heart-racing discovery

The news came as a surprise. Early last month, my classmates and I attended a seminar in the school where two of our instructors are pursuing their graduate studies. It was a 3-hour drive from our city.

I had a slight headache. Although generally bearable, I felt occasional painful throbbing in my head. I informed my companions about it and while the program has not begun, our college head decided to bring me to the school clinic to ask for a tablet of Paracetamol. The nurse did not issue the med right away though but cuffed me with the sphygmomanometer instead.

“Are you high blood?”

“No”, I replied.

She pumped the device again and while she’s reading the meter, I began to suspect. “Why? Did it register high?” I asked calmly. “Yes. 130/120”, she affirmed. “Oh! It’s the first time I’m told such”, I said with a sheepish smile which I cannot tell whether due to my attempt to shrug off the fact or I was just feeling weak to be panicky.

I was given the tablet and a glass of water. “Rest for a while”, the nurse advised me pointing to the couch behind her desk.

She checked my BP every 5 minutes and told me it was declining. I fell asleep in the interim when our college head left me to check our companions. When I woke up about 20 minutes later, I was feeling better; not very well but better. Before sending me back to the seminar venue, we checked my BP once more and it had slipped back to the normal range. We attributed the incident to the sweltering weather in the area – a province not blessed with vast bodies water and has been greatly affected when a nearby volcano erupted 18 years ago.

The drowsing effect of the med brought me to a stupor mid of the second talk and I was awakened with the sound of clapping.

I was back to my ‘normal self’ the entire trip home.

* * * * *

Thursday afternoon of the following week, I entered the Electronics laboratory to refill my bottle of water. One Engineering instructor had with her a sphyg so I decided to have my BP taken without anticipating a negative result. But the reading still seemed a surprise to me. Two more tries later, the result was consistent: 120/110. As if doubting her own skill, she recommended that I ask our school nurse for second opinion although technically hers was already the ‘second’ opinion.

Fifteen minutes later, I was in the clinic. A different device and a different person affirmed the result: 120/110.

* * * * *

As advised, I sought a doctor’s evaluation. The next week, I went to my employer’s dispensary. In fact I had fasted overnight in case a blood analysis will be required. After being queried at the nurse’s station and my BP checked as well, I was given a slip with the instruction that I have to have my BP monitored by someone every morning for 7 days. Based on which would the doctor shall give his recommendation upon my return. I was told though that in any case I feel something odd, I could come back immediately.
Thankfully though, there are no weird feelings ever since I was first told of my condition.

* * * * *

Despite slight fluctuations in my BP register, the doctor said that these were acceptable especially that BP is affected by fluid intake and the hot weather. I was relieved and grateful. Nonetheless, I personally took the initiative to be more careful. I was a pescatarian for 4 years so I guess it has little to do with diet but I did cut on carbs. I’m also guilty of living a sedentary lifestyle although recently stress is quite inevitable especially that we just had our finals at school; I did gain weight within the first quarter of the year. Heredity is also one possibility.

Regardless, I guess it’s time to act now and do things to truly a healthier me.

Weekend Recap and Monday’s Incident

Friday had been a feast. Lunch was an invitation for taste-test of food prepared by culinary students and I observed that pork was the main recipe so my pescatarian diet constrained me to the non-pork ingredients of the dishes nevertheless there were too much for lunch. I particularly loved the cheese and bacon rösti.

By afternoon, these came in for sampling

A sumptuous dinner with the staff of the school paper was scheduled in the evening. There was a specialty pizza that was has at least 24” diameter, plus a blueberry crepe and a glass of iced choco peppermint for me. Aah! Good thing we walked home so there were roughly 30 minutes to burn some calories.

* * * * *

Saturday was a dragging day at school and all I wanted to do by the end of the day was to go home and nap. On the ride home I noticed that my spare wallet’s missing. A classmate kindly paid for my fare although I have sufficient coins in my pocket. Good thing there weren’t major IDs so that the most important thing in it was money – fortunately no more than 500 pesos but unfortunately it was all I have for the next few days.

