Paying Bills

Living overseas isn't as exotic as you might think it would be.

Sure, it's exciting at first. Everything is new and different, and you tend to think of things in terms of "Life in the Philippines," or wherever. But after a while that changes, and eventually your Life in the Philippines becomes, simply, "life."

And that's how I'm reduced to writing about paying bills. What could be more mundane and pedestrian than that? Taking out the garbage might qualify, but I've already written about that. Twice.

Paying bills at home is so easy. Write a check, peel off a stamp, drop it in the mail. Or log on to the Internet, make a few mouse clicks, log off. Either way, paying bills is a snap.

In the Philippines, it takes a bit more effort. Don't get me wrong: It's really not that difficult. It's not like I have to negotiate the bill paying process in Chinese, after all, but it does take some leg work. For example, here's a look at my afternoon:

2:02 Arrive at HSBC, withdraw money from ATM. Go inside to exchange P1000 note for something smaller that I can use to pay the gardener later this afternoon. Discover the bank is out of P200 notes, so reluctantly accept a wad of ten P100 notes.

2:06 - 2:15 Drive to Union Bank's Makati Supermarket Branch to pay the power bill and telephone bill. Stand in line for five minutes before stepping up to the booth to talk to Ric, the teller who now knows me so well that he tells me jokes whenever I stop by to pay our bills. Ric immediately hands back the power bill and points out that it's more than three days overdue (how did that happen?) and, therefore, he cannot accept payment. "You'll have to go to Meralco," he tells me. But he does take my money for the phone bill before practicing all the colloquial ways he knows to say goodbye to his American customers.

"Bye!"

"See ya!"

"Catch ya later!"

"Take care!"

"See ya 'round!" I give up and let Ric get the last word in, making him the winner of today's edition of the Goodbye Sweepstakes.

2:25 - 2:35 Shop at the supermarket for something -- anything -- so I can get my parking pass validated and save that ever-important P15 parking fee.

2:35 - 2:40 Remember where I parked and debate, loudly, with myself about the best route to Meralco.

2:45 - 2:55 Fight traffic but -- I think -- find the least busy route to the power company.

3:00 Receive number 0946 from the guard greeting me at the front door. Wonder how many people are in line in front of me. Walk upstairs.

3:02 Discover that luck is with me, and that number 0943 has just been called.

3:03 Bells chime and the electronic sign board hanging over the cashiers tells me that booth 4 is now ready for number 0946. Booth 4 is still occupied by another customer.

3:04 Cashier at booth 4 uses her thumb to gesture towards booth 6. The booth 6 cashier picks up the gesture. I give her my money and my very overdue power bill.

3:05 Cashier at booth 6 hands me my receipt and says "See you next month," says the guard who had given me number 0946. I get in the car before he can try "Catch you in March."

3:06 Debate, loudly, with myself over the meaning of a road sign.

3:07 Lose the debate, as I find myself on a one way road into a gated housing development.

3:08 Smile to the guard and tell him I made a wrong turn. "Can I make a u-turn here?" Guard opens the gate so I can leave the neighborhood.

3:09 - 3:16 Wait for traffic to clear so I can drive back past Meralco and finally head home. Make a mental note to remember what the sign means.

***

If you're a child of the 80s -- well, if you grew up in the 80s -- you might like a CD that I've been listening to by Colin Hay.

Colin Hay was lead singer of Men At Work, who hit big with Down Under and Who Can It Be Now back in 1982. (This happened to be about the same time I was losing some of my, ahem, innocence to my summer-between-junior-high-and-high-school-girlfriend. Her family had cable TV. Her parents worked all day. We watched a lot of MTV.)

Shelly and I were watching an episode of Scrubs a few weeks ago when he was a guest star who performed a couple of his songs. I eventually searched him out on iTunes and listened to a number of his tracks. On the CD Man @ Work, Hay does some nice acoustic versions of old Men At Work songs as well as some new music.

I'm also enjoying the reissue of "The Legend of Johnny Cash," which my lovely wife gave me for Valentine's Day. It's got a number of songs I had not heard before, as well as alternate versions of a couple more. Though I'll never make Shelly into a Johnny Cash fan, I definitely appreciate this gift.