A Big Time, Beijing-Sized Suck

Yesterday evening. The day before the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Little Spud’s nanny teleports to my side.  “Ati!  Wala na namang segnal ang teveh!” 

I rush to the TV set and check.  It’s not that we did not have a signal exactly; the box scans for channels then displays: Load.  On the TV screen, I am prompted to enter a password.  What the eff is this?!

“Pateh ba teveh nelalagyan na den ng lud?” asks Little Spud’s nanny, as I explained the problem to her (she insisted on a play-by-play).

Little Spud’s nanny is a tiny woman without a smidgen of inferiority complex who’s quite adept at collecting and sharing scandalously distorted gossip.  She has a lazy left eye that gives me a bit of disorientation whenever I talk to her; the other eye prefers to focus on cute men.  I shall call her Mata Hareh. 

Mata Hareh sometimes amuses me.  Other times, I want to wring her neck.  But this time, we’re united in the anticipation to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.  Mata Hareh is pissed because this year was her first time out of the country and in China, ever, and we have the Olympics happening in China and we can’t even watch the Olympics?  In China?  The country that gave us visa hell because of the surge of foreigners who had the moolah and time of day to see the 2008 Olympics LIVE or stage “Free Tibet” protests??!!  Even in her own little world, it does not make sense.

“Nageng ganyan na yan kanena pa, kagabe hende naman ganyan, de ba nanood pa tayo ng debbedeh?”

Yes, I thought to watch a DVD of the teen flick, Stick It (it says here, “From the makers of Bring it On…“), the night before, to… I don’t know, psych us up for the competitions?  And I’ll be watching gymnastics because I’m curious to see how this batch will fare with the new scoring system – which will consider difficulty of artistic and technical elements in addition to ticking off points for mistakes – that debuts in time for Beijing 2008.  Brief segue: I wonder if Stick It had a hand in addressing this apparently long-standing complaint on gymnastics’ scoring system the way Bring It On repackaged cheerleading as a serious competitive sport in today’s pop culture?  Who’d have thought cheerleading cheering cups could become international events? Is cheerleading Olympic material, even?  Getting back, yes, Stick It was a fun show to psych us up for the Olympics.  In fact, we were so psyched, we became anxious about not being able to watch the Beijing extravaganza; talk about bad timing.

But other than the usual hooking up the DVD player and turning things off after, I didn’t do anything else to the stupid tuner.  I’ll also mention that all menus on the TV set is in Chinese, and I doubt I’d ever get interested learning putting in passwords and stuff even if I sleepwalk.  It’s a TV, I watch the news and DVDs with it.  That’s it.

And so the next day, today: I call the TV service center after work.  Our landlord owns the TV, among other furnishings in the house.  Except for the Internet connection, all services — cable TV, water delivery, gas, electricity — have been previously set up, and things ran smoothly most of the time.  We once lost the signal two months ago, and that was because we weren’t familiar with the payment system or the service routine then. 

An operator has a technician call me back, and I describe my problem to him.  “We don’t put in passwords to the box, that may have been your doing,” he tells me.  Mata Hareh tells me she neither pressed anything out of the ordinary on the remote, nor did she have a sudden urge to baby-proof me from the Korean channel. 

“I don’t know how to do that, and this never happened before in our three months in this apartment,” I reply. 

Mata Hareh and I eat our last meal for the day at 7:30.  “Seguru hende na sya dadateng?” 

7:45, the doorbell rings.

It’s the guy who set the TV for DSTS.  He’s baby-face-ish and pleasant to talk to, not all growly and abrupt, and he’s like, what’s the prob?  I show him the TV and the Load prompt.

Baby Face whips out another card reading, signal boosting, whatever-you-call-it box (and they think I’d bother programming a password, like, shyeah) and confirms, “Yes, you did not input that password, I think the box is not functioning correctly, don’t talk anymore…” when I attempted to make a point, “… we have no time to lose.”

And so he changed boxes and turned on the TV and switched to the CCTV channel et voila.  A three second countdown to the Olympics… commercials. 

“Official time is 8:08 PM,” he informs me.  Seriously, without the one-child policy, having eight kids seems like a good idea around these parts.  I thank Baby Face and he wishes us a nice evening watching the opening ceremonies.  I figured he’s hurrying because he wants to watch from his place, too.  Indeed, if you step out on the veranda, you’ll hear other apartments tuned in to the same channels.  The whole country is tuned in to the same channels.  While CCTV is the sole broadcaster of the Olympics in China, several channels apparently will broadcast the CCTV frequency.  I don’t know if I got that tech bit right, but you get the idea — it’s like a special product launch commercial that airs in 50 different channels simutaneously.

And so after the hundred twenty seven commercials from the government and all those Olympics sponsors, we finally get into the opening ceremonies and we were just about to ooh and ah over the amazing light shows and fireworks displays when the box blinked (Mata Hareh: “Aaay!”).

The box scanned channels, and then it’s back to normal. I press the buttons to resume viewing the cable channels.  Cool, I thought.  Maybe it was just kind of rebooting or something.

Only this rebooting glitch repeated every 10 seconds. 

I call Babyface; he doesn’t answer.  Perhaps it’s official policy to take orders from his switchboard crew only.  I call the TV service again. I describe the new problem, and midway she concludes, “this repeats ever several seconds, correct?”  So this is a routine problem for them.  “We’ll try to send someone to check the problem, but this may carry over to tomorrow morning, I’m sorry.”  That sucked.  Yes, a 9 PM TV service is itself a miracle, but dudes, we’re in China.  Where anything is possible.  And it’s the freakin’ Olympics opening ceremony rumored to cost billions of Renminbi and featuring everybody from Zhang Yimou and Tan Dun to Sarah freaking Brightman!

We put up with the stupid reboots, rescans and pressing buttons for a while, but we were also concerned about maybe damaging the remote and the TV.  “Kaka-enes, ha,” Mata Hareh clucks my sentiments aloud.  She thought the boys from Iceland were impressive and was looking out for Gloria Arroyo in the presidential bleachers (“Paano kaya sya makeketa ng mga Penuy pag daan nela?”).

At past 9 PM, I am really neither dressed for nor in the mood for calling on the neighbors.  And the Little Spud is sleeping.  What, we drag him with us?  Leave him behind?  Even a temporary mania has its limits. 

I call DSTS, who is back home chilling with his boyfriends after work, to dump my frustrations to.  Hey, you don’t watch TV most days of your life already at this age and the one day you have a hankering for TV watching, you get denied.  This is anger management session material!  He consoles me that tomorrow will have a lot of reruns going on (It’s not the same!).  In turn, I managed to convince Mata Hareh to watch a Sharon Cuneta-Robin Padilla film from a compilation DVD that DSTS purchased from Carriedo.

Meanwhile, I decided to put my searching prowess into action to look for a live feed online.  The prominent yield: 

CCTV is the sole broadcaster of the 2008 Beijing Olympics!

Great.  I press the button aaaand…

Sorry, please install our CCTV media player. 

Press.  Button.  Daggit.  Installed! 

Press again, aaaaaaaand…

Sorry, broadcast is limited to the Mainland, Hong Kong S.A.R. and Macau. 

I am in the Mainland, you stupid prompt!

I log onto the Chinese version of the site.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand…

Sorry, please install our CCTV media…

This is really getting old. 

Press, press, press.

Press again.  AAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDD?????

Sorry, due to the statutes governing the agreement to broadcast the opening ceremonies live, you cannot view the live webcast online at this moment.

I.

HATE.

Media in China.

God Bless Ye Merry Auld Acquaintance

How’s that for mixing titles.  I’m beginning to notice a trend as far as Christmases go: less get-togethers, less people. 

Mother’s inaanaks, however, defy said trend and have managed to produce even more Christmas beneficiaries.  Does ninanghood really extend to progeny?  It’s ridiculous; my mother isn’t even (baptism) godmother to many of them, and I’ve always thought married couples are the ones who ought to give gifts to their sponsors, not the other way around.  Put that in, less cash all around, I guess.  God bless our country.

Things still manage to be as hearty as ever, but not as fun as things used to be — old friends passed away, the next generation in their families weren’t as keen on keeping in touch.  Many friends are not in the country — Mr. Shuli, Dr.Tom, Ellie Punk’s Master, Amazing Cross-stitcher, they’re still out there.  Hope you guys have a merry year-ender. 

We have the surprises, of course.  I especially like the story of an American, a Pinoy, and a Chinese who were shipwrecked on an island. The American took charge: “I’ll build our shelter out of this ruined boat, and you guys find supplies.”  An hour later, the Pinoy came back with firewood, edible fruits, and some game.  Evening came and still no sign of the Chinese.  “I’ve finished our shelter, let’s go find him,” said the American.  “I think he went that way,” replied the Pinoy, pointing to a pathway heading to a woody area.  They took the small road and headed deeper into the thickness of the wilderness, when they came to a dead end.  The two companions heard a howl from a distance.  “I hope nothing bad happened to him,” said the Pinoy.  Suddenly, there was a rustling behind them.  Neither man had weapons, and the American, apprehensive, drew out his heavy-duty flashlight to use as a club if necessary.  Out of the shrubs jumped the Chinese, who yelled, “Supplies!”

Where were we?  Oh, surprises.  Surprises abound!  T2jim, however, hands down biggest surprise of the year.  All the best… and use the Force.

And back to the missing theme, this year’s noche buena features just the fab four… the little spud celebrates his first Christmas with Mama, Ahma, and Diko.  DSTS goes back to work (cue maudlin Martin Nievera Christmas songs).

Little Liempo wishes Papa a happy birthday come midnight and he misses their kagat pwet ritual very much. :.( 

So Long, Big Daddy

I have the most thoughtful boss in the world:

Phone rings.  I pick up.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Jill, this is [Big Daddy].  How ya doin’?”

