Swimming Through Treacle

Treacle

The more astute readers will notice that its been over a month since I posted anything. Clearly the blogging apathy has hit, which any blogger will recognise as something which happens once the lustre of your shiny new blog begins to dull. But there are more sinister forces at work. I fear I may have been infected by the Philippines Treacle Syndrome.

This deadly wasting disease is most prominent on a Friday afternoon. It causes ordinary tasks to take several times longer than they usually should. Here are some examples:

Buying Ibuprofen in Mercury Drug:

You walk into the store. There are 6 staff in the shop, and 2 customers. You stride to the counter, behind which are 4 of the staff. They instantly stare intently at pieces of paper in front of them. Some try to run out the back door. Some duck under the counter. Eventually one will have to talk to you …

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Putting the Grate Back in Immigration.

Visa HellLast week I had to go to immigration to renew my visa. I'd been there a couple of months ago, and although the process was long-winded and expensive, it didn't cause me too much pain. Therefore when I revisited the office last week, in the Intramuros district of Manila, I was entirely unprepared for the seven circles of hell which awaited.

Last time I'd got there at around 11, and had to wait until 3.30 for my visa, which had effectively taken up a whole day. This time I hopped into a taxi at 7.30, before the inevitable traffic jams had a chance to build up, and was there at 8am when they opened. My first surprise was that I wasn't allowed in the building. At all. Two months ago I'd had no problems when I turned up wearing shorts, but since then they'd put up a cheaply photocopied notice saying "No shorts or sandals", and were refusing to let anyone thusly attired in the building.

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Power to the People

Broken PylonThe Philippines is not blessed with the best electricity system in the world, and its certainly not the cheapest, so it makes sense in some ways that they're a little careful with it. But how that manifests itself is sometimes broken, sometimes scary, and sometimes a little of both.

Take for example the number of cars driving around without lights on at night. These are primarily taxis, jeepneys and buses, and its not in an "Oh its just past 6pm and I forgot to turn on the lights" sense that they do it, its in a "This electricity stuff costs money, so by driving around without lights on I will save up to 10 Pesos a day of gasoline." sense. Way to go.

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Smart gets Dumber

So I probably didn't mention the incident last weekend when three Smart Broadband employees came and sat at my house and watched files download. I was demonstrating to them how slow my connection is, and the fact that it is impossible for me to download any large files, or watch any streaming media. I've been complaining about this for the last 5 months, on and off, so I was delighted to finally get some response.

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Ruminations on Taxis

Taxis in Manila do one of two things: If you're standing there waiting for a taxi to appear, they hide. Sometimes they'll drive by with the light on, but they won't stop, because that just means they forgot to switch the light off. You can wave your arms around, shout, whistle, whatever you like, but … Read more