bored update…

I think Rachel Bilson is the cutest girl currently alive. I am considering stalking her. From now on, I have decided I will only have Rachel Bilson pics on my blog.

I have almost no more cash here in Manila which is a big relief, as I’ve been a bit stressed, having some large amounts lying around as I still can’t do banking here. I shipped off my cash with some Australian guys so I am now living stress-free. So to any prospective thieves, there is nothing of value to steal anymore except maybe my awesome 9:1 printer/fax/copier/scanner/phone/etc which I almost never use, but which I will guard with my life.

I had to fire my maid this week after she stole $100 (about 5000 pesos) from my desk. Whenever I asked her for it back, she would make classic manila style excuses and denials, and then she broke down last week and admitted she “borrowed it” and spent it. She promised to pay it back and I said she can simply work off the debt quickly (I pay her about 2500 peso a week for 15hrs per week work effort, but she only ever does about 3hrs a week) so it would only take her a fortnight. I sent her a message on Wednesday last week telling her she could take the day off and pls show up on Friday. She has not shown since then so I messaged her today (the following Tues) and she responds “You said I could come in on Friday so I will come in next Friday.” She’s shown up for work about 1 day a week for last couple months and I kept on paying her each week and pleading with her to pls attend her job more, but obviously she picked me for a sucker and I decided I had enough of being a sucker so I had to finally let her go. If she ever shows up with the $100 I will let her keep it, but if I was a bookmaker, the odds of her returning that $100 would be something in the range of South Africa winning the RWC, so like 150:1.

There is a funny pattern sometimes here in Manila where it seems the more generous you are, the more you get screwed. I had a massage the other day for my peddlar shoulders, and it was a really good massage so I gave the girl like 5x what she asked for, which wasn’t all that much - she definitely deserved it. She immediately realised I was some kind of generous fish moron, so she grabs onto me demanding more, refusing to let me leave. I was not impressed as she was hanging onto my arm dragging me to the ground, her eyes glazed over with manic greed. When I spoke to the manager later, I was told the girl claimed I never paid her. So sick.

When I bought a TV when I got here, I tipped the salesman $50 as he was really competent, professional, gave me good advice and made sure the TV was delivered on time, which for Manila, is nothing short of a freaking spectacular miracle. Rather than be grateful for the very generous tip, he then screwed me a number of times before I wisened up. The cable quality here is really crap, so he advised me to hire his friend at VERY expensive rates to illegally install something to increase the cable signal. When that didn’t work, he advised me I needed a $100 adaptor or something (I don’t know crap about anything technical) so I bought the adaptor off him, but was concerned when he arrived with this little plug which was not packaged. He “installed” this plug which, of course, did not improve the signal in the slightest. In the midst of all this, I had promised him $5 a VCD if he brings me a list of TV shows I really wanted (I had no internet at this stage and was going stir-crazy). The VCDs sell for something like $1 or $2 so I was giving him good markup on his promise the quality would be excellent. I bought the VCDs with the adaptor and 90% of them didn’t work or were in Chinese or whatever.

I have many more stories like this, and its pretty sad, but I guess that’s the way it goes.

I learned a valuable lesson about why my bribes weren’t working this week. Previously, I have stood dumbfounded as people just ignored me when I offered huge bribes for things I needed desperately, like offering 5000 pesos for this guy to send a fax I needed sent immediately. I could never understand why this was, but I now think they just thought I was crazy and therefore didn’t take me seriously. My gym hours in the building are 10am-10pm and I wanted to go to the gym at 11pm the other night. I asked the night receptionist if he could open the gym for me and he said “sorry sir that’s impossible after 10pm”. I tried offering a tiny bribe, I handed him 50 pesos, and he beat me to the gym doors to unlock them.

Posted in Random |

No Responses to “bored update…”

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment