How do I love thee? Let me count thy ways .... I am not about to write a litany of why I love the Philippines yet :-) Well...sort of ... What I am about to write is to share with you that the inspiration of the title "I love the Philippines" did not come from me but from Bob. My blog link is actually "MyBoblovesthePhilippines". Bob of course, is my hubby, honey, sweetey, etc. That line did not come from me but from him. But that line got me to start this blog... here goes...
Since we did not travel and enter the Philippines together, Bob can only stay 21 days* and need to get an extension visa. So we schedule to go to Manila to do it (we stay in Cavite) and plan to go to Divisoria and Raon as well. We decided that it is going to be a "like a local" day for us. Since parking will be tough on the places we intend to go, we are taking public transportation. First stop, his visa extension. As expected there were a lot of applicants, but in fairness, it was well organized with clear instructions on what to do and an "information desk". I came prepared and have read from the website the procedures on visa extension - so I know that for an additional fee they can do express processing and we intend to avail of it. I asked one personnel that I want express processing and he smiled and said something like, "ma'am, if you want we can do super express processing". To which, I replied, "that I like!" He stood up, talked to me quietly and using his celphone to compute the entire fee - he showed me a total with an additional 500 pesos for the "super express" service. I asked him how long and he said just 10 to 15 minutes. I even haggle for the extra few pesos so we can just round them off. He said fine and I told him, "let's do it".
All the time, I am negotiating with this personnel, Bob just sat down and was observing me. When, I sat down beside him, he said "a VIP treatment?" I smiles and said "yes". Less than 15 minutes, the guy came over, handed me Bob's passport with his extension visa, certification and receipt and courteously said, thank you. We left the office, and Bob asked me all about the "negotiating" and I told him all about it, and he laughed and said, "I LOVE THE PHILIPPINES!"
Now before you raised your eyebrow and say something like, but isn't the above incident just showed how corrupt it is here in the Philippines? Stop for a moment and reflect :-) I have had the privileged to travel for work on other countries so I can make comparisons and say that corruptions of different forms happen everywhere. But what is really considered corruption? Corruption means the abuse of a public office for personal gain or other illegal or immoral benefit. Political corruption is a recognized criminal offense, along with bribery, extortion, and embezzlement – three illegal acts often associated with corruption in office. I read the news regularly and I can really point out "corruption" in its technical term but I refuse to classify the incident as "corruption". Read further before you argue ...
I'm sure the guy split the 500 pesos with the others who helped him do the "super express" processing, he probably even bought a merienda(snacks) for everyone to share. I don't know, I don't need to know. What I know is we benefited from it! The extra pesos are nothing compared to the inconveniences we have to go through if we still need to go back or wait for couple of hours. In economics, think about the concept of opportunity costs and you can easily grasp the value of the time you save by shelling out the extra pesos. In customer service management; would you rather have a rigid rules to follow and implement or you want a flexibility in rules and implementations to provide a better customer service? For me, I can look at it as bending the rules to provide a better customer service.
Yes, think about it - we travel and stay in hotel and the porter carry our bags and we hand them a tip. We eat and dine and we leave our servers a tip, a much bigger one if we are happy with the service rendered to us. We go shop and do our grocery and if we get a carry-out help, we hand them a tip. The way I looked at it we went there for a service, we were served, we accomplished our goal in very little time. It is no different when you buy something on the internet, if you need it badly, you pay for overnight shipping which in a lot of ways can cost you an arm or leg!
Don't get me wrong - I am not justifying neither am I condemning the practice. What I am pointing out here is, this things happen and it happens not just here in the Philippines. Let's not try to be naive about it - so why be hard on dear Philippines? One of the things I learned from my husband is learning how to look at things or situations differently. We can focus on the negativity of the event or we can look at its positive side. We can complain about it or laugh about it? You can look at the said incident and hate the Philippines or you can look at it and say, I love the Philippines! Your choice ....
In the next series of blog I will punctuate incidents that I feel makes Philippines endearing - just so next time you see them, you know the reason for the line "I love the Philippines!"
Source:
*Nationals from some countries (USA is one of them) are allowed to enter the Philippines without visas for a stay not exceeding twenty-one (21) days.
http://immigration.gov.ph//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=37
*http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-corruption.htm
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