Back from MLA

I just got back from a week's vacation in Manila. Boy, it sure was raining out there! But notwithstanding the occasional flooded street that caused traffic jams, I liked the rainy weather and the umbrella-busting wind action. Sure beats the sticky heat that was the daily experience when I was there earlier in the year, in late Feb to early March, to be exact.

Ditching my usual Jetstar Asia for Philipppine Airlines this time around, I thought the baggage collection at the Ninoy Aquino Int'l Airport would be faster since the terminal only serves PAL flights. Wrong!

After breezing through immigration, my fellow passengers and I soon found ourselves stuck in baggage collection, jockeying for spots near the conveyor belts with passengers from a PAL flight from Japan. It seems that those who flew in from Japan have had to endure more than an hour's wait for their baggages by then, triggering loud exclamations of dismay from Singapore-arriving passengers. If an earlier flight had yet to fully empty its cargo, what more us?

Despite the huge numbers of Filipino workers coming and going through our airports, airport management apparently still does not have an efficient plan to make baggage collection smooth and fast, rain or shine. What will it take to make this people remotely interested in drastically reducing the long waiting time a traveller must endure to retrieve his bags and boxes? Hello, this isn't rocket science, Mr Airport Manager! Surely you can do something to fix this?!

I could only sigh. Welcome to the Philippines. What else is new?

Anyway, after an hour of waiting, spent quietly observing the people milling around me -- most distinctive of all being the ladies who obviously were 'cultural entertainers' in Japan (they all look alike somehow: slim with long, straightened hair, tight jeans and shirts, high heels, many clutching Louis Vuitton bags, a brash, defiant sort of confidence) -- I finally had my luggage. Yey!

My 7 days home were a whirl of activity, as most vacations are wont to be. I won't bore with details but suffice it to say that through my packed days there, I was also filing away in my heart new, warm memories of unconditional love and kinship from family and good friends.

Some thoughts that crossed my mind while there:

1) Any meal, any activity that involves family members is a chance to reconnect.

I am so happy that I was able to spend most days with my sickly mother. We went to the hospital for her check-up together, went to the malls, watched a movie, ate food that we both missed. All the while, we also talked, catching up on each other's lives. She told me about the recent weddings of my cousins, her various ailments, her recent trip to Cebu while I told her about my new life as a wife, apprised her about my job and plans.

I was also so happy to see and hug and cuddle my 2 nephews and 1 niece. They are growing up so fast, their antics multiplying by the day!

Spent time too with my siblings and my SIL and BIL who are like my own sister and brother to me now. These folks always make time to see me, take me around, do errands together. Bless their hearts. I miss them already.

2. I am truly so blessed to have great friends.

As I only had a week, I didn't call most of the usual suspects to schedule a lunch or dinner. I knew that I was going to be tied-up with trips to the hospital so just sent word to 3 ladies, to see if we could have a quick catch-up over coffee.

As it turned out, I got to have lunch with Weng in Saisaki on Tuesday and a couple of drinks with Hanabanana in Giligan's Malate on Wednesday.

The show stopper was a text from Malou saying that dinner had been set for Sat night at Mard's place.

Now, if you were invited to Mard's for dinner, please don't say no because the food she prepares with my other mates is just YUMMY!!! And boy, was it good that night -- we started off with some ulang tom yam soup (made from scratch, pls), pako salad (delicious. I gotta try to make it myself, I think I can live well with just that!) and then pritong lumpia and humungous, gigantic, gargantuan crabs!!! For sweets, we had a heavenly chocolate caramel cake.

Through all the munching and slurping and glogging, 6 batchmates and good friends exchanged news, joked about, planned, reminisced. We didn't part until it was 4.30am on the day of my return flight to SG.

(We missed you then Anna, Kathy, Jasmin, Jean and Alma. Let's all come home at the same time one day soon!)

On a lighter note,

I watched Sukob ni Kris Aquino. (Pls don't pelt me with rotten tomatoes. I knew I was in for at least an hour of Kris and her idea of acting, so I knew I was in for torture.) Anyway, the movie is really scary, not because the plot is scary, because it ain't. Kris didn't disappoint. Her acting is still scary. She only has one expression on her face, which to me looks like she's found out she has an STD again.

And may I know how come the idea of 'sukob sa kasal' now involves death, death, death and more deaths? From old wive's tales, someone who marries on the same year as another sibling only has financial bad luck to possibly contend with. Certainly not death!

Wow, ang jologs ko!

