https://iphone.com.ph/config."

I entered the settings in my web browser. The page timed out.

"Thanks," I said and hung up. She didn't seem too helpful or willing to help, but she was actually more helpful than I thought at first.

I typed the following into Google: iphone apn settings for globe in manila.

After clicking on a couple links, I found this site: http://philmug.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=24153. The correct url the customer service rep should have given me--https://iphone.globe.com.ph/config--was there. You would think she would know the correct address. It didn't matter anymore. I clicked on the link, and it downloaded a file of an unknown type named "config." I opened it with Notepad just to see what was in it. Just a bunch of code and some references to xml and Globe Telecom. I looked back to the site where I found the link. There were instructions for changing the APN settings. I checked my phone. I assumed iPhones that hadn't been unlocked or jailbroken wouldn't have this feature available but that I might. Yes. It was there a couple levels down under settings. I clicked on Settings, General, Network, and Cellular Data Network. There were fields for APN settings for Cellular Data and MMS as well as login fields. Since I'd used MMS successfully on this phone already and there weren't any login settings entered there, I figured I'd try changing the APN settings for Cellular Data and see what happened. I changed internet.globe.com.ph (postpaid) to http.globe.com.ph (prepaid) then restarted my phone for good measure and gave it a try. Bingo! Online again. I don't know why I didn't look into doing this sooner.

Labels: 3G, APN, Globe Telecom, Internet, iPhone, MMS

I guess it was bound to happen. Working from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. the past couple days has been challenging enough since I've had to readjust my sleep schedule again. Yesterday, I came home, ate breakfast, then slept from around 10 to 12, watched Eastern Promises (good movie by the way), worked out, then slept again from 7 to 10, and headed into work. It would be nice to get some solid, unbroken sleep.

Anyway, by the end of my shift I was exhausted and looking forward to going home and getting some rest. The shuttle van my company provides was supposed to pick me up at 8:30, so I had to wait 30 minutes. Okay, I wasn't thrilled about that, but I waited anyway. By 8:45 I'd given up waiting since I was nodding to sleep on the sidewalk in front of work. I stood up, stepped out into the street and the rain, and hailed a taxi. The ride itself was smooth, and the driver didn't ostensibly try to rip me off. The problem came when we entered Rockwell. The smallest bill I had on me was 1000 pesos ($20 US), and the driver didn't have change.

"All right," I said. "You don't have change?" I looked over the seat at the meter. It read 80 pesos. "Okay. Eighty pesos," I said. "I'll be right back."

I ran into the 7-Eleven at my building and asked for change, but they didn't have it. I ran across the street to Figaro. Same problem. When I came back out into the rain, the driver had pulled up in front of the coffee shop. Apparently, he was afraid I was going to stiff him. I got back in.

"Drive up the block," I said. "There's a bank around the corner."

He drove me to the bank. I looked over the seat. The meter was still running. Scum.

We pulled up in front of the bank, and I ran up to the ATM. I didn't want to take money out because of international service fees, but I was wiped out and wanted to go home, so I did it. I took out 4oo pesos, expecting four 100 peso bills. Instead, the ATM spat out two 200 peso bills. Nice. To hell with it. I walked back down to the cab and opened the door. I held out the bill.

"Do you have change for this?" I snapped. Yes. It was a rhetorical question.

He pulled out a 100 peso bill. The meter read 90 now. He also held a twenty and smaller bills in his other hand. Nice. He was giving himself a tip. A whopping 40 cents.

"Choke on it," I barked.

I snatched the hundred out of his hand, tossed the 200 at him, and slammed the door. I'd actually planned on giving him a hundred anyway since he hadn't tried to screw me until it came time to pay, but now I was pissed. It was a two dollar cab ride with the tip, so the money was never the issue; the attitude was; the sense of entitlement, of getting over. Are you telling me no one in this damned city has change for twenty bucks?!?! I'm sure the stores didn't want to give it to me because I wasn't patronizing them at the time even though I'd been to both places several times before.

I'm still disgusted. I could take nine cab rides here for the price of one in New York, and that's not including the New York tip. I'm still floored at how these bastards are scrounging for pennies. It creates a lot of unnecessary aggravation for me and every other foreigner of whom they try to take advantage. I actually sympathize with their plight, but they're not dealing with it the right way. I guess they figure they'll never see the passenger again anyway, so get what you can from them while they're there. It's just sleazy.

Labels: ATM, cab, Eastern Promises, Figaro, international bank fees, Manila, New York, pesos, poverty, ripoff, Rockwell, sleep deprivation, taxi, work. 7-Eleven

As you know from my previous post about this, I was able to have AT&T suspend my service while I'm out of the country for $1o a month. So, where does that leave me then? The iPhone is little more than a glorified mp3 player without phone and data access. The solution was to jailbreak my iPhone and swap out the SIM card with the one from the cell phone my company provided me. (For information on jailbreaking your iPhone visit http://blog.iphone-dev.org/.) Everyone here uses prepaid phone cards to load their phones, and text messaging with these services is cheap--about two cents a message outgoing and free incoming. And those rates are across the board for international texting, too. You can't beat that. I even was able to send MMS (pictures) messages internationally, a service AT&T won't provide until after summer.

