Daily Report: A Better Tune

Epril tried waking me up for about an hour before I finally gave in. She pounced on me, tickled me, and hit me with pillows... but I was refusing to wake up because my alarm which I had set for 7:00 a.m. hadn't gone off yet. It turned out after 5 years of faithful service, my alarm clock was no longer working. Have to buy a new one.

I spent the morning reading news on the internet, blogging, and enjoying my breakfast of bacon and eggs, cooked by Maid Susan. I never bought a new coffee maker when I moved to The Philippines, because I've started enjoying this Nestlé instant coffee called "3-In-1". A little milk, a splash of Bailey's Irish Cream, and it tastes quite nice. I'll get tired of it eventually though and go back to some nice fresh-ground coffee.


The afternoon Cebu Pacific
flight coming in for a landing.
Cagayan's airport is only a few
miles farther down the road
out of town from my house.Work went well in the morning and was much more enjoyable. A few months back, several of my accounts were given to our transcription teams in India. They were all amongst the easiest accounts my company had, and therefore the easiest for Indians to transcribe.

Over the past few days, however, that work has started coming back to me (with the addition of the emergency room reports that I mentioned yesterday). It seems that even on the easiest accounts (crystal-clear phone lines with standard midwestern, articulate English speakers) Indians can't transcribe worth a damn. I hear The Philippines is trying to take the overseas medical transcription market away from India: Only if they can offer much higher quality, which, sadly, I doubt.

Getting these accounts back certainly makes me feel a little surer about my job.

For lunch, Epril and Susan went around and paid bills and did some grocery shopping. They bought for me a miniature pizza from Pizza Hut for 59 pesos ($1.50) which was good, if a little bit too small for a Kano's meal — about the size of an average New York City bagel.


Sunset over the Cagayan
river valley. In the distance,
behind the clouds, you can
see the mountains, about 40
miles distant.In the afternoon, my motorcycle was returned to me from the shop. Seems it was indeed another electrical glitch. Here's hoping it's the last.

In the evening, we watched some more "Heroes" on television, and then went to bed nice and early.

The girls have discovered an oldies radio station that plays ballads from the 1960's and earlier, which they enjoy. I'm not sure if it is a radio station or just a morning show, since the girls tune in to "today's" music in the afternoon. It's an example of why I enjoy being around Filipino people so much more than Thai people: Filipino people have the capability to look beyond their own place, their own culture, and even their own age and era, to find things they can enjoy. The only thing that Thai people want antique are their monks. Downstairs, I've got two under-25 girls singing along to "When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes."

Heh: Just after I typed that, the music turned off, and Susan and Epril put in the head-knocking techno CD that my friend Siuyoung sent me from America. Figures.