* * * * *

Yesterday, we were enjoying a little leniency at school since one instructor was on leave while the others were busy preparing for an upcoming seminar in a couple of days. In the middle of one class though, I felt something weird as I occasionally shifted position in my seat. I discreetly wiped my hand over my behind and the crime was confirmed:

I had sat on a gum. Yuck! That was rude and disgusting! It’s my first time ever to be a victim of such. I’m glad that my sling bag falls low enough to cover it until I got home.

Oh man… you call that lucky for the Chinese New Year huh?

Drop the script shall we?

EPISODE 1: ‘Watermelon’

Oxygen: One medium Tropical please!

Storekeeper: What fruits?

(‘Tropical’ is a mix of any 4 fruits of one’s choice; there were only 5 options in the stall that time)

Oxygen: Uh watermelon, apple, mango & banana

Storekeeper: Sorry, it’s too late to slice the watermelon tonight. To guarantee freshness, we make sure to sell such fruits within the same day they are peeled/sliced (In other words, you can’t have your watermelon because you didn’t come earlier today, D’head!)

Oxygen: Ok… I see that I have no option what would make my tropical blend then. (The math of it isn’t tough, A’hole!)

Storekeeper could be thinking: (Actually you have an option on its permutation. In what order shall we put in the only 4 fruits available? Stupid!)

Oxygen gulps at the thought of challenging the storekeeper in math then gulps his tropical shake which, surprisingly, is refreshing even without the watermelon.

* * * * *

EPISODE 2: ‘Sour Cream’

Oxygen: Strawberry fizz float and McShaker fries for dine-in…

Counter: What’s the flavor of your shaker fries?

Oxygen: What are the options?

Counter: Cheese or Sour cream…

Oxygen ponders for a second…

Counter: but only cheese is available tonight, sir

Oxygen breathes in, then out: And I was given a choice huh?

Counter flashes her [likewise-scripted] smile

Oxygen would like to advise Miss Counter to stay away from the fryer as distant as possible because it’s beginning to fry her brain but then Oxygen just shook his bag of fries vigorously.

Crossroads

i can wait, time won’t

There was the crossroads; a major one which I had dealt with so far. If you had been following this blog for some time, you could have read a couple of posts on how dragging my job has become.

Early on when I realized that the pressures at work are eating me, I contemplated the circumstances and came up with a rather frail decision to resign by the deadline I set for myself.

Certainly my job wasn’t a complete waste. Professionally, I was privileged to not only join the civil service but that it is the industry I pursued after high school, considering that I was then 18 years old with only a certificate that is technically not a college degree. Indeed it was a feat among the distinguished few achieved so far by our batch and which my previous mentors commend.

My job gave me the advantage of better understanding of theories taught at my present school thus earned for me not only certain privileges but respect from younger classmates and faculty members. (Speaking of ‘young’, it recently hit me that few of our instructors are actually younger then me). For several times this blog has also been a testimony of the good times I had with my work colleagues; there were the outings and other recreational activities which we enjoyed doing together. Salary wasn’t very rewarding but it did pay for my education since I entered formal college in 2003 not to mention the few needs and wants I acquired for myself.

But then I came to where my path forks and it necessitated a choice. There was dilemma that’s like a bus I know would drop me off at some point but which I boarded and rode along nonetheless. I am serving a company which prevailing policies would require a college diploma prior granting a promotion; with which I have no objection. But since I could attend school only after office hours, obtaining a diploma is the prize in the still dim distance because even though I could track my progress with the course curriculum, I cannot forecast when or whether my remaining units shall be made available in the evening schedule.

Five years in the company to which I credit the experience. Eight years since graduating from high school; the first 2 gave me credentials enough to land a job, the next 6 were spent striving for a college degree. I used to be the youngest in class, now I’m among the seniors. Come summer next year my sibling will also enter college. Then I knew my education should wait no longer for it had unwillingly taken backseat to my office job long enough. I can wait, time won’t.

