Workings of an idle mind

I’ve mentioned that American restaurants are common in the Philippines, but one thing I think is very interesting is that some brands that are all but extinct in the U.S. are alive and well in the Philippines.  When was the last time you saw a “Shakey’s Pizza” open for business and full of customers? They are all over the place in the Philippines.  They don’t make as good pizza as “Pizza Hut” and never did, but they are clean and much more comfortable than the old U.S. version with the long wooden tables and backless benches.  How about “Kenny Rogers’ Roasters?” Seen one of those lately? Well, they are in all the big malls, and Grace tells me they are considered more upscale than KFC. The chicken is very good, and they have a plate with half a breast with salad and fruit salad that I prefer over the heaps of rice everyone seems to think they need to serve here.  Many product brands considered over the hill in the U.S. are still going strong here too. One example is "Ajax" which has lost shelf space to "Comet" to the point of being invisible in the U.S., but it is still on display here, and "Comet" is not.

Most packaging and marketing is geared toward people who don’t have a lot of money and have to walk home from the store carrying their purchases.  That means that there is no emphasis on stocking up, and it is all about single use packaging.  There is currently a commercial for a package of shampoo that has 4 individual use sachets, with the slogan, “Enough for the whole family.”

When we go grocery shopping, we have to limit what we buy to the number of bags the two of us can carry to the taxi stand.  It is a long way to the tricycle stand, and difficult to put the bags in the way Paranaque tricycles are built.

I’ve had mixed success being more assertive with taxi drivers. I started refusing to get in until we have agreed on a price, and I’ve started offering “Flag down plus 30 pesos for shorter trips and plus fifty pesos for long trips.  The two drivers since I started my experiment accepted my offer, but the first ignored my directions and did not get off the expressway at the correct exit. At the next exit, the toll was 18 pesos more plus we had to retrace about 5 km. In the end, the trip should have been about 175p on the meter, but I ended up paying 300p. This is still better than asking “How much?” and getting a ridiculously high price. The average price I was paying was around 500p, so even with the fare padding, it was an improvement. The second driver went straight to the destination, which was a little longer trip.  He didn’t have complete change for my 1000p bill, which is what comes out of most ATMs, so I ended up paying 400p for that trip.  Still an improvement, and no constant complaints about “traffic” to justify the hold up fare, so in general, it was an improvement. Gas prices are going up here, and that has a lot to do with some drivers refusing to use the meter. The taxi authority approved a fare increase, but it hasn’t improved the mood of the drivers. Apparently they have to pay to have their meter recalibrated, and many have not done it. I think being aggressive and suggesting a meter based fare before they have time to think up an excuse is worth the effort, and I’ll continue that approach to see how well it works. We are trying to take public transportation more, but like anywhere else, there are a lot of places that are difficult to get to.  One of our problems is that so called public transit is a chaotic collection of jeepney routes and bus lines, all run by private and competing companies. We don’t know where a lot of the terminals are, and it makes it difficult to get places. Thursday night we came home on a bus that drove just like the “Night Bus” in Harry Potter.  We were holding on with white knuckles and praying the brakes worked every time the driver slammed them on.  One of my main objections to public transport here is that the cattle herder who loads the jeep or bus thinks I can make myself smaller by act of will. I take up the amount of room that I take up, and once Grace had to hold me back from expressing my dissatisfaction with a particularly rude and persistent loader by compressing his face with my fist.  I am finding that all my life experiences have not prepared me very well to live in crowded conditions.  Things that don’t bother Grace make me so mad I can’t think straight.  When we were in line at the supermarket check out on New Year’s Eve, the line was at least 2 hours long. About an hour into the wait, the person behind me got out of line. The new person behind me rammed their cart into my butt every time the line moved forward. After a half hour of this, I was so mad, I shoved their cart back with my foot. I didn’t look behind me, so I have no idea who the person was, but Grace told me I needed to go sit down in the café and wait for her to check out. Now I know a lot of my grumpiness comes from the fact that my back hurts any time I have to stand for even a few minutes, and I’ll have to go see an orthopedic specialist about this because it is really making life miserable and difficult. Still, there really isn’t any excuse for bad behavior, even when there is provocation.