Thinking about Filipinos in Lebanon

While reading today about how foreign governments have been working round the clock to find ways and means to evacuate their citizens from war-torn Lebanon, I couldn't help but feel sorry for many Filipinos still left in panic in the area.

For while Britons, Americans, French people, Russians, Greeks and Australians are waiting their turn to board the luxury cruise liners, or helicopters or coach buses that their governments have rustled up to ferry them to safety, my poor countryman have largely been left to fend for themselves.

Philippine officials have been quoted as conceding that they are unable to evacuate thousands of people on their own and have asked foreign governments for help.

Gloria Arroyo herself has asked that 30,000 Filipinos trapped in that land be spared. Yeah. Like Israel can programme their bombs or the Hizbollah their rockets so that these stay clear of those with Maharlika blood!

Trust them to remind us always how perfectly inutile they are. In every crisis it confronts, it seems that all the government can do is just wring its hands and say, 'Somebody help! We can't take care of our own. Help!'

How utterly pathetic.

In the meantime, let's all say a small prayer for Pinoys still in Lebanon at this time. I hope they all safely find their way home soon.

On S'pore salaries

I get many queries from friends and friends of friends asking about the Singapore salaries of varied posts, all linked to a job seeker's desire to write down a realistic figure in the 'expected salary' portion of his/her Singapore job applications.

As can be reasonably expected, all I could offer in this department were intelligent (hopefully) guess-timates based loosely on the extrapolations one can make when reading local newspapers about the salaries and financial habits of all sorts of people in the news, among other things. It's not a scientific figuring out of salaries for sure but I've always taken time to be extra careful when quoting a figure. I don't want to cause one to lose his or her chance at a job because of a laughably high expected salary, much less cause one the distress of finding out that he had priced himself too low due to ignorance or plain laziness in finding out for sure what his post's salary rate should be (as I strongly think was my case when I started here).

But now I think we can all kiss my guess-timates goodbye in favour of actual survey results. The Ministry of Manpower here has on its website the 2005 Report on Wages in Singapore. Browse it and see the mean (or average) and median salaries of selected occupations in all industries, sorted by industry, gender and age.

So if a graphic designer, for example, were wondering what average salary his compatriots were earning here, a quick check at Monthly basic and gross wages of selected occupations in all industries, June 2005, would show that for his occupation (listed under Technicians and Associate Professionals), latest data shows an average basic salary of S$2,419 and an average gross salary of $2,562. He can cross-refer also to the age table, and see what graphic designers in specific age brackets earn on the average.

Neat, huh? (God bless Singapore for their transparency and efficiency!)

Here's a list of other occupations and their average salaries from the same table. (S$1 = Php33.08):

Advertising and PR Manager - S$5,403

Creative Director (Advertising) - $4,907

Engineering Manager - $6,224

Marketing Manager - $6,190

Accountant - $3,844

Dentist - $4,637

Editor (Newspapers and Periodicals) - $5,177

Mechanical Eng'r - $3,634

Network and Computer Systems Administrator - $3,279

Systems Programmer - $3,436

Teacher of the mentally-handicapped - $2,303

Medical diagnostic radiographer - $3,005

HR personnel - $3,074

Bank clerk - $1,832

Seaman - $1,455

Store hand - $1,297

Do check out the resource and the Ministry's other publications online.

I'll google you

Well, what do you know!

'Google' has found its way into a US dictionary so quickly. According to an AFP report, the 2006 fall edition of Merriam-Webster will carry the verb, which means to search the Internet -- made popular with the launch of the famous search engine.

Of course, this isn't the first trademark that has also been transformed into a verb. There's Xerox and xerox (to photocopy). Know of any other?

Other new words in the dictionary: spyware, supersize, ringtone. Say hello too to 'mouse potato', which means someone glued to the computer screen the same way that a couch potato is someone glued to the telly.

One person in my neighbourhood

There's this character from the office who is always assigned to the same van I take when going home. He lives in central S'pore, like I do, and since we finish work at roughly the same time most nights, we always get assigned to the same coaster which the company provides to ferry those of us who end our workday when the MRT and public buses have parked for the night.

Being the naturally friendly fellow that he is, this man chats up whoever is sitted beside or near him, me included. In about three years of sitting with him in the van, he's told me many stories about himself and his family -- like the sickness and subsequent death of a brother, his daughter's university education in Australia, her graduation, her moving back to Singapore to look for work and her plans now to go back to Australia.