Of all the advices my friends gave me, Bert’s made a mark: “Weigh the circumstances carefully, decide when you’re composed. And when you’ve come up with a decision, stick to it. No ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ because if you doubt, you might regret it afterwards”. So when my superiors summoned me a day after I’ve forwarded a letter, I already knew what I wanted; really wanted.


*****

Since a couple of weeks ago, I am a fulltime student again with 34-unit load entailing consecutive classes from morning until early evening. There’s a lot of schoolwork to do and adjustments to cope with time and money-wise. So far I’m happy to be back to school with a renewed spirit. I am now trekking the path I chose for myself. When my study leave expires by the end of the semester, I’ll return to our company with revitalized mindset. I might continue farther along or maybe another crossroads awaits me there.

WAT-SO-Not Customer-Friendly

The kind of service I get from the branch of Watson’s convenience store in our city mall is well, not convenient.

For the past two years I think, I’ve tolerated and simply shrugged off their not giving back centavo changes until recently that I had enough of what seems to have become their norm if not strategy to increase revenue. In my experience, for every 10 transactions I made, only twice was I given exact change.

What irks me next to not getting my loose change is that their cashiers wouldn’t even bother to apologize that they ran out of centavo hence the deficit. They have practiced or more appropriately perfected the art of playing mute and just handing the change which defies the rounding off rules since it’s always rounded down to the nearest ones. Accepting it without an appeal is the prelude to you walking away and them moving on to the next paying customer. Just when all you want to hear them say even half-sincerely is, “Is it ok with you that we don’t have any 25 (or 50) centavos to give?” which could have at least held your building temper for a minute more, they would rather hear you demand for it. Thank heavens if they asked; at least they did.

Imagine if the change should be whole-point-twenty five, they could have asked the customer if he has 75 centavos to exchange for a peso.

Foremost, if they have no plans of providing a centavo fund, they better strip off the decimals from their prices. Second, in case they cannot produce the coins, it’s the business that must be on the “losing end” and give way. As customers, we buy their goods priced with interest already. So why would they make it seem that we are the ones who owe them debt of gratitude by purchasing hence we still are charged a little extra by not getting the loose change? If the jeep/public transport drivers here in the Philippines usually give way when they don’t have centavos to change for the PHP 7.50 fare despite the minimal earnings from driving, then why these bigger businesses don’t? Consider the figures that for every 20 customers to whom they don’t give back 0.25, they earn PHP 5.

As if that isn’t bad enough, they wouldn’t attend to you immediately even if you demanded for the loose change. Twice they almost consumed my fuse when after I told them I’m willing to wait for my centavos while they [go] find some for me, the cashier just said “ok” and asked me to step aside while she attended the others thinking that I was willing to wait until a customer from the line pays with some centavos even if that customer could be the last one by their closing time. Lucky them I was in my office uniform so I was reminded of what professional ethics is. However it also made me think that if in this country where unemployment stat is high hence being in corporate attire gives the impression that one is educated and professional , I, despite looking like one was still treated inferior, how worse do they deal with the modest-looking customers?

Talking about the line a while ago, what’s more annoying is that in their peak hours in the evening when shoppers pour in, just one lane is open yet 4 cashiers are in the counter chatting while endlessly counting their collections. To add to the “excitement” is when the credit card reader in that counter wouldn’t work, the sole cashier left to swipe the card at the other end of the store despite some 20 people lined up in her station.

I’m not generalizing that all Watson’s stores render poor service. Also, I know several other establishments with similar flaws. I believe though that this must not be tolerated and the management must do something to resolve this. If the cashiers worry about falling short of their collection hence do not give back loose changes – somehow, I pitty them that when I demand for my centavos, they dig it from their own pockets – then the more that the cashiers must appeal to the management to maintain a centavo fund. The businesses might need to recruit more employees who are more enthusiastic about dealing with people if not train their existing employees to be sensible. They should bear in my mind that business does not end by the closing time but rather if all customers had left the store hopefully just for the meantime.

