MMMiii!

I have a friend at work. She lived in the UK for about 5 years and just came back a little over half a year ago and she’s really funny sometimes.

A couple of weeks ago, she was arguing with another workmate and their topic of argument? Shower.

Here in the Philippines, a Shower doesn’t necessarily mean, in Jesma’s words “You know, like rain?” More often, it would mean a half-bath. Usually, it’s skipping the shampooing part.

And then a bath doesn’t mean a soak in a tub. It means soaping and shampooing–That’s Philippine English for you!

Anyway, I have another friend, Yu, who used to correct me all the time whenever I said shower because our bathroom didn’t have a working shower. Or so I thought. I just was scared to try because I had visions of it spewing rust all over my face. Since in the Philippines, baths are mainly done by using a dipper (Tabo) and a big pail (balde), he tells me that I shouldn’t use the term “shower” instead use pail-and-dipper… or something like that.

Anyway, I found out that the shower doesn’t spew rust, although it spews water EVERYWHERE. It needs to be replaced. I’m planning to buy a showerhead so I can really use the shower properly. I’m not sure how much that will cost as well.

The bathroom is also small and will need some decent bathroom lighting, however it’s a really small bathroom and a round fluorescent light should be good enough, I think. Our bathroom isn’t really glamorous. In fact, the sink has a leak so we don’t use the sink at all. XD

Anyways… I’ll check out showerheads once I get my computer out from it’s coma.

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Corvettes are Sexy. Don’t you agree?

But Corvettes will never have a place in this country. Well… maybe in showrooms, or really mad rich filthy filthy rich car collectors. I want a corvette though. Although I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to afford one with my meager salary, but dreaming is free, right?

I’ll probably be dressing up my corvette or keep customizing it. I’ll be adding stuff like fancy stylish wheels or housing for the headlights. I’ll decorate it with stuff like wings maybe, like Ayu’s backpack… somehow.

Inside, I’ll make sure it’s got nice floormats with matching seatcovers and matching steering wheel cover and … well… and an uber cool dashboard–matching as well. I’ll probably end up having a set and I’ll go broke just prettifying my car.

To top it all that, I don’t drive at all.

I’ll have to live in the States for it to have meaning (or reality) and since http://www.corvetteguys.com ships out their parts for free this July, I’ll probably buy from that site.

Well, to sum it all up, my pet corvette will be like my baby Taba who is high maintenance because I buy all sorts of stuff for it without it giving me anything in return. Except maybe an empty pocket and a headache.

P.S. He (Taba) chewed on the other ear of my Sennheiser earphones (that he mangled a couple of days ago).

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When my computer died, one of the first few things that I thought of was my motherboard being fried. It just wouldn’t turn on anymore suddenly. Then of course, I consulted some people, like my boss who sidelines as a computer consultant and technician and my friend Yu. I can’t remember who suggested it that my video card might have gone bad.

I do remember chatting with my boss though and he told me to try taking out the video card and see if it’s dirty or dusty and try cleaning it a little to see if it will change anything.

I took out my video card and I tried making the fan spin. It wasn’t spinning at all. So my boss told me to unscrew the fan and see if I could clean it out.

Is it still recognizable? I don’t know what you call that one, that thingie that reminds me of cities with high rise towers, that thing that functions as a heatsink maybe. Well… it was caked with dust. Literally caked. I had to poke the dust to remove it. Simple brushing wasn’t working. And the fan? Oh… a lot of work had to be done to the fan as well. I won’t even go into details.

Is there like a proper way of taking care of video cards? I know I’m not the best computer-literate person but if I did know how to take care of things, I might try to keep it in mind and prevent something like this from happening again. How do I avoid this from repeating anyway?

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I dote on my doggie, Taba. I buy him stuff that sometimes is really a waste of money, but I just wanted to buy them for him. He has 3 collars. Or maybe 4… or 5? I can’t really remember. Of course, these are just cheap collars. He’s not a really huge dog so they’re not too expensive. Does he wear collars? No, not really. He doesn’t like it. Sometimes I make him wear them though. Right now, he has a piece of a pant-leg on his neck. … Choker?

