Of all the blogs all over the internet, you've clicked onto mine.

More Philippines Stuff

2005-01-09|3:12 p.m.

Okay - here's advanced notice - I don't think this is going to be a very funny entry... It's just an outline of some of the things that happened this week.

To begin, work this week sucked - there was not a lot to do, and my co-worker who is over here until July running the place has become very power hungry... On one hand, I do understand - anything bad that happens does happen on her watch, but on more than one occasion she hasn't been very cool...

Since we were slow this week, she and I talked and agreed that it would be a good idea if I would take some time to do some updates to the training manual. She sent me four 60+ page documents that I had never seen before that she thought could be incorporated into our training...

After a day she expected everything to get done - which it wasn't... I can't read over 200 pages and make changes to a 40 page document (not to mention make changes to the supervisor manual) in a day... She was a HUGE bitch about it... at one point asking "Well what are you doing?" as if I wasn't actually working on it... And she did all of it in front of Ken...

It really pissed me off. She apologized about having the conversation in front of Ken, but didn't really apologize about her tone - or the fact that she implied that I wasn't working...

She did a similar thing to Ken - calling him out for doing something she didn't agree with in front other people in the center... and didn't bother to apologize to him... I think because he didn't let on that he was pissed off about it. But he told me about it later that day... Because Ken is technically one level below "Lisa" and me, I couldn't really go into detail about how pissed she made me...

The good news is that I train on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week (that's Monday - Wednesday night for you...) so I won't have to deal with her much this week...

It's tough - she's not always a douche-bag. But when she is... Look out.

I have not really been able to completely let go of the anger yet - I know I need to do it, but it's just figuring out how...

For the most part, people in the office have been very nice. Each day they have tried to teach Ken and I new words - and then they laugh at us when screw them up... :-) More about that in a second...

The culture here is different - the class system is still very much alive and well... Here people are either rich or poor. There is no middle class. It appears to me that companies starting offices over here will help that - but I'm no economist, so I can't say for sure.

Most of the people here are poor. It's odd, there are tons of malls, and tons of people in the malls, but no one buys anything... I have no idea how stores stay open. There are very few rich...

The rich have servants who do pretty much everything - including raising the children... BUT many of the rich parents refuse to let the servants actually discipline the children. That makes for some interesting scenes in the malls.

I have witnessed a few scenes this week that have really made me angry... Servants approaching the people they are serving like beaten dogs... afraid to say something simple like 'the room is ready' for fear that they are going to be lashed out against...

I witnessed one servant in a hotel who had to sit at a different table - without food - while the family she worked for ate. Once the family was done, she was then able to go over to the table with a small plate and get some of what wasn't eaten.

It really makes me sick - but I know that if I said something to the family, it wouldn't make any difference - and it may only make the life of the person serving them worse... So I feel stuck - unable to help.

But enough of that - back to good things... Most of the people in the office went out to lunch after work on Friday. Many of the traditional Filipino dishes were ordered, and Ken and I hand a chance to try all of them...

The thing about most of the Filipino food is that they make use of every part of the animal... The rich get most of the 'good' parts, and everyone else gets what is left over... This means that many of the dishes are things like intestines, livers, etc... One thing we had was called Sisig (I am not sure if I am spelling that right...) What is sisig? The face of a pig.

With many of the dishes, I felt as if I was a contestant on Fear Factor. By far, the worst was the sisig... It was hard and crunchy... When I was eating it, all I could think of was eating the snout on a pig... There were a few moments when I thought I was going to get sick... It was really gross, but I did my best to disguise my displeasure with the food. I hope I did okay.

I will not have a lot of access to a computer this week, and when I do, it will only be for a few minutes - so I probably will not update again for about a week... I'll try to be better about leaving comments though... Have a good one!

Previously on Ramblin' Bill -- In The Year 2000!

The Current Terror Alert Level is: