Yesterday was a another whimsically declared holiday. For Metro Manila, that is. Is this part of Arroyo’s “holiday economics”? Supposedly, because it’s a long weekend, people would go out of town and therefore stimulate local tourism. Notwithstanding the fact that tourism sucks as a long-term industry, what about the potential production of all these people who are out of town (or more likely just malling since going out of town is becoming a rather expensive proposition)? Where’s the economics sense in that? Maybe, it’s part of a scheme to reduce the number of people in Metro Manila so that they won’t join the demonstrations (like most people still care). Or maybe I’m just too cynical. Maybe the government learned of a destabilization plot and they are just after the safety and well-being of the Metro Manila populace (who were probably out malling). Who knows?
Month: July 2005
One last thing. I know movies are commercialized but can’t they tone commercialization down a bit?!? The movies is peppered with 2-second brand exposures and it got kind of annoying. It even includes ones of MSN Search and XBox. M$!!! Maybe that’s why I was annoyed :P
Rating: 3/5
I’m tired. I think I’m still mentally drained from yesterday’s finance exam. At first glance it looked like a giveaway exam. But our professor has devious ways of making things a bit harder. Take for example the subtle wording in one question: Net Income as against EBITDA. It’s so basic and yet it got me. So irritating X-( And then there’s the essay part that had to be answered not in paragraph form but in a bullet point format. Have you ever encountered that? I had to pause and think how to go about doing that one. I ended up with bulleted paragraphs :))
UPDATE: Turned out I did pretty well in the exam. Happy happy joy joy!
Rating: 3/5
It’s been quite some time since I last flew with PAL. So on my recent trip to Bohol to attend my sister’s wedding, I decided to get PAL round-trip tickets mainly for convenience’s sake but also out of curiousity. Initially, this PAL experience seemed okay though my sister did complain she had to wait too long getting the tickets and on the flight the restroom stank.
It was on the return flight that I regretted my decision to fly PAL. The weather was bad so when we checked in, they said the flight will be delayed. But PAL didn’t announce on the PA, as Cebu Pacific did, that the flight was cancelled. We decided that the best course of action is to go to Cebu and catch a Cebu Pacific flight.
We went to the Cebu Pacific ticket office. But by then it was too late to catch the 3PM flight and we had to make do with the 5PM flight. Because we had little money left, there were no ATMs nearby, and they didn’t accept credit cards, we had to refund our PAL tickets to pay for the Cebu Pacific tickets. But the PAL office was full of irate customers they couldn’t appease. We definitely were not going to get the refund in time. Thankfully, the very nice staff at the Cebu Pacific ticket office agreed to just allow us to pay for the tickets once we get to Cebu where they do accept credit cards.
We grabbed a quick lunch and scooted off to Cebu via a fastcraft where we got the tickets at the Cebu Pacific ticket office and refunded from the, thankfully, empty PAL ticket office. On the way to the departure lounge, we saw an announcement: The PAL 5PM flight was delayed by an hour. At the end of the day, it wasn’t so bad as we eventually got back home albeit a bit late. But I’ll have to say my airline of choice is most definitely Cebu Pacific.