I hate the EDSA MRT. If you have been following me on Twitter, you probably have noticed that most of my tweets are complaints while I am in the system. I don’t even want to call it a system as to a public commuter such as myself, I think the stations are poorly planned and the trains are taking in more than what it could handle. You can clearly see how flawed it is compared to the LRT-2 which started construction almost at the same time as the EDSA line and yet have properly designed stations and efficient fully-automated trains.

What made it even worse are the people. Although majority of the passengers are disciplined, as with every place in this world, there are some people who are uneducated, rude and arrogant that ruin the supposedly peaceful commute from home to work and vice versa. Some of these “characters” are described here so that you are prepared the next time you ride the MRT during rush hour.

The Right-Hand Drivers

The MRT stairway in most stations is usually divided by chains to separate those who are coming in from those on the way out. During rush hour, the line on the right going in can be so ridiculously long that it actually overflows to the street causing an insane amount of foot traffic. Some people, who obviously think that they are royalty therefore deserve to come in the station without much hassle, climb up the other side. Now when a train arrives and passengers get off at that station, the dimwits have already blocked their way causing yet another insane amount of foot traffic upstairs. Next time you encounter these kind of people, feel free to push and let them fall down the stairs. They are better suited lying against the pavement.

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I’m a pretty lucky guy when it comes to my gadgets. Almost nothing I own have ever broken down while I was using it. Having said that, If I want to make a purchase and a lot of users have been reporting lots of problems with theirs, I usually just disregard them and buy it nevertheless.

Last night I was playing Portal on my Xbox 360, which I got just a couple of posts down. I am extremely close on solving the final level when the screen suddenly froze. I did not think much of it since my progress have been saved before that so I turned it off and turned it back on. What happened next is the one thing that all Xbox 360 owners are afraid of, the omen of an impending doom, the red rings of death:

Like a scene from a movie wherein a loved one died, I let out a loud and grim ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOO’ as I say goodbye to hours of fun that my Xbox 360 has brought me. I have read about it on the internet, heard it on the news and still I could not believe that something like that could really happen.

The good news is that the store is offering me a replacement—as soon as they get new stocks. In case you didn’t know, Microsoft Philippines is not supporting Xbox 360 units as it is not officially distributed here.

For now, there’s nothing I can do except wait.

I was talking to some friends telling them how sad and lonely I am lately. Understandable since it’s the new year and 2008 is pretty uncertain for me with masters application and not knowing for a while if I l get accepted or not. I often walk down Ayala Avenue with a blank stare lost in deep thoughts. Then I thought about what I could do to take my mind off this and one option immediately crossed my mind: buy a new gadget.

I have fallen into the pit of consumerism a long time ago and I could never climb out again. New stuff really does make me happy and when I think about the last time I felt contented was when I bought my iPhone back in September.

So what it is that I bought this time around? Well, it’s something that I don’t really need but I’ve been wanting to buy roughly a couple of years ago. An Xbox 360. I just thought I could totally justify buying it now since we now have an HDTV, DSL connection is pretty fast and I have a bit of cash saved up for “emergency”.

I bought Halo 3 as my first game because, you know, why not? I am also planning on renewing my Xbox Live gold subscription for a year after the free trial expires because the online aspect of the 360 is pretty awesome and the console feels lacking without it. At 2000 pesos a year, it’s not really that much of a burden financially.

There is also a service called Gamehopper which is basically like a Netflix for games for Metro Manila residents. At 600 pesos per month, you can rent any game you want, one at a time and they deliver the games for free. I cannot comment on the service yet since my subscription won’t start until the end of the month but they have an OK selection of games. Their website is crappy though but if they happen to have excellent service and I get the games that I want then I won’t complain.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with my purchase as it does fill the void on the times that I have absolutely nothing to do. I only get to play with it for an hour or two on weekdays though because my mom has to watch all those stupid ABS-CBN teleseryes and they want to see it on the big TV which I don’t get because it doesn’t really make much of a difference since it still in standard definition. (Breathes…)

There was a break-in in our apartment. Well, not exactly at our apartment but in another one on the same floor. This is where my mom’s friends from the States are currently staying in temporarily for a week. Talk about bad luck.