He's also told me about his political views, his comments on the day's burning issues and his struggle with the new programme installed at the office that was supposed to make his work easier but which only succeeded in making his blood boil during the early weeks. (I think I can safely say that he's over the hump now where this change is concerned because he has stopped trying to think up nasty meanings of the programme's acronyms. He used to say that NICA, the new programme, stands for Now I Can't Access.)

He's apprised me about his health woes and the medical expenses that he has to contend with, as well as his unhappiness over the early morning noises in his block that rouse him from his precious sleep. And who can forget the ghosts he saw while doing his NS in what is now Sentosa, and how his dad used to bring him to the area where I now live to visit a good doctor who has since passed away.

Yes, I now know so much more about this guy than I do any of my own uncles. Funny huh?

He narrates stories the way my dad does: in a winding, nostalgic way. I guess that's how it is when one is getting on in years.

There's a thing that worries me about my transpo-mate though.

He can tell me a story today with all earnestness and re-tell it again the next night without remembering that he had already told me the exact story less than 24 hours ago. When this happened the first time, I brought it up to him and told him, 'Hmm, didn't you tell me this last night?'

He said, 'Really?' and then kept quiet the rest of the way. I must have embarrassed him, I don't know, but since then, I've never had the heart to try and stop him from re-telling his stories again and again.

An example:

Transpo-mate: Did you know that the daughter of the sherpa (Tenzing Norgay) of the first man to climb Mt Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, married a Filipino? The daughter married Noli Galang, who used to be with this company.'

Me: Oh. (Oh no, here we go again. I've heard this 4 gazillion times! How do I stop him without embarassing him?)

TM: Yes. They met in England. Noli was one of the best guys I ever worked with, you know. He was very good at his job. It's a pity he has passed away.'

Me: Oh. (Help! How do I stop this? If I tell him the truth that this is my 4 gazillionth-and-one time to hear this, will he start to question his sanity? Help!)

TM: I kept in touch with him when he went home to the Philippines for good, you know. Those were the old days. Did you know Noli?

Me: I didn't know of him until 3 years ago, when you first told me this story. (Ooops, that just came out, honest! Shit, shit, shit! Why can't he remember?)

TM (pointing to area near my house): There used to be a doctor here who was very good. My father used to take me to see him. You won't get that kind of doctor nowadays.

Me: Oh. (Sigh.)

Repeat the dialogue exactly the next night and feel my pain.

But really, I just hope nothing's seriously the matter with him, health-wise. Altogether, he's a really nice, friendly chap.

Anyway, this past week hasn't been to bad for me. He's just come back from a vacation with the family to Switzerland, Germany and France. And boy, does he have travel stories to tell! He's been telling me about Switzerland so far, about how beautiful it is there.

I'm hopeful that with his Germany and France exploits untold to me so far, it will be a long time yet before I have to sit through another retelling of who married what where.

Bye, bye bag

I got my new weekend bag last week but I had to promptly send it back after two nights of mulling if it was a keeper or not.

It looked really nice and all the girlfriends who saw it said it was a head turner. It was roomy too and could fit a small elephant into it. But try as I might, i didn't like the way the bag stiffly held its U shape even when I filled it with my everyday bag stuff. I would have preferred it if the canvas was softer so it would just sort of collapse into a comfortable lump swinging by my side instead of it standing proud and U-shaped.

Also, the material, which was white canvas interweaved with a matted gold thread, rubbed not so nicely on the skin. All told, it didn't feel right on me.

And so, the bag's snaking it way back to the US as I write this. Boohoo.

But I have to commend Hayden-Harnett for their excellent customer service. When I wrote to say I would be returning the bag, I got this email from them:

----------
Hi, Joanne-

So sorry the MOSA didn’t work out for you! Of course, you can return the bag, no problem.

Just a suggestion, but we do have another style, the MALIA, that is a very soft city basket with woven trim...these
Are also a limited edition of 50! Anthropologie just bought them from us for their catalog/website....very cool bag and I think the
Strap, fabric, etc. would work really well for you this summer.

If you are interested in the exchange, then please let me know and I’ll hold a bag for you...maybe I can throw in a handful of goodies for
you also :)

Best,
Toni

----------

Now THAT is great service, huh?!

For that alone, I will continue to look through Hayden-Harnett's bags for a possible replacement to my Mosa. (I don't like the Malia bag they recommended. It is too tribal for my taste, not to mention that I think I can get something similar in Manila for much much less.) AND recommend the site to other girlfriends.

As for me, it's back to oogling weekend bags!