Calling is a different story. Assuming you load your phone with 500 pesos ($10 US), a ten minute call will burn that up. So, I can make and receive calls on my iPhone now, but I do a lot more texting, and texting is a hell of a lot more enjoyable on the iPhone than that Nokia piece of crap I'll get charged $250 for if I lose it.

Now I can make calls and text, but what about Internet access, email, and other web-based services? I have Internet access in my apartment, but it wasn't wireless, so I went out and bought a cheap Belkin wireless router for 2500 pesos ($50 US). Now I can check email and do everything else while I'm in my apartment from the comfort of my bed if I so desire, and I do. I can do the same outside if I can find a hotspot, but they aren't as plentiful here as they are in NYC. Still, the texting keeps me as connected as I really need to be. I'm here on a work assignment, so I have almost constant access to a computer and the Internet. GPS still works, but it works a lot better with a data plan and plentiful hotspots. Also, there's no voice mail service with the prepaid phone card. That's not really a big issue. Most of the calls I make are international via Skype anyway, and if someone really needs to get in touch with you there are plenty of alternatives. By the way, Skype has unlimited calling plans to landlines for as little as $5.95/mo for calls to the US and $12.95/mo worldwide. Computer to computer is always free.

I also like using the prepaid phone card. It's a little inconvenient to have to buy one every so often, but they have other alternatives for adding a load to your phone. I like being able to ration out the pesos. In some ways it's easier to keep track of my spending. It's a hell of a lot better than getting raped by the big T for international roaming charges. I've heard horror stories of $30,000 phone bills, and no, that's not a typo. No thanks, AT&T. I'm happy with your service, but your billing sucks.

Labels: data, international roaming charges, iPhone, jailbreak, SIM card, texting

So, I've been here over a week now, and my sleep is still off. I would say I'm dealing mostly with insomnia at this point. I start working my new permanent Manila shift tomorrow. I'll be working from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. Monday through Friday. The anticipation of the new shift is probably at least partly responsible for my sleep issues. Tomorrow--or I should say Tuesday--will be a long day for me.

My coworkers who came down from New York with me went out the first night and partied. I don't know how they did it. I only managed to sleep a couple hours during the 20-hour flight here, so I crashed and burned once I checked into my room. They had a great time, and I wish I could have gone with them but I just couldn't make it. That's how it was for a good part of the first week. I allowed myself to sleep whenever I felt like it in an effort to catch up, though I've read you can never really catch up on sleep. I think I would disagree, though.

I felt rested enough the next day to head out with everyone to a club and meet up with the new analysts we would be training. We reserved a VIP room and drank beer, played pool, and sang karaoke. The new analysts, known to us as CSEs, are a good-natured, fun-loving group of people, and I think meeting them in such an informal setting for the first time was an excellent idea. I'm not a big fan of the stuffy corporate atmosphere, and I think it's good for us all to feel comfortable with each other since we'll be spending a lot of time together. I think the work experience will be just as rewarding as the travel experience.

I spent that weekend hanging out with my coworkers from the New York office, mostly shopping for essentials like food and clothes, dining out, and trying to get my sleep cycle in some kind of order.

Monday, we met at the Joya building in Rockwell Center around 2:30 p.m. to catch the shuttle van that takes us to work at Three World Square in downtown Makati City. Traffic wasn't bad at that time, and we made it in about twenty minutes. Work was light this week, mostly spent getting our laptops setup, our VPN access to New York, and ironing out a few issues before going live on the third.

There's a lot of construction going on by the Manila office but not a lot of options as far as eating out is concerned. There's McDonald's, Chinese, Japanese, a pancake house, a sandwich shop, Starbucks, a chicken joint, and a pizza place. I probably sound spoiled, and maybe I am, but it will be challenging for me to eat healthful meals at most of these places, especially since most of them will probably be closed during the hours I work. I'll have to see as the week progresses how things pan out. I'll certainly want to bring my own lunch if I can.

By the way, some observations about the food here: I still haven't tried Filipino food yet, and to be honest I'm in no rush to do so. After trying guinea pig in Peru, I think I've pretty much had it with being adventurous about what I put into my body. I know what I like and what I don't like, and I'm cool with that. I'm sure I'll try new things that intrigue me, but I won't go crazy. That being said, I've noticed that generally the portions are smaller here than in the US--no big surprise. That's no doubt a contributing factor to why most Americans are fat. Even the portions in McDonald's are smaller with the exception of the burgers and the Chicken McNuggets.

