Scribblings

Hello blog! It’s been three months since I last wrote my thoughts here. I must be that busy and heavy at work, huh?

I’m sure ‘Gelo — our new president in JCI Cebu-Mactan Channel — and Emi Rose — his wife, our new Director/PRO and my colleague at work — could well attest to that.

Yesterday, Christmas Day, as the movies shown on Star Movies, HBO and Cinemax were not that interesting, I was just browsing channels and got to watch two features — the live broadcast of the Christmas Eve Mass by Pope Benedict XVI and a replay of Larry King’s interview of Angelina Jolie, Robert de Niro and Matt Damon.

I chuckled when I thought there was one thing in common in the two shows I watched. Both featured The Good Shepherd — the German shepherd at the Vatican and the American shepherd in the CIA. Common but contradicting, noh?

Then just before Christmas, I had dinner at Goodah Gud that featured a local play of The Sound of Music, the story of the Von Trapp family of Salzburg, Austria, located near the boundary with Germany in lower Bavaria when the Nazi prepared for what would be World War II.

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I mentioned this because the former Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger spent his childhood and adolescence near this place, probably by the hills where and when the Von Trapp family fled through after the patriarch, a Navy captain, refused to be drafted under the Axis alliance even if it meant they had to "Climb Every Mountain."

As war broke but far from the frontlines, young Joseph received his Christian, cultural and human formation, an environment he himself described as "Mozartian," in reference to the music of the great musician composer, Wolfgang Amadeus.

Yet the teenager got drafted thrice, assigned on defense but experienced no actual battle yet briefly became a POW. After repatriation in 1945, his seminary life started and he became a priest in 1951.

Today, the Catholic Chruch is now led by this man, a very conservative vanguard like his police father (who was openly against Nazi’sm for being opposed to his faith) and his former boss, Pope John Paul II.

The German Shepherd may not be as charismatic as former Cardinal Karol Wojtila of Poland (that Nazi also occupied under Hilter’s reign) but he is as his predecessor was as champion of traditional values that now battles with rising liberalism and commercialism.

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And now comes The Good Shepherd, the movie that starts during World War II when the main character Edward Wilson (played by Matt Damon) got recruited to the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, to become a veteran operative who’s methods during the Cold War became the S.O.P. of every CIA agent today.

With the famous Tomb Raider and Mrs. Smith (Angelina Jolie) as Mrs. Clover Wilson in this movie, this should be worth a hundred bucks on the wide screen.

Not to mention the presence of and the hands behind by Robert de Niro … plus top ace actors like William Hurt, Alec Baldwin and Joe Pesci.

Merry Christmas!

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In my hometown in Bohol, we would leave our shoes or slippers by the stair landing or by the main entrance door before we enter someone else’s home. It was a way of showing respect to those who live there. We have carried that tradition even today … when we’re in Corella.

Such custom is typical Bol-anon, or Boholano. There was even a joke of a middle-aged farmer who went to Tagbilaran City and got mad as he alighted from the bus. "Be… sa imong ina, ha’i naman ahong tsinelas, gisul’ob ma’g lain?" he quipped. (Where’s my slippers? Someone must have worn it.)

The joke came to fore in my mind yesterday as we, with JCI Mandaue president Carlo Fortuna and past president Jimmy Flores, were asked by security personnel to take off our shoes, put the pair in a plastic tray and be scanned by the x-ray machine at the final departure area of Mactan-Cebu International Airport.

Yes, even pilots, women like fellow JCI Cebu-Mactan Channel member Rose Pulido and children were made to do that … thanks to that creative terrorist who was caught using the heel of his shoes to carry into an aircraft explosive chemicals. Call it kapraningan, but it pays to be careful nowadays.

My last travel to Manila was only three weeks ago, and this security measure at our airports is new. The Inquirer incidentally reports on the front page today, Sept. 14, that pilots of a foreign carrier refused to take their shoes off for scanning because "the airport floor was dirty."

Yes, the same measure has been taken at NAIA 2 Centennial Terminal. Yet, it added a new measure. Everone entering even the pre-departure area were required to take off his/her belt so that this can be scanned along with one’s pair of shoes. Hapit na gud ko makahubo. Hehehe.

Pastilan baya sad noh sa nabuhat nilang Osama bin Laden sa atong kinabuhi sa?

Better than landing in the news and be part of another aviation tragedy.

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Dear
Friendsters,

 

Those among you who know PHP
programming will find this of interest. If not, your friends and those
within your network may want this opportunity. Please pass this informati0n to
them.

 

With new opportunities tapped, a
client is expanding operations that it expects to double its team of IT experts by the end
of this year.

 

Incidentally, if you (or your
friend/s) happen to have been writing PHP scripts for some eight (8) years now,
you might be the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) it seeks for its
fast-growing unit/subsidiary that’s making waves in the global e’commerce. The
pay is comparable at Silicon Valley, in fact.

 

Please send your (friend’s)  intent with resume to apply@focusoutsourcing.com.

 

Cheers, and Godspeed!

 

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The International Astronomical Union (IAU) gave up on Pluto as the nineth planet of our Solar System. We’re now down back to eight as it was before February 18, 1930 when Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered what IAU now describes as a "dwarf planet" and has set aside as part of a pack of still unnamed trans-Neptunian objects.

Lowell Observatory, whose facility Clyde used to discover Pluto, named the heavenly body from a suggestion of 11-year-old Venetia Burney (Phair) to her grandfather Falconer Madan, the librarian then at Oxford University. The first two letters has the same initials of its founder, Percival Lowell.

