When work travel really means work

I was pretty excited for my virgin work travel but the novelty has worn off. I was dreading it because I had to fly on a Sunday morning and come back on Saturday evening which meant I wasted 2 days for this. Not to mention that the flights were with PAL and small planes. I would complain less if it was SQ. In addition, I had to settle the issues with my team. Sigh.. I hate people who backstab and now I have to set aside my personal anger.

My boss did not come with me this time so I had less stress. I could go back to the hotel at 4pm+ and to continue to do my work there. The bad thing was that I essentially had to work almost until midnight to prepare for the following day and to provide updates to my boss. It was definitely more tiring compared to my first trip in January when my purpose was for training and to know the people. For this trip, I had to plan things, coordinate discussion, and keep changing agendas since there were new updates (like staff promotion). I did not even go out in the evenings. Sigh..

I spent less than 5000 peso in January and I was planning not to change any for this trip since I had more than 5000 peso leftover. Thank goodness I decided to change USD 100 to 'test water' if the money exchange here is as troublesome as in Indonesia when it comes to USD notes. They are not so next time I will just use my USD notes. Not to mention that I spent more during this trip as I tended to splurge for dinner.

One of my colleagues brought her baby and she asked to switch room. Thus I ended up sharing a 2-bedroom suite with another colleague. The suite has a washing machine/dryer so it was a win-win arrangement for me. The downside of sharing a suite was that I spent time chit-chatting and that contributed to my late nights.

Thursday was emo for me as my laundry nets were missing. Pretty sure that the housekeeping took it and they did not even attempt to set things right. Sigh.. To add to my emo-ness, my comfortable elephant pants from Bangkok reached its end of life just after 1 round of washing: threads coming off and the whole pants just shrunk. The colour wore off and it made my VJC PE shirt blue :( Sianz..

Friday was teambuilding and I woke up at 4am+ since the bus would leave office at 6am. The teambuilding was at MB Cove at Nasugbu, Batangas. The bus journey was 4 hour long. I would enjoy it more if I were not so OCD about cleanliness. I did not want to bring back dirty and wet clothes so I did not play in the water at all. I actually wanted to try the inflatables :'( The sand was brown and initially I thought the water was murky. Looking closer at the water, it was actually quite clean from rubbish.

Not a fan of beach or swimming but I would like to try the inflatables T_T

Nice to look in photo but I was not really enjoying myself there

As people were playing, I spent my time in the air-conditioned karaoke room to sing with few people who also consider themselves as bad singers. Haha yeah so bad singers unite. I played some volleyball and I had bruises on my arms. The volleyball was already the lighter ones and the bruising simply means that I am old and my blood vessels are fragile now. I took a brief nap on the hammock as well. The weather was uncomfortably hot