I buy him chew-toys. Like milk bones, or that croissant chew thingie. He really loved that croissant thingie, but when it flooded here, it was one of the few things that I forgot to save coz he had it in his apartment. It’s usually just in my room but he must have ran away with it and I forgot about it. So I bought him a milk bone. Same material as the croissant thingie, but in a shape of a bone. And he hasn’t touched it at all. It’s just gathering dust. =_=

I got him milk sticks instead. Those, he kind of likes, but they get eaten up too fast. What Taba really likes are cables. And dangling stuff. And my monkey fridge magnet. And pillowcase zippers. And my shoe laces. And my pop’s shoes and slippers. And chicken bones. And pork bones. And beef bones. And the bathroom door. And his leash. And my expensive Sennheiser CX300 earphones.

I also bought him doggie treats, but he doesn’t like it. Mama says I waste too much money on Taba. I’d rather just buy him chiffon cake or sponge cake. He likes those better. Rather than expensive doggie stuff.

My brother thinks otherwise. Orc thinks I should just buy baby gifts for his baby. But the baby isn’t even here, why should I buy him gifts? And sadly, I don’t really feel any attachment for his baby, even if he is my first first-degree nephew (or is he really? XD).

I’d rather be spending and wasting my money on people and things I love (and my dog).

orz… I can’t even sit still or sleep properly if I know he’s not in my room. =_=;;

I LUB TABA~

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Iks brought me a souvenir from his and Eelai’s last out of town trip. It’s just a choker with a cross pendant. It’s … cute. Although I’m not really into religious jewelry or jewelry with religious symbols…

I kind of feel like I’m desecrating it, but then a cross is just a cross, right? I also have cross-designed dangling earrings which I really like a lot, and I only got that for P50 because it had a defect which I fixed using my handy-dandy soldering gun.

I remember buying earrings for someone. The fish thingie that has a religious meaning… I like that design since it’s not blatantly like telling everyone I’m a religious person or something. It could be any fish for all anyone would care.

~_~ I don’t really wear chokers… I feel bad.

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At work, there’s this like … point system. There are certain metrics that you can get certain points for, and these points you can exchange for company trinkets. So far, I’m one of the ones with the most points all over the floor.

There’s this pen that I really really want. There are two kinds of ink pens available in the trinket cabinet. One is a carabiner pen… it’s like a keychain pen thingie. The other one, the one that I’ve been drooling on for weeks already, is the one they call the Magneato pen. It’s kind of like a necklace pen and the ends at the back of the “necklace” part are magnets. Isn’t it neat? I really really want it. And I have enough points for two of those.

>____< I REALLY REALLY WANT IT!!! There are two colors, silver and blue. And I’m greedy enough to want both of them.

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I knew there was a typhoon because I saw someone mention it on Plurk. And I knew its name was Frank because I chanced to watch on TV that there was a typhoon building up and that if it did, it was going to be named Frank.

Yesterday, we were supposed to be stranded at PBCom Tower. In the middle of the shift, the power was fluctuating and at one point, one of the elevators even started free-falling for a couple of floors (We’re at the 50th floor). We were also advised not to leave the office because of the strong winds and rain. The company even hired a transport service … a shuttle bus, maybe, to pick up the agents and drop them off on drop-off points on EDSA.

It was a nice thought that the company was thinking of our welfare. However, the bus would be picking us up around 2pm. What time do they think we’ll be able to go home if we waited for the free ride?

Knowing me, I was tempted to wait for it. Free ride. I love the word free. However, I also love the word sleep and rest. So I decided to go home. The winds were strong, but not strong enough to faze me. I went home anyway and I arrived home safely.

On the way home today, I noticed that the big billboards had their tarps rolled down (or to the side) anyway which was what actually scared me yesterday. I even had visions of a billboard flying and cutting the bus in half (top half, mind you).

Then I also started thinking about my insurance. Now that my basic salary is bigger, my insurance would also be bigger if anything happened to me on the way home from work. My mother could probably set up her own business with that money.

On the way home as well, I saw that BPI had a new product. The Direct Save-Up with automatic something. It looks pretty neat. The interest rate is higher as well. maybe I’ll finally be able to save up. I’m not interested in the life insurance though especially since I do have insurance with my job already. I might check out their life insurance quotes though.

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No offense to Indians or people from India, but I’m kind of glad that my account is going to shut down their site in India. I do get a lot of calls wherein the customer couldn’t thank me enough for not being Indian. I also dislike transferring or calling up other departments in India. They just have this… I don’t know… they have a different attitude that I just can’t live with.