And speaking of chicken, apparently, unless you specify otherwise, all chicken served in restaurants here still has the skin on it. We even went to Teriyaki Boy the other night where I ordered a chicken teriyaki bento box, and though the menu clearly stated in no uncertain language that the chicken was skinless, it had skin on it.

There were a few other hitches in my week. Though I was able to get a temporary pass to the Rockwell Club which gives me access to the workout facilities, I still hadn't received my permanent ID by the time the temporary one expired Wednesday, so I had to head down to the club's office yesterday and get another temporary ID since the permanent one still wasn't ready. I lost Internet access sometime after midnight on Thursday, and called down to the front desk a couple times but still had no Internet at 9 a.m., so I headed down there in person to see what the story was. The guy at the front desk was clueless and put me on the phone with the cable company. After being transferred a couple times, I was informed there was an outage and that they were working on it. They suggested pulling the power and coax cables and jacking them back in. I had done that already, so all I could do was wait. I headed over to Figaro, a small coffee shop around the corner and had a small gourmet breakfast of honey glazed bacon and eggs over ciabatta bread and coffee--a nice little breakfast for 199 pesos or roughly $4.oo.

To further complicate things, my company had us attend a cultural awareness class Thursday from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. A great idea, but the timing sucked, and the class ran over twenty minutes. Afterward, we were hungry, so we ate at the McDonald's up the street, that being the only thing open at that time. Another night's sleep screwed up.

We did evaluations of the CSEs Friday, and I wish I could say things went smoother, but there were a few rough spots. I had to sit in the room with them and watch how they handled the calls. Basically, I had to watch to see if they opened all the correct databases, followed procedures, etc., while their team lead role played as the end user on the phone. I think I would attribute some of the problems to nervousness and others to spending way too much time documenting the calls when they should have been trying to resolve the issue at hand--an easy problem to correct. We'll see how things go tomorrow. The Manila office is supposed to get about twenty percent of the total call volume, so I don't think it will be too bad, and the CSEs will really learn the job best by doing it.

The evaluations done, there really wasn't anything else for us to do, so we left work early and ate at the aforementioned Teriyaki Boy. Aside from the skin on the chicken, the meal was good and uneventful.

After dinner, we walked around a little and explored the local shops of Market Market and Fort Bonifacio, then we decided to call it a night. We grabbed a taxi and headed back to Rockwell, and that's when the real adventure began. The driver took it upon himself to make a detour through a seedy neighborhood under the pretense of getting around the heavy traffic. At first, we thought he was doing right by us since the van had taken a similar detour earlier that day, but instead of circumventing the traffic and abbreviating our commute, it prolonged it by taking us straight into a blocked off street.

Randy knew the area better than the rest of us who'd just arrived, so he started giving the driver orders which the driver ignored. My thoughts at the time were that the driver was trying to jack up the fare or he was just incompetent or he was setting us up to be robbed by his buddies. Think about it: four Americans with new laptops in a bad neighborhood of an unfamiliar country--not good.

Eventually, we got back to the main thoroughfare and made it back safely to Rockwell, but Randy wasn't kidding about these cab drivers. My final opinion on the incident is that the driver knew exactly what he was doing. This is his country, and his job is driving people around the city. He wanted to jack up his price. The money means a lot less to us than it does to him. An extra 75 pesos ($1.50)? If he wasn't trying to screw us maybe he would have received a bigger tip. The only reason he received a tip at all was because it was easier for us to give him 100 peso bills than wait for change. I understand that 95 percent of the people in this country are poor, but it's really ashame that people like this driver haven't enough respect for us or themselves to do their jobs fairly and with a modicum of pride. I think it takes a lot of nerve to attempt to take advantage of someone like that.

Finally, yesterday, the four of us decided to take a trip to the Greenhills Shopping Center just east of San Juan. It's basically a huge flea market and haggling is not only commonplace but expected. A lot, if not most, of the merchandise on sale consists of knock-offs, bootlegs, black- and gray-market items. I picked up a couple Lacoste polo shirts for $12 US, but that was it. I personally didn't need and wasn't interested in anything else the merchants were selling. It took some getting used to hearing them constantly calling to us from their booths:

"Sir, do you need a wallet?"

"Sir, do you want a watch?"

"Sir, do you want a bag for your wife or girlfriend?"

It was that and the fact that everyone was staring at us, and why wouldn't they? Three black guys, one of which towered over everyone else at 6'5", and a white guy walking around an almost exclusively Asian marketplace. The attention hasn't been a negative thing, though, except maybe for some of the cab drivers looking to take advantage of us.

Tomorrow the call center goes live. Hopefully, it will go smoothly.

Labels: CSE, Figaro, Greenhills Shopping Center, Joya, Makati, McDonald's, San Juan, Teriyaki Boy