What IAU did to Pluto was radical, maybe even life changing. Probably, it had to when a clique within the IAU wants the inclusion of more supposedly newly-discovered planets, like Xena (2003 UB313), that is interestingly larger than Pluto.

A clique even wanted the largest known asteriod Ceres be considered a planet as it was found to hold more fresh water than our own Earth. Yet it only has the size of Texas. This had further blurred the line between planets and large space rocks, forcing the IAU to classify them as "dwarf planets."

If IAU did not nip these creeping moves in the bud, who knows the lunatics would launch a move to declare our Moon as the n’th planet.

Seriously, I feel awkward in "losing" Pluto. I had been a "lover" of the supposed nine planets and their satellites. My time after lunch during noon break and during morning and afternoon recess were spent mostly in the library when I was in Grades 5 and 6 at Don Bosco Technical High School.

Astronomy and Geology had been my favorite pages as I scanned the volumes of encyclopedia and other reference books and magazines. I would buy issues of TIME everytime the cover featured them. I almost thought I would follow the footsteps of Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley and Edwin Hubble.

The feeling of not wanting to lose Pluto is human nature not to let go with what we have been used to. Man by nature is resistant to change but man would accept new realities if he gets to appreciate the value and logic of such change.

But what worries me now is Pluto, the happy pet dog of Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney named our favorite cartoon dog Pluto to celebrate the discovery of the now-ousted planet. Will the people at Walt Disney give up on Pluto as well?

Oh please don’t. I would certainly ask Goofy to stop them. I’m sure Scooby Doo and naughty Scrappy will be one in this cause. And yes, Bethooven, too!
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I never thought my experience with SMART’bro wireless broadband service led me to develop a new attitude that fits well with the principle espoused in the article below that I got from a fellow Jaycee — past NVP Frine Fuentes from Davao (tama ba?).

This I gladly share here with you.
.

My friend Jeffrey asked me how my
wireless broadband internet connection was. I told him I was in all ecstasy,
especially when it made me tour the world thru Google Earth and work/business
got more efficient (from dial-up).

I nearly sent everyone an email urging
them to shift to its service. Good thing I didn’t. Else I would be next to
Jeffrey who now often goes to a big mall not anymore to submit new
subscription requests but to facilitate disconnections.

To say it straight, it has gone
beyond the bounds of disappointment. It’s has gone beyond frustration. From
ecstasy, it’s now all agony. If there was any positive thing it gave me, it’s
stretching my patience and realizing that it’s useless to vent your ire on poor
CSRs of its HELP call center.

Replies

My agony with this wireless broadband
service can be traced with the call center’s service reports, as
accordingly numbered. In interacting with the CSRs almost three times
a day, I have almost memorized their standard scripted replies and supposed
assurances.

It has become disappointing when
the CSRs say:

1. "There’s an ongoing
technical activity at the base station." (A base station refers to its GSM
cellsite.)

2. "The base station is
having difficulty to transmit signals."

Then, its ineptness in responding
to pleas for service makes the CSRs sound like the boy who cried wolf. It’s
hard for you to believe them no matter how hard the CSRs try to convince you.
Among the lines you’d now hardly believe:

1. "We have referred your
concern to the higher technical group. Please wait for a call within 24
hours." Yet, the nearest the company actually responded was 48 hours (2
days), an average of 96 hours (4 days), and the worse, the latest, seven days
(as of 8/21).

2. "We advise you to monitor lang po." Sometimes, they add
"…within the next 24 hours."

3. "Tatawagan po kayo ‘w/in the day’ ng concerned group."

4. "Please expect a call from
the scheduler."

5. "Somebody from our
regional support group will call you to address your concern."

Whew!!! These lines are
interchangeably used by the CSRs. From them I’ve learned to take note of their
"Service Report (SR) No." And I have noted on record 47 SR
numbers from June 25 with 116-361-256 to Aug. 21 with 124-139-955, and still counting.

Hard sell

I had my connection (thanks to
Jeffrey’s hard sell) set up on the week the company started promoting it in May.
But I clearly only had clear unhampered connection for a total of 15 days,
the longest between 7/10 10AM to 7/19 6PM.

It was practically dead from 7/24
@ 6AM until 8/21 (as this blog is written), with the longest "life"
for only two days from 8/06 6AM to 8/10 8AM.

It had put my business in
jeopardy, not to mention clients’ disappointment and loss of opportunities.
Then you have what lawyers call "sleepless nights" from your
frustrations. No kidding, you’d almost get a heart attack. Poor CSRs, they get
the butt of your anger.

And what prompted me to finally
pour out through this blog?

The "scheduler" told me
past 6PM today 8/21 that she has scheduled my case for technical visit on …
hold your breath … Thursday 8/24 in the morning. In the three occasions a
contractor came, it took the "scheduler" within 24 hours to deploy.

As I wrote this blog, a friend
called. I told him about my latest disgusting moment. He told me it no longer
charges for an installation fee. I wouldn’t wonder why. It must be losing
customers as Jeffrey now goes to the mall to work out more disconnections.

I just pity the next batch of
victims of this poor, unreliable yet hardly-sold wireless broadband service. It
is so unthinkable that a large company with so much resource could not oil well
its customer-response mechanism. The firm must have hired the wrong people.

I’m still hopeful this wireless broadband
provider would shape up. Me and my tolerant self pod sad gyud, noh?

Tingnan lang natin kapag puno
na ang salop.