Day 7: Operation Birthday a success

I'm lying in bed, writing an assessment to scare the pants off my trainees tomorrow morning, and musing on the day's happenings. All in all, a thoroughly awesome birthday...

I managed to stay awake to see my birthday in at midnight...then was fast asleep by 12:05. Lesson learnt: extreme heat and too many cocktails on a Friday night is going to limit my ability to stay awake on Saturday night. However it didn't stop me from waking up at 6:30am, hours before I was due to meet Crissy for breakfast. So I moped...boy did I mope. I stalked everyone I know on Facebook and Twitter, looked at photos of my family and friends, wandered in circles around the apartment and watched High School Musical. I hope I shall never be mopey enough to want to put myself through that again, it's a truly hideous movie.

Breakfast finally came around in all its delicious buffety goodness. I am LOVING the mangoes here. They are so soft and sweet and yummy, that I'd like to soak in a vat of them for a several hours. And the Filipino specialties of spicy baked pepper chicken and salty-sweet beef tapa totally made the meal. After breakfast, a nice long chat with home.

I wasn't able to get in touch with Crissy to continue the day's plans, so I decided to wander back into the department store with the thousands of stalker staff. This time, I was a pro. I expertly manouvered my way around the racks, deftly dodging the attendants and their cries of "yes ma'am". I stayed calm, I even made it to a change room with some potential purchases! It was then that it all failed. Here's the thing: in the land of bikini bodies, I am an anomaly. In Asia, even more so. I take an Asian size small (wtf?) in bikini tops, but an Asian size large in bottoms. Either I have a pitifully small chest, or Filipinos have no arses (or I have a giant arse...but I'm not gonna go there). So I slunk out into the street, defeated. Well, defeated for about 10 minutes. The good thing about the Filipino consumerist culture is that next to one giant mall there are 2 or 3 equally giant malls. And after a bit of searching, I was able to find a shop that sold swimwear in separates. Note to self: when I say "I'll pack my swimmers in the morning", that's code for "I'll end up in a really hot country very grumpy because I forgot them"

After the successful shopping expedition I managed to track down Crissy, who'd somehow managed a 2 hour nap. We decided that it was cocktail o'clock, and that we needed to drink in style. Our destination: the Shangri La - by all reports the swankiest hotel in the city. And once we got there, we agreed. The foyer was magnificent, with twin staircases curving upwards and meeting at a mezzanine level. Intricately patterned carpets covering the floor, and a giant golden orb adorning the centre of the room. It was like entering a palace. Even their bomb dog was larger and better looking than ours.
I'd heard they had an awesome pool bar, so we went exploring through the hotel. It was very difficult to be totally lost while maintaining an air of "this is our hotel". We eventually had to ask a very kind member of staff for directions...and were very relieved when she didn't kick us out. The pool bar WAS truly awesome. Much cooler than the little roll-out contraption that carries water and ice back at our hotel. And the drinks were magic...and strong. My mojito easily had 3-4 shots in it...something I realised while trying to navigate back to our hotel some time later, when I nearly walked under a bus.

After one drink, we migrated back to our hotel bar where the drinks were slightly more affordable. More cocktails were drunkon the outdoor terrace, and happy birthdays were 'cheersed'. An extremely nommy Chinese dinner followed.

After dinner I returned to my room, and discovered an intruder...
A cake had entered while I was out and hidden itself in my fridge!! And in true Filipino style, even the message on top was perfectly polite :p

So yes, a very successful birthday. It went so well, that I think I'll have another next year.

Days 5 and 6: I've survived the first week

It doesn't get much more exciting than breaking in a birthday all alone in a hotel room, naked, eating chocolate icecream and watching back-to-back episodes of glee. At least, that's what I'll be doing if I can actually stay awake until midnight. I've had my fair share of pretty terrible birthdays, and I can safely say that this isn't anywhere near as bad. However, it would be nice to be out in Sydney with my friends right now, making a fool of myself on a dancefloor somewhere.

Thinking about the date does spark the realisation that I've survived my first week here in Manila! I'm surprised that I've made it through without flipping out after all the disasters and setbacks. But enough about those for now...I've got more important things to blog about.

Throughout the week, on several occasions, I glanced towards the back of the training room and saw Crissy whispering to the Manila trainer and team leader. They saw me looking, and quickly stopped. I didn't think too much of it the first time, but after about the third time I started to get a little paranoid. I tried to focus on the task at hand and put my worries out of my mind. I managed to convince myself that no, they weren't whispering about me, why would they? Turns out they were, and I was to find out why on Friday.