As for us customers, we must speak up.

Call Each of These, "A Day"

In observance of the Philippine Labor Day, my original plan was to blog something about the Filipino workforce which should have been my first entry for May. However, my weekend turned out quite noteworthy hence could be a good excuse for yet the 2-paragraph draft of the Labor Day article.

Life indeed is full of surprises. With that I mean both pleasant and not-so-pleasant surprises. My recent experiences are like a seismogram showing pleasant-unpleasant-pleasant register.

Ridiculous Allowance

Past office hours on Friday, I was still in a chaos of thoughts. I was exhausted from the day’s work but still attempted to brainstorm a justification to appeal for exemption from the prescribed allowances for external trainings. We are targeting to attend trainings by last week of this month. After weeks of exchanging e-mails with prospective training centers querying for the must-knows and trying to politely deal with their aggressive marketing stratagem (amidst also a breakneck plan we were concurrently working on), my lower jaw dropped to find out how little are the allowances we’re given. We can’t imagine what type of lodging could we avail (if there’s any) for less than half a thousand pesos in the metropolis known to be the country’s business center. Shall we stay in a parking lot and be billed per hour? Hopefully not!

Even the registration fee they are giving us is short by more than a thousand pesos than what was quoted by the training center. Aaargh! I’m just so disappointed with it that’s why I’m drafting this blog tonight rather than the appeal we will be sending out tomorrow…

WORD OF THE DAY: forbiddance (n.) – act of forbidding. variance (synthetic): an amount purposely given as allowance but insufficient for expenditures hence is forbidding rather than allowing.


Stranded in the Rain

Still in great disbelief on our travel allowances, I stayed in the office and unwound by playing The Sims 2 which I learned just recently. By 6PM, it began to rain after a scorching day. I haven’t brought an umbrella so I shrugged it off thinking the downpour shall not last for long just like the previous night. I just enjoyed my game and eased myself knowing that Jing and Doth are still in the other workroom.

Three hours later, Jing and I decided to go home. From inside the office, we hardly hear the rain pour on the roof anymore but looking outside from the corridor, we saw with street lights that the drops are coarse and continuously falling; the type of rain that would not die down in the next couple of hours. We had to make a decision and the only thing we could do is phone for a taxi to fetch us from our building. There are just two taxi operators here and both do not use meters rather have fare matrixes based on zone areas. However, the taxis based outside the Freeport have cheaper rates therefore that must be option A. Jing scrolled through her phonebook for the number of a driver she got acquainted with. She called him using my phone but we learned that he wasn’t on business that time and has nobody to recommend. As Jing was trying to find another contact in her phone, its battery went empty. I offered my phone (it is open line) but as we switched it on, it prompted for a security code which I could not recall until this writing. The last hope was Doth’s. I was left wondering what could be my phone’s security code while Jing went back to their workroom only to return after a few minutes and announce that most of her entries are saved in her phone’s memory. My phone’s battery also was dead already that time *sob*

We were left with no choice but call the more expensive taxis with our fingers crossed hoping that they’ll charge us humanely somehow. P150 was the agreed price from our building to Jing’s residence which, I think would just consume no more that P75 if the taxi is metered at P30 flag down rate. *Tsk! Tsk!*

So we locked our workroom and stood on the terrace keeping an eye for the taxi. Good thing that we did not ran out of something to talk about until we realized that we’ve been waiting for more than half an hour! We had to make two follow-up calls 15 minutes apart, have cited our location from almost all reference points I could remember and joked that Spiderman 4 might have been in theaters already before the taxi arrived.

I got home by about 10PM


Book Shopping Spree

Almost lunchtime on Saturday morning, I went to the local bookstore with the prime purpose of canvassing for size A4 copy paper. After fulfilling my major objective, I browsed through the shelves without anything in mind to buy but I found a paperback copy of “The Devil Wears Prada”. I have long wanted to own a copy and I recall having it in my wish list last Christmas that I informed a friend about it who however seems to have asked with the prime purpose of “canvassing” for wish lists. *sigh* That was the only copy I saw thus decided to buy it thinking that it would take long again before they could restock.