Anyway, I had this customer and we were trying to make his old LinkSys router work. Now, I always tell my customers that I’ll be glad to help them with the basic configuration of their LinkSys router to work with our modem, but in the event that it requires advanced configuration and/or troubleshooting, I will have to refer them out. And they agree.

And so I was having trouble making the router work. The modem was working fine, customer can connect to the internet without the router, but when the router was connected, it wouldn’t work. It’s not a big deal bridging and unbridging the modem to make it work properly with the router, but well… the issue was the customer was typoing (over and over again) … (I shouldn’t really assume, but that’s actually what happened) at one point, and his router had a password that was different from the default.

As much as I would love for the customer to just press the darned reset button at the back of the router, we’re not really allowed to do that. LinkSys routers aren’t our products and we’re supposed to play dumb about it. Not that we know everything about it, but we’re not really trained for it. But the reset button is almost the same in equipment like these… so… anyway.

In the middle of our troubleshooting, trying to figure out the password for his router, he had his wife call LinkSys. Apparently, the agent was from India. The customer kept screaming that he has a nice lady from the Philippines helping him with his internet and he needs to know the password for his router. From the sound of it, his router wasn’t under warranty anymore and he was told that he was going to be charged.

The customer went back to me and he told me that this stupid person from India wanted to charge him for just to be told to press the reset button so he’ll just do it anyway. Well, he did it, and it didn’t work. While doing this, he kept going on and on about how he didn’t like Indians and that he could get a heart attack just talking with them.

I ended up selling him a modem-router (gateway).

I’m not saying that Filipinos are better technical support or even customer support people. Indians actually do better in the metrics side, I believe. But due to the nature of Filipinos, we’re more amiable and tend to want to please. The Filipino hospitality or something. There are still some Americans who don’t like people from other countries answering their calls though.

“Oh Well.”

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One of my calls today was really depressing. The customer wasn’t so old. She’s only 52 and she keeps calling herself old. I keep on telling her that she’s not (since I get calls from older people like Mr. FastAction). Well… her issue was she was having troubles setting up her internet.

The details: She had an old 5 or 6 year old computer running Windows 2000 that she just got from a friend. Her modem is an old Netopia 2241 that she also got from a friend. Her computer doesn’t have an ethernet port.

Now, with her ISP, the installation works best with at least Windows XP (even if Mac and Win2k is supported). It almost never fails. With USB connections, she has to go through the hard pain-staking process of installing the driver for the modem. And her computer is slow. Have I mentioned that the computer was slow? The computer is SLOW.

The process is actually really simple. Just run the CD and then just follow the instructions. But for someone who is too clicker-happy, yet does not and could not distinguish left click from right click, it becomes hard. Really hard.

It came to the point where she was telling me why she got internet (and she got the fastest one, mind you) while we were rebooting the computer. She said she just wanted to look at recipes. And then her voice started to shake and then when the computer was back up, and we were going to proceed, she said, “I’m sorry Angel. I’m tired already. I thought this was going to be easy but it’s becoming a job to me already.” (It was almost 10pm already).

My heart went out to her. I wanted to go there and set up her internet for her. She did mention earlier that she was just some lonely old woman, divorced, living alone, her kids have left her as well. And she really did sound lonely. She was saying goodbye and I couldn’t say goodbye to her. I’ll probably be marked down if ever that call was monitored. But since that call was over an hour, probably not.

This is one of different kinds of calls that I get that I really hate. Getting emotional on a call. *sigh*

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A Dissat or a DSat is short for Dissatisfaction — A dissatisfied customer, in other words.

My job involves a monthly scorecard. And if I pass my scorecard for the month, there’s an entailing bonus for every quarter.

The scorecard (at this time) includes customer satisfaction surveys. Some customers receive a survey and they are asked to rate the agent and the service they received from their call. If you got a sat, you pass. A dissat? an instant fail.

From December to May, I’ve never got a dissat. Until June. All my surveys were Sats (Satisfied customer). Until June.

The reason I got a dissat? Because I assumed that Thunderstorms = Rain included. According to the customer’s comment, “I told the agent that whenever it storms, I lose my internet connection. Even when it rains.”

*sigh*

It’s depressing. Because I know I told her clearly that it MAY be because of the rain and water seepage in the NID that’s causing this. I said it MAY be that’s why I sent a technician to fix the goddamn thing. Why the ef should she give me a dissat -_-;;

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