After getting off a rather stressful conference call at lunchtime, in which I discovered that we wouldn't have systems access until next Wednesday at the earliest (yup...details to come on that one), I wandered into the cafeteria to get some lunch. Before I was able to turn towards the food lineup, Crissy grabbed my arm and led me towards one of the meeting rooms off the cafeteria. As I entered, my training group burst into a chorus of "Happy Birthday". They'd prepared a surprise party for me!I may have cried...just a little. It was so touching that these people that I've only known a week had put in such a mammoth effort to make my birthday so special. They'd put together a great feast of authentic Filipino food:
One guy had even gone wandering around Metro Manila at 4am searching for Balut for me to try! He wasn't able to find it, but has promised to bring some on Monday. Also, they all dressed up for the occasion, and brought a HUGE cake!
The generosity and kindness shown to me totally made my day, my week AND my birthday. It helped me realise that, despite the stress from the neverending stream of crises, I'm very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet and learn from these people.

Friday night the celebrations continued in a rather drunken manner...Crissy, the Manila team leader and another employee from Melbourne sampled the hotel's rather dangerous cocktails until the wee hours of the morning. We had a prime party spot - the hotel terrace, 6 floors above the street, decorated with multi coloured party lights and overlooking pedestrians and cars bustling past below. For the first night this week, the wet season took a break and we had a clear night to enjoy the outdoors.

$8 cocktails all night led to a rather sore head this morning for all of us, and we commiserated over a yummy buffet breakfast. Then, as this was our first free day, we ventured out shopping. The Melbourne rep, who has been here 5 weeks already, played tour guide and price haggler for the afternoon. The place we visited was Greenhills, a giant flea-market, packed to the brim with top-quality knockoffs. I managed to get myself a new handbag (good timing as mine had disintegrated earlier in the day) and two pairs of shoes for just over $30. Magic. Plans have been made to return.

Since then I've been lurking around my hotel room, enjoying all the extra opportunities for naked time. And now that I've finished this post, its 2 minutes to midnight and I'm almost 26.

Day 4: The fun bit

Today was product training, a schedule packed with creative learning activites. Thank fuck. For an entire day I was able to relax, forget the fact that systems don't work and may very well not work when we absolutely need them tomorrow. And what a day it was!

I nearly tore my hair out trying to explain the intricacies of tolling products to a group of people who had never seen nor heard of an e-tag before. I'd never had a training group ask so many questions before! Once we got into the activities though, their creativity really shone through. Part of product training involves designing a billboard advertisement on each of the products. Normally, my groups grab a sheet of butchers paper and a couple of markers, slap together a bit of a doodle and off they go. The works of art that this group created were beyond description! With crayons, textas, intricate pictures and brightly coloured text, my Filipino group put all my previous training groups to shame.

Same story with another learning activity later in the day. Trainees have to create a TV commerical complete with jingle. These are then performed in front of management. In Sydney these usually involve a group of agents shuffling nervously, looking at the ground and generally putting in a half-arsed effort. But this afternoon's performances were world class. We had a boy band dance routine, an attempt at line dancing, and even a simulated talk show. So on the whole, the day was a great success.

I'm really starting to settle in here. I'm getting to know the trainees, and enjoying the company of the team leader and trainer. They spent a good part of our afternoon break telling us all the places they are going to take us to visit while we're here. I think I've earnt their respect by promising to try Balut. If you haven't heard of it, do a google image search.

This afternoon I had a quick chat with home, which was really nice and made me smile for the rest of the evening. I managed to get off my arse long enough to go to the gym too. So I'm lying here in bed with that nice warm tired feeling, utterly content and catching up on True Blood.

Now time for some shut-eye before heading back into battle with the incompetent IT departments :p

Day 3: I cosy up to a man with a big gun

But that comes later.

The day began with the early morning cab ride as usual. This time we got about halfway to work when the cab driver started calling out to the next cab over, then started muttering something that sounded like 'transfer' to himself. Not about to be thrown out on the side of the road right outside a slum, I decided to try out my 'angry foreigner' voice. It worked! All it took was a stern "no", and a narrowing of the eyes towards the rearview mirror for our driver to turn away from his mate, and back in the direction of our destination.

When we arrived at work, we found out that we had lost a trainee. I don't think I've spoken about Abby (aka Brian the ladyboy) in this blog. "Abby", as he/she likes to be known, turned up to day 1 of training in a pink floral print maxi dress and a beautiful set of heels, with amazing face makeup and hair curled to perfection. We accepted this as a humorous lesson in Filipino culture, and were happy to have such a pretty "girl" in our midst. Filipino management were not so convinced. Apparently it is taboo here for ladyboys to wear womens clothing in the workplace. And not just in our office, but right across the workforce. The Filipino team leader had a chat with her about the dress code on Monday arvo, being careful to explain that while the company does not discriminate against the "third gender" (yup, that's what they call it), they do not condone crossdressing in the workplace by someone who is still technically male. Ladyboys are required to wear pants to work at all times. Abby didn't show up to work for Day 2. Nor did she call, text, or answer any of our calls to her. So it was with great disappointment that we had to make the decision to replace her, to ensure we have enough trainees to feed to the angry customers on go live day. I was sad. Besides grief over losing the opportunity to sneak glances at her skirt in the hope of a brief outline of lurking parts, I actually liked Abby and thought she was a cool addition to the group. But such is life...

