of reasons and rainbows

I’m in the skies, I mean in a plane.

I’m blogging this from an airplane full of people of all nationalities heading towards the Hong Kong international airport from the United States San Francisco Airport. The journey is such a long one but I’m glad because this time I was able to sleep. The night before was our farewell dinner from the office and I got so wasted that I threw up at the last bar we hit. That is a first. In effect I wasn’t able to sleep that well the night before so when we finally boarded at 1 a.m., I’m practically sleep walking.

Looking at the video monitor of my seat mate, we are 2337 miles away from our destination. I’m getting closer to home by the minute.

Sitting on a plane, staring at the window and realizing that the stars are below the horizon where you’re at… Then after several blinks…staring endlessly at a magnificent rainbow situated across vertically at the skies.

These are two of the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

In two hours our limo service to the airport would pick us up and we would be saying good bye to San Francisco.

Though uwing uwi na ko… and I can’t wait to see Junjun at Singapore…. this beautiful city with all the experience that I had gather in my two months stay would be missed greatly.

First of all, it’s too foggy tonight.

And too cold to go out.

The Americans in our apartment are partying at the rooftop.

But I still prefer the old school New Year celebration at the Philippines.

With watusi, pla-pla and kwitis at the road that makes passerbys afraid would explode anytime, anywhere.

Around 2 years ago, I developed this wierd habit of naming my stuffs. I have a Nikon d40x camera named Dax Cortez, a now neglected and unusable laptop named Tappy Peralta, we have a Sony PSP slim named Pipoy and we used to have Tachi - Jun’s ipod Touch which unfortunately was stolen three months after I gave it to him.

So when I brought a new mac, we christened it with a name too… MACOY. I was calling it macmac during the planning phase of buying a mac, but when I finally brought it during my first day in San Francisco, Jun sent a message saying “Hello, Macoy.” Cute, right?

Here’s a glimpse of Macoy:

Purple Macoy

Front view

While in transit at the Hongkong airport last May 17, I lost my k600i Globe Roaming handyphone. I didn’t remember how I lost it. All I remember was being able to call my mom and my sister who were then at Lyle’s baptism (my super poging inaanak) from the ladies’s room of HK airport minutes before I realized that my phone was gone.

I wasn’t totally removed from the world of text messaging and voice calls because I still have my w880i Singtel prepaid mobile phone but the thing is, I exhausted it’s credit up to the last cent at the Singapore airport thinking that I wouldn’t have to use it. Singtel’s roaming rate is very expensive compared to Globe so i was thinking of using Globe for incoming text messages then replying via Chikka. With Globe gone and at the middle of Hongkong transport terminal — I had no way of buying Singtel credits. That day was the last time I sent an sms message using a handy phone.

See, being a college student from UP when the cellphone mania took over the Philippines, I was part of the hype. I got my first Nokia 5110 phone when I was a sophomore in college and it was a very exciting and amazing tool then. Only a few students have cellphones and some of those that do have analog phones where sms is unheard of. The word we used for the phone models during that time was “pangkaskas ng yelo”. Eversince owning that Nokia, I was never without a celphone. I had lost four units already (some lost for carelessness, other by theft), dozens of sim had served as my mobile number, I had used both prepaid and planned services, Smart / Globe / Touch Mobile / Sun, had used gprs to check my email at a great capacity (especially during those times when Junjun still worked on graveyard shift)… all the works that comes with owning the “in” thing… a cellphone.

I was able to watch the cellphone units evolved from those ancient big black and silver units to the newest, tiniest, touchscreen, wifi enabled ones that we see today. And to be honest, like probably everyone else on my contact list, I had spent a LOT of money loading my sim with phone credits for the past 7 years.

I also developed weird daily habits - another proof that my life had been dominated by the mobile industry. Before leaving the house for work each day I would check for three things that i could never be without for the rest of the day: cellphone, ID, wallet. In that order. Before I sleep, i send a message to my boyfriend most of the time. Waking up, the first thing I do is look at the screen of my phone. And I laugh at the silliest text jokes, especially the ones involving Inday. (grins)

Given these fancy bordering on obsession and compulsive attachment that I have with cellphones, I always say in the past that it is one material thing that I could never live without. Then came my phone vanishing into thin air at HongKong. I was mortified.

As of today - almost two months later, I haven’t brought a replacement unit still. I was initially planning to have my sister send a SIM over to me but it turned out that neither Fedex nor UPS would carry it because of some customs regulation issue. I also thought of looking for a Globe SIM in an Oriental or Filipino store here in the city, but unfortunately I later discovered that there isn’t any. I even tried to look for Sim-on-the-go their version of  prepaid simcards here but it was so much trouble I got tired of looking (most people here use postpaid lines). So be it, I told myself. I could survive without a phone… right?

Now the good part about this whole ordeal is that during these days of our technology-frenzied world, an internet connection was all that I needed to stay connected to the text messaging world… I use Chikka a lot in place of the phone I lost and I also discovered that you could actually use Yahoo Messenger to call any mobile phones - domestic or international (until I ran out of money to buy credits… I blame shopping like crazy!). The wonders of technology… I was at awed and relieved at the same time.

So now here I am, one month and 3 weeks after. I don’t put a phone under my pillows at night anymore. I don’t wake up with the sound of Sony Ericsson’s alarm vibrating in my head. I don’t have a phone under the desk on discreet mode during meetings - sometimes secretly replying to a message while deep in conversation with the whole meeting panel… And as of this writing, I have no idea where in the apartment my celphone is. I still use my walkman phone but now it’s usability is limited to music… not as a lifeline to the rest of the world.

It’s nice to have this cellphone break for the time being. I realized that a triband-3g enabled-polyphonic-wap capable gadget is not really something that I couldn’t live without.

I had been living here in San Francisco for more than a month now and I had never been treated badly by anyone until today. I feel so bad about it that whenever I see her face…I couldn’t help but be annoyed. She’s older than me maybe in her late forties (so it might be a sign of old age or something). Here’s what happened.

I am meeting one of our training sponsors at my desk to do some recording on the application that we’re testing. Aside from the usual clutter on my desk, I want my ‘guest’ to feel comfortable while we do the hour long knowledge transfer session. So I pulled a chair from the first room that looks like a meeting room and has more than one chair on it. I just thought that it would be harmless because I’m just borrowing it for an hour and would immediately put the chair back after. Nobody is using the room anyway.

A few steps back towards my desk with the said “borrowed chair” in tow, a smug looking lady approached me and said matter-of-factly that if I’m planning to use the chair I should know that the room I got it from is reserved to their team. She said, and I quote “If you want to use that chair, you should go through me” (while motioning from the chair to herself using her fingers) in a very arrogant manner that made me feel so embarrassed. Haaaaay.

And you know what makes this story worth telling? The lady is a Filipina.