They all went out today so my mom could treat her friends to a nice lunch at Dampa in D. Macapagal Blvd. I also left our place to hang out with my friends at Rockwell. I returned home later in the afternoon and saw that there’s a whole lot of stuff scattered on the stairway. Clothes, shoes, bag of snacks and an empty luggage. The dwellers from the third floor said that there was a break-in and I should go to our place and check to see if we lost something. We were spared, probably due to the fact that my dad always keeps our place secured with at least four locks. My mom’s friends weren’t so lucky.

They returned home shortly, shocked and devastated, upon seeing the mess as nothing like that have ever happened to them. They did not know how the robbers were able to get in and there were no signs of forced entry. They were glad that they have brought their passports and money with them and the robbers did not get anything valuable, only bags of snacks, candies and canned meat products that are supposed to be given to their relatives as pasalubong. Maybe the robbers are planning to put up a store of imported goods to rival Duty Free.

This is not actually the first time that something like this happened in our building. Someone broke-in through a window in an apartment on the 3rd floor, stealing all their mobile phones. Still, we are thankful that no one was hurt in both occasions and those filthy, dirty, low-life creatures chose to steal things when no one’s home.

My uncle had a probable theory. Sometimes there are men who look like they have just escaped from prison, knocking on our doors asking us to solicit some money for some cause. This happened a couple of times before Christmas. My uncle said that they are probably surveying the place and see if there are things worth stealing then they come back when they are absolutely sure that no one’s home. I know that sounds a bit too paranoid but I’ve seen these so-called “solicitors” and you just have a gut feeling that something’s not right with them.

I can’t wrap my head around why these kind of people exist. We are here working our asses off trying to earn a living and in just minutes, they take what we have bought with our hard-earned cash so that they could enjoy it for themselves.

Just always be careful. If you live in a particularly shady part of the city, do whatever you can to keep your place extra secure. You just never know when these things might happen.

If you know me personally, you probably already know that I am planning to take up my masters in Sweden next year. If not, then yes, I’m just crazy that way and as with most students wanting to study abroad, I want to be exposed to a culture totally different from ours and live by myself in a foreign land.

Enough about that, this entry is really about PhilPost or Philippine Postal Corporation. If you believe all the stories of lost and extremely delayed mail and parcels, you have to be an idiot to trust sending items of value through them. But I’m different, I tend to think that only people who have negative experiences are the most vocal about it and the majority who did not have any problems at all would think nothing of it.

According to studera.nu, the site where you can apply for most universities in Sweden, you have to send your documents by regular mail. I may be overanalyzing it but I think they mean no couriers since the address is a PO box. Having planned this for months, I did my research and was overwhelmed by the horror stories people have about PhilPost. Even my friends are saying that their office are just filled with corrupt postal workers who just use all our mail as scratch papers for computing their ridiculously overpriced charges. Despite all of that, I have decided to trust them with my future (I guess, you could call it that) and use the service.

After my documents are ready and sealed in a brown envelope, I took time off work to head to the EMS branch of the Post Office in Pasay. Luckily, it’s just a single jeepney ride away from where I live. They told me that it will cost around 1500 pesos and will reach Strömsund in a couple of weeks. Sounds reasonable enough so I gladly paid and they handed me a receipt with a tracking number.

The PhilPost website seems to be stucked in 1999 so I never expected to find a page where I can track my mail. The Track & Trace section under Customer Guide just shows you a lame ‘under construction’ graphic and as far as I can remember, it’s been displaying that for more than a year now. I don’t mean to brag but I could probably get that up and running in less than a week, probably even a day.

So, it seems that the only way I could track my mail is wait for it to reach Sweden and get scanned by Posten. As I can be a little OC about this, I keep on checking the site almost every 30 minutes if it will show up there and not be collecting dust in a back room at PhilPost.

2 weeks have passed and there is still no sign of my mail. I got really worried and thought about just sending another one through DHL which will be horrible as I have to deal with my previous school’s bureaucracy all over again. I later found out that there is a problem on Posten’s english version of the site and entering the same tracking number on the Swedish site bears a result. Turns out, it was delivered to the recipient only in only 5 days! I let out a huge sigh of relief thinking my documents are in their hands now, ready to be judged.

I am not saying that the horror stories about PhilPost are not true. It’s just that the few times I have used them, including sending and receiving huge packages with items of value to and from abroad, my experience have been very pleasant and they deliver mostly on time. There may be corrupt workers stealing valuables from our mail but there are also honest and good ones like Mr. Floro “Pol” Camote from this Inquirer story published in October. I bet most people chose to ignore that when it came out.

Image Credit: Walang Magawa.com