The rest of the day was BUSY. Because systems and schedules were fucked yesterday, we were working hard to squish a lot of material into one short day. Fortunately (?) this was made easier by the revelation that the systems were still fucked, and neither my company's IT or the client's IT department had a clue what was going wrong. So again, another part of the schedule moved to another day.

I asked the Manila trainer to deliver the morning's training session to get her involved, and to allow me to see if she was really as militant as reports had indicated. She did really well. Having obviously taken earlier feedback on board, she was interactive, related well to the trainees and got them involved in activities. Having only recently gone through the training herself, she was better able to understand potential points of confusion and provide additional explanations. I was pretty impressed, and really enjoyed the opportunity to rest both my legs and my voice!

The afternoon training session was all about Sydney geography, and was therefore ridiculously confusing. Sydney is hard enough for locals to navigate, so was near impossible for foreigners to make sense of! We used a LOT of pictures and google maps, and giggled a lot. Giggling seems to be the first line of defense here. When they're nervous, they giggle. Don't know the answer? Giggle. Feel embarrassed? Get an answer wrong? Yup...again we giggle. It was a day chock FULL of silly laughter.

I think the highlight of the day was afternoon break, when Crissy and I ventured out into the heat with our cameras to try to take sneaky photos of the office guard. Sneakiness rapidly flew out the window as we saw an awesome photo opportunity. And this is what followed:
You got it. That's a man with a rather large rifle. I didn't get one with the dude with the machine gun...I need a couple more days to work up the courage. But yes, I feel much safer here in one of Manila's major business districts knowing that this man is here to protect me.

I'd also like to share something else that amused me today. This is a sign up in each of the cubicles in the work loos:
It reads "Please remain seated for the entire performance. Do your mission then flush and close and make sure everything goes down - we don't want any surprises!" Enough said.

After work, Crissy and I decided to check out one of the local malls (there are 4 or 5 in our immediate vicinity). Upon entry, I realised why Filipinos get paid a pittance working in retail. Its because stores hire so many of them! There were about 20 staff for each 50 square metres of floor space. There was literally one at the end of each clothing rack, watching customers like hawks for any indication of purchase interest. I'm one of those shoppers who likes to rifle through clothing racks in search of interesting finds. I also like to be left alone to forage until I'm ready to ask for assistance. Manila is obviously not the place for me. One by one, the staff closed in. Everywhere I looked, there was an attendant wating to attend to my every wish, even if I didn't wish for anything! My heart raced, a carefree shopping trip now became a desperate effort to make it through a gauntlet lined with eager attendants. I tried changing direction, zig-zagging through the racks in an attempt to throw them off. I tried camouflaging myself against the clothing racks, looking down, ignoring the smiles and greetings of "hello ma'am", but to no avail. I finally escaped into an open area of the store that was empty of staff. But in my desperation to outmaneuver my stalkers, I'd lost Crissy. So back I went - ducking, weaving, practically powerwalking through the rows of clothing, leaving a trail of staff in my wake. I finally found her, and we escaped together.

I survived the first of what I'm sure will be many shopping trips here. I might wait a few days before trying it again.

I'll leave you tonight with a pic of some of my trainees that I'm rapidly growing to love

Day 2: Can we get any less organised?

Yup, that was the general gist of the day. And it began with the taxi ride. We stumbled out of our hotel somewhere around 5:30am, hailed a cab, explained where we were going and got in. The taxi got to the first set of lights, started yabbering to the driver of a taxi next to him, then told us we'd have to get out. He pulled around the corner muttering something about "taxi transfer"...and sure enough, his buddy pulled in behind him. At a loss for words, we got out into the middle of the street and clambered into the second taxi. And off we went to work.

I stumbled into the office just before 6am to find a stranger holding out her hand to greet me. It was the previously MIA trainer, who had decided to join us. I found her poring over piles of printed but unbound and unsorted training materials, apparently waiting for another member of staff to help her.

To make up for yesterday's catastrophe, we organised our first full day of training to include a half day induction by the Manila trainer. I hope she covered everything that was missed yesterday. Meanwhile, Crissy and I were left to spend the morning ferreting through piles of paper printouts to organise the traning modules into some sort of order. Feedback to be provided to the office at home: next time, save your trainers a heart attack and mail the manuals over in advance.

