I have never experienced serious work environment until I got myself in a contact center job in Makati. A lot of people were guessing that in the BPO industry, particulary in customer service, everything is easy. I used to. But after all the drills that we’re having, speaking grammatically, or just sounding grammatically-correct English is not good enough. I’ve been doing fine in the English department when drills are given in our wave but when the trainer (which happens to be the manager of the whole program) plus other trainers who are interested in witnessing our wave’s performance, controlling my tummy’s uncanny antics is virtually impossible.

Yep. For almost two weeks already, I’ve been burping non-stop even in the middle of the class. I’ve been eating adequately and never missed a meal but it seems to me there’s another problem that keeps me burping, worse enough farting without the established premise of eating or digesting something fart-worthy.

Good thing that my body is cooperating well in the drastic night shifts.

BTW, about the trainer’s interest in our class? Well, we have a different curriculum. Something that has never been done in the previous batches of trainees of the company I’m working at. That’s the reason why I, along with my co-trainees, have already received calls very early–ahead of the other trainees of the same program who went into training a week or two earlier than us.

Special children, eh?

I wrote this very long post last Thursday at 1:45 am. I was really having a hard time sleeping until I found this green dusty notebook under my bed (yeah, like it was so dark and then I just felt like putting my arm underneath my bed and boom! I started writing with a candlelight and two mosquito coils beside me.) For the record, it’s been a while since I last had an article handwritten. My girly handwriting missed my notebook so much.

Issues about the government’s plans on taking over Meralco, in my opinion, are something I’m really scared of. Perhaps their scrutiny on the out-of-this-world charges of Meralco to us (or technically to my mom, for that matter) consumers may have rang the bell. But as I see it, it’s the government, along the corporation’s shareholders and other unlikely people trying to squeeze in, who has kept on allowing such ridiculous policies to be implemented. In the upcoming days, or it might have been predicted earlier as expected with the media buzz around, it’s another numbers game for the administration of this electricity monopoly.

Having said that, the options that the votes should be contending are both atrocious. The Lopezes and the Arroyo government. Choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. But if the people are to be asked who they will entrust the unprogressive overcharging fate of Meralco, with the popularity of Hana Kimi and Piolo Pascual I guess you already figured.

Yeah whatever. I just couldn’t sleep so without knowing how long my candlestick will last, using a pen I stole from Theresa Pangilinan (hehehe) I dribbled and scribbled on this notebook (hi notebook… miss you).

Apparently I don’t have much intellect to ponder much about the takeover ish. What I’m gonna do now is something Kuya, my mom, and I were babbling within the darkness of our home a while ago (umm yeah, I think we talked about this and I distorted the facts). Everyone is sleeping already when I came home (after Internet-ing on the other side of our block to… well… argue with someone—LOL). What was I talking about?

Umm, I was looking at our electric bill (with the disconnection notice—unstapled and in effect) and tried to evaluate (using just our awkward selves) how Meralco was brutally gluttonous enough to charge us a whopping Php 1221.05 that eventually led to our disconnection (har-har-har… buti’t malamig ngayong madaling araw) of our power supply to our (1) desktop PC (2) a rarely opened TV (3) a small electric fan (4) a 50-pesos worth ceiling fan (5) a 3-ft fridge (6) a wireless flat iron (7) a rarest-than-rarely used component system (8) seven 10-watt CFL light bulbs, two of which are regularly lit for approx. 6 hours nightly.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that this stupid lambasting analysis of mine is completely biased. Any misinformation or false definition/misusage of the terms on the Meralco bill used by me (because they defined it according to their scientific hullabaloos) should be treated at your own risk. Any sarcasm that can be encountered on the course of reading is either unconsciously written while I was half-sleeping or that I’m just plainly sarcastic since the beginning of my writing here on this notebook I got from our employment seminar a year ago. Complete with message for Neil faggotry at the back. Wait, I should have deleted this part

GENERATION

Okay. I know very well that Meralco is (unfortunately the only one) supplying us electricity in the whole archipelago. And since they are the ones who generate electricity… oh wait, it’s NAPOCOR and… what was the other one? I dun care—isn’t it presumable that before anything that reaches our appliances has already undergone “due process”? So here’s the generation charge… where everything that has been processed from NAPOCOR and I don’t know what, paid whatever and all, is charged to us. And these equates to the kwH of our consumption. To begin with, it’s enough to pay everything. The effing note that my 0.4 point gel pen’s whining about is its share on the whole bill. Only half of everything? What are you thinking? Isn’t “Generation” enough to cover everything up?

Behind our bill is a rather broken down partition of the generation charge. And then my eyes went o_O after I read that… wait, you call this PowerAct deduction? For me, this Liliputian subtraction they call PowerAct is just stupid. Like me. As if a deduction of 9 pesos will help uplift my unemployed Dad’s morale because of a measly point something percent discount. And what’s this adjustment? Like they’re migrating to the US and had to adapt ourselves with the new environment? Wait… does Meralco have this big volume adjustment knob somewhere in Dasma? Gawd, I so wanna see if they are being charged by turning the know to “increase adjustment charge” or “decrease adjustment charge and augment the deducted amount somewhere within the bill unnoticed so it’s still a win for Team Meralco” option.

TRANSMISSION CHARGE

For what my gradually deteriorating neurons know, transmission is a noun (I’m not even sure about that… is it a preposition?) of bringing something from a source to its receiver, as if you’re delivering a pizza and then charging your customer two times the original price. Convenient transmission, eh?

SYSTEMS LOSS CHARGE
Ummm…. Wait a focking second…. Yeah I mean 3… 2… 1, err wait that’s three… anyway. (Erase Erase Erase). So you mean when we are having brownouts or something, you still farking charge us with a hundred farking bucks? Whatdafark is this Meralco/Lopezes/Wowowee? Isn’t it YOUR faut for having a crooked corporation setting up crooked electric connection with crooked services, crooked over charges and what have you? For crying out loud, Meralco. Don’t tell me your overcharged and other extra-curricular activities would not suffice everything if you farking brag to all of us. If you would have charged us with full honesty and sincerity, people of all ages would have paid you in full amounts instead of resorting to jumpers that you assessed a major hunch of your so-called “system loss”. Don’t even farking tell us that’s it’s our farking fault. Ferkrisessake, as if those wiretappers have brought one of your largest transformers and generators and whatever-you-call-them to farking smithereens. Ain’t you charging us your efforts to generate (GENERATION) electricity and then deliver (TRANSMISSION/DISTRIBUTION) it (SUPPLY) to us (METERING CHARGE)? With all these crap scattered all over our bills with ridiculous percentage distribution, I won’t ever buy your sheesh that you’re not having a fare share with us consumers. If you call it “nalulugi”, ano pa kaya kami? Dumudutdot ng kulangot sa putikan?

And I’m not done yet with my stupidity.