“Oh, hey.  If clueless about what’s happening with the hush-hush things that are supposedly ongoing with good progress while generally maintaining an air of cool and talking to customers and publication contacts as if things are business as usual is fine… then we’re fine.  And yourself?”

“I’m cool.  Supercool.”

“That’s great.”

“By the way, I’ve resigned.”

“Hum?”

“I just thought to call you up and tell you ’cause they’re gonna make an announcement by e-mail any second now… and I just don’t want you to be surprised or anything.  And thanks for editing my resume.”

 

See?  Thoughtful.  Bring out the keg.

Far To Go

I was born on a Thursday, and, according to that batty nursery rhyme, I have “far to go.”  It was a subject of personal convolution: does this bode well, meaning I will go far in life, or does it mean the opposite — that life will throttle then fling me far and away, so it’s literally far to go before I get to my goals?  So typical mine is vague when those pieces on Monday’s and Tuesday’s kids are so obvious, Wednesday’s is, without a doubt, screwed; Friday’s child takes after the day’s deitic namesakes and should have no problem advocating free love and everything touchy-feely, Saturday’s child inspired a Donna Summer hit, and finally, Sunday’s is simply all that.  What a queen.  Anyway, I’m betting the poem meant the second possibility, since the verse about Thursday’s should match Wednesday’s like Tuesday’s did Monday’s.  Hmp.

I usually get annoying cramps a day or two before the usual suspect settles in.  The problem was usual suspect did not come, and yet the cramps went on for five days (and counting)! I was about to bring matters to Aunt Advil because it was getting to the point of driving me nuts, but it was an out of the ordinary occurrence, so working on a hunch, I went for the stick that was behind the “Break In Case Of Paranoia” glass instead, and, after a necessary trip to Honkytown two days later, it’s officially confirmed: a possible FedEx package is on the way, and it’s not the cake.

DSTS and I are ecstatic… and kind of surprised, but it’s a welcome surprise!  Weeks after he went back to work following Dozer_21′s orientation on China and a week spent in Poor, Poor Village with me, I kind of noted some signs, though it could have been stress again, and I told him not to tell the moms yet — his mama was kind of hoping and sending out feelers for several years now, and false alarms can really dampen things.  But ever practical, DSTS told her anyway and instructed to just “wait for her news.”  His mama passed it on to my mama and maybe crossed fingers.  So when I finally called them, there was no yelling much, more like, “Whew.  And yay.  Er, good show, child.”  We’re so efficient that way.

Now here it is, and well, hooray!  Hooray, and no jumping.  And no upchuck reflexes yet, though not exactly looking forward to that.  NO.  Now if only the darn cramps would go away already so I can finally attempt matching my face to how I feel.

Pixie-Dusted ‘Shrooms

As we sat down today in the meeting room for Big Daddy’s sudden call to arms, all four of us — Jean-Luc Picard, Curly, Oberon, and I — wondered.  Is this some kind of emergency thingie like what happened to RBJ’s kneecaps?  Is someone getting sacked?  Who invented muriatic acid, and why do I see it used as disinfectant in our toilet?

The great leader speaks.

“Last night I couldn’t sleep,” he began.  Hmm.  We’re called to interpret his dream?

“I received an unexpected message on my computer.”  Follow the white rabbit.

“That idiot of a partner of mine in Korea is sending his new sales team here today for a three-day sales training so man battle stations.  Curly, prepare for reservation nightmares. 

“Oberon, if I find these guys are a big headache, I’m passing this account to you.

“You,” he turned to me, “and you, Jean-Luc Picard.  Tour them around the factory, get engineering to help out, figure out lunch, grill them about their market.”  All this before we all could blink and, uh-oh. 

It’s Babysitting 101.

The afternoon trickled by and at about 4 pm Curly received his first phone call from the Lost Boys.  Their leader said they’re now in a taxi heading towards the factory in the poor, poor village.  “May I speak to the driver just to make sure about him getting you to the right address?” Curly inquired politely.  He listened for a beat.  “No, I want to talk to your taxi driver.  Could you pass him your phone for a second?”

He hung up and looked at us.  “I don’t think he understood me.”

I spent the afternoon preparing what documents we should have for training and looking for my usually trusty smiley face mask should I turn into Uruk-hai come coffee break tomorrow. 

At five, huge boys and men who look like boys pile into our office with equally huge luggages and, good grief.  It’s supposed to be a three-day stay.  What, you guys packed your mothers in there?  Nice timing, too… the ladies who take care of transportation go home on the dot.  Curly hurries out to drag them back.

Jean-Luc Picard runs into the meeting room to give away his name cards and comes back with eyes wide open.  “They can’t understand Engleesh!”

Okay.  Babysitting trainees is one thing, but how do you babysit when everyone’s no habla Ingles?  No habla China, either?  What the heck are they here for?  Big Daddy sputters into the phone for a Korean translator and I was thinking, this is the second batch of sales people from Idiot Business Partner and the last batch that reportedly got sacked was about several months ago. 

What if Idiot Business Partner is not an idiot after all and his real business is industrial travel and tours?