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

Well, after much anticipation, I'm here. The flight was long and taxing, but it was the most pleasant one I've had yet. Wednesday morning, the car service I booked online picked me up promptly at 7:30 a.m. and took me to JFK. I met up with one of my coworkers, who's also on the same assignment, and we hung out in the first class lounge for British Airways courtesy of Cathay Pacific Airlines.

We boarded about 9:45 and took off on time at 10:10. Pretty Asian flight attendants served a number of Chinese and gourmet meals and snacks. When I wasn't busy stuffing myself, I watched a couple of the latest movies on the pull out 18 inch flat panel monitors with which every seat was equipped. My seat had the ability to recline completely, but I didn't make much use of that feature though I did fall asleep several times. In any case, by the time I arrived in Manila I was very sleep deprived.

We had a layover in Hong Kong for about two and a half hours. After getting the wrong directions to the business lounge a couple times, we passed through another security check. They confiscated the bottled water I received on my first flight for some reason, and of course I was thirsty now. It was a little unsettling to see some people walking around wearing face masks—mostly flight attendants—but I suppose I can't blame them. I'm not too concerned about a virus killing me, but I hate getting sick.

Hong Kong looks very impressive from the air, by the way. I would definitely like to spend some time there while I'm in this region of the world. Who knows when I'll get the opportunity to visit it again?

The second leg of my trip was brief—only about 90 minutes—but I fell asleep for a few minutes during that flight as well. By the time we landed at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, I was a bit haggard. Immigration was smooth, but there was some confusion with the luggage I had checked. That kept us delayed at the airport longer than we should have been, but one of the porters managed to locate it for me, so it was only a minor snag. Customs was quick, and we were on our way.

We had instructions to proceed to the AVIS counter located just outside the airport exit where we would be transported to the Rockwell Center. The nature of these instructions was a little vague. I naturally assumed we would be driven, but that wasn't explicitly stated, and it's been my experience that assumptions aren't always accurate. But when we approached the counter, the girl behind the Plexiglas looked at me and said, “Mr. Dunn?” Was it that obvious? They were expecting us, of course. That was great because I was way too tired to have to do much thinking.

Our driver's name was Jhun, and he was friendly and courteous. He was apologetic about the fact that it was rush hour and traffic was heavy. Still, we made it to Rockwell in about twenty to twenty-five minutes. Jhun dropped me off at Manansala Tower, and I approached the front desk, which was manned by two security guards. They were absolutely clueless as to the whereabouts of the keys to my apartment even though they had my name and room number clearly written down in a ledger.

“Is there a problem?” I asked, cranky and somewhat annoyed.

“The receptionist is on break, sir,” one of the men said as they both continued rifling through drawers and folders for my keys.

I rolled my eyes and looked around, taking in my surroundings. About ten minutes later, a pretty Filipino girl appeared. She greeted me with a smile, verified my name, and pulled out a bag with my information packet and keys with an ease that made the guards look clueless. I'll cut them some slack, though. It's not their job to check people in, just check people. The bellhop took my bags, showed me up to my room, and left before giving me a chance to tip him.
I settled in, took a shower, and called Randy, who I mentioned in a previous post. He was working and would be off at midnight. He suggested a bunch of us get together for drinks. I was all for it, but when midnight came I was too tired and had to cancel.

I fell asleep around 12:30 then woke just before 4 a.m. That was it. I couldn't get back to sleep. I got online and called my family via Skype. I have a free month of Skype to land-line calls, and it works pretty well.

After awhile of lounging around the apartment and eating the food from the fruit basket that awaited me when I arrived, I decided to venture outside and get a sense of what things were like here. I walked out in shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt. I figured I'd just get some necessities and maybe a bite to eat. Most of the people I encountered wished me a good morning. Native New Yorkers aren't accustomed to strangers bidding them “good morning.”

I walked around a bit and realized I have no idea where I'm going. It was very hot and humid. I found a Starbucks about two blocks away. A security guard or cop—I didn't have the presence of mind to determine which—opened the door for me. I ordered a venti mocha Frappuccino and a bagel with bacon, egg, and cheese. Total cost: 245 pesos or $5.11 US. The drink was as I had expected it, but the bacon on the sandwich was tough and chewy and not what I would consider good.

After breakfast, I started back to the apartment since the sandals were hurting my feet. I stopped off at a gourmet deli on the way and bought a couple bottles of water, totaling 50 pesos or $1.04 US. Not bad. It would seem everything here is roughly half price.

That's it for now. I'm going to get ready to head out with my work buddies in a little while. It should be quite interesting. I'm glad I know a few people here already who can show me around.

Labels: Hong Kong, Makati, Manila, pesos, Rockwell, Starbucks