Lunch was a bit of a giggle. They have a cafeteria (called "pantry" here) that serves authentic Filipino food for about a dollar a plate. We were having lunch today when we heard just about all the other employees in the room start up cheering and whistling, clapping and stamping. What was the hullabaloo about? Nothing else but the Miss Universe pageant on TV!!! These guys got as excited about Miss Philippines (and Miss Australia for their guests) making the top 5 in the comp as some Aussies get about their footy team winning a grand final. It was great :p

The afternoon was spent trying to break the trainees out of the shells they seemed to have retreated into during the morning. From all reports, the Manila trainer seems to have a bit of a militant training manner, and this has a detrimental affect on staff participation and exubrance. I like training to be fun, and I hate lecturing a bunch of scared rabbits...so that had to change. We played games until they were giggling and chatting again. They opened right back up...even to the point of oversharing. We played a game where we shared our most embarrassing moments...and some that were shared I'd probably NEVER share with a group of work colleague I'd just met. A sample:

• One girl told us she always sleeps naked
• One guy told us that when he gets stressed, he wets his bed
• Another spoke about a time she got so drunk that she got her top off at a party
• Yet another told us about a time she was so drunk that she peed on her brother's bed.

So I guess you could say we're friends :p

I'm a little frustrated with the way things work here...IT support seems to be minimal at best, the Call Centre Manager is only new to the company and completely overwhelmed, and people seem to give you the answer they think you want, rather than the real answer. For instance, our IT issues were going to be sorted yesterday, then this morning, then this afternoon. Real answer: no one knows when the hell its going to be fixed, and we have to wing EVERYTHING.

Add to the mix I'm tired after a long day and a bit grumpy and lonely. And I'm watching Miss Universe on TV :p

Day 1: Catastrophe Central

The day of disaster began at 5am, when I woke in the world's comfiest bed. Yep, 5am...with eyelids heavy as lead I thought that the day could only get better from there, right?

But before I get to today, let me talk a little about the amazing party pad I'm occupying at the moment. Think giant one bedroom apartment in a 5 star residential hotel, with shiny new fittings (granite, chrome, polished wood - you name it), dual LCD TVs in both living and bedroom, full kitchen, laundry, blahblahblah...I'm in wanker heaven. I can't believe my company would shell out this much $$ for any of their employees. The rest of the hotel is pretty amazing too. The numerous guards (some wielding giant guns or minding bomb sniffer dogs) greet you with a smile, and open every door for you. They provide you with fresh, sweet iced tea at the check in desk. The pool and spa area are pretty amazing too, and there's a giant fitness centre I plan to test out once I can drag myself off my lazy butt. Oh, and the hotel bar serves margaritas as big as my head, only one required for much silliness to ensue :P

But back to the day...after a quick cab ride past squalid slums separated from mammoth mansions by huge fancy gates, we arrived at work. Our friends from the Melbourne office were kind enough to take us and give us a tour of the building, because they've been here a few weeks already training another project. The building is brand new, and extra shiny. After the tour, we met the Manila managment team. They were all smiles at first, but first greetings soon gave way to worried looks as we discovered the following

• The Filipino trainer due to deliver Induction had not shown up for work, and her phone was switched off
• We had no training materials, because said trainer had been in charge of printing them and no one knew where they were
• We couldn't get access to our centralised knowledge base to print more training materials due to an IT fuckup over the weekend
• We couldn't get access to our Sydney email and server because of a firewall problem
• We had 15 brand new employees waiting to learn, and nothing to teach them.

Trying very hard not to freak out, we went to meet our new trainees. We introduced ourselves, and were then left alone for an hour trying to think of a way to occupy them while the contact centre manager (who looks totally overwhelmed ALL the time, poor man) tried to sort things out. It became apparent that the trainer wasn't just late, but is actually MIA...her phone switched off, and according to both her partner and her sister, dropped off the face of the earth. We're worried for her safety. But we had to carry on and make SOMETHING out of the day.

With a tremble in my voice I rang our client in Sydney, explained the predicament and asked her to email some training docs to the contact centre manager, who had email access. We rapidly worked out that bumping up our schedule by a day wasn't going to work, as there was no way we could work with the meager resources we had. So we turned the day into a massive teambuilding exercise.

We had the agents get to know one person in the group, then introduce that person to the rest. We then made a poster for our partners, so each person would have a space devoted to them on the wall in the call centre. That got them all involved and interested, and we shared heaps of laughs at our varying degrees of artistic skill. The day went OK after that, it was a muddled combination of games and giggles, and sneaking outside to check on the status of IT issues, missing staff members and equally absent training materials. By the time we left at 3pm, things were sorted enough that I'm fairly sure we'll be ready to train tomorrow. Which is good, cause I don't need to be up all night worrying!

I'm now back at the party pad, looking out across the city from my 12th floor window. There are huge bolts of lightning reaching down like hands towards the ground. That's the thing about the weather here - its hideously hot and muggy all day, and thunderstorms all night. I like the storms part.

A wee bit homesick sitting here alone, missing hugs. It'll be a while before I get any of those.