I caught an eye of a sign hanging between a closed cashier lane and the children’s nook. The sign said “65% OFF”. With a glance on the hardbound books, one would think that those were mostly business and technical books. I pulled a few and discovered that those were fiction. Rounding the shelf, I checked some more and found some bestsellers or at least, bestselling authors. And guess what, it’s on sale at P65 (roughly USD 1.35) each! Those were secondhand books with traces of library cards peeled off the back while some just seemed to be inventory overrun all good as new! I searched through the pile and got “The Guardian” (Nicholas Sparks), “Leap of Fate” (Danielle Steel), “Dare to Succeed” (Mark Burnnet), and “The Things I Want Most” (Richard Miniter).

I left the bookstore thrilled with my finds. I think the earliest time I’ll be purchasing fiction books again will be by end of the year.

By the way, I was also glad to find that the bookstore’s management had acted on the complaint I reported to their Main Office via e-mail regarding their defective air conditioning and being understaffed. Although they explained in their reply why they cannot resolve yet the problem with the A/C units, they considered my suggestion of putting up electric fans in the aisles rather than just in the cashier lanes. I’ll try to share details of this in a separate post.


Stand! Err... No, Sit!

We attended Sunday worship in a different congregation. The chapel is at most 20 minutes ride via public transport from the city. Our family tries to visit that congregation at least once a month. The welcome was warm and the service went as usual. In the later part however, particularly during the announcements before the closing hymn and prayer, I don’t know if we’re really absent-minded or it’s something with a shift of the speaker’s intonation that seem to have given a cue, but my sister and I stood up at the wrong time! Fortunately somehow, we’re on the rearmost pew although some still sit on plastic chairs behind us. It’s like in an episode of Mr. Bean where he attended church and was late and sleepy. We immediately sat down and tried hard to hold back our giggles. *blushing*


Delectable Lunch, Frustrating Service

After the Sunday service, we decided to have lunch at The Coffee Shop located two blocks away. The Coffee Shop is its name although it’s more of a restaurant rather than a coffee shop. They are famed in the city for their giant tacos although I hardly recall of having tried it myself during my first visit about 10 years ago.

Anyway, we chose a table outside and were handed the menu. I ordered seafood kebab with fried rice while my companions got for themselves chicken barbeque, sweet and sour fish fillet, and buttered mixed veggies. We all ordered frozen iced tea for our drinks. The drinks were served in less than 10 minutes. Two plates and the utensils immediately followed. But the next half an hour was a complete drag! We anticipated the time it will take to have our food grilled but then we’ve noticed that there are about four batches of newcomers already served. Whatever was left of our frozen iced tea had been like hot tea already.

My patience gauge dropped below the red mark. I went inside the restaurant and confronted the waitress why our order was taking too long. Of course I anticipated the typical pacifying but invalid it’s-almost-done-excuse but I didn’t take my eye off her as she got anxious serving the other orders while I was irritably muttering things like “Wow! We’ve been waiting for almost an hour”. I didn’t go back to our table until I saw her go in the kitchen and put dishes on the tray. A minute later, she followed and served our orders. And hey! My sister’s BBQ isn’t among those yet. She told us that it will be served soon after and I sarcastically said, “Perhaps for another 30 minutes I guess”.

When all were served, we started eating. Testifying about the food alone, it’s really sumptuous. I have this theory though that it wasn’t the preparations that really took long but the lady might just have forgotten us because we’re outside. If it really took long to prepare our meals, then it would have been served hot. The food is already cold hence it could have been left unclaimed on the kitchen counter for sometime.

The waitress might really have felt our ire because she’s hesitant to come near us in a manner that she’s busing the dishes from a point just enough for her to reach it. Of course, a poor service equals no tip.

We bought half-gallon ice cream somewhere else before heading home. Ice cream truly can make anybody’s day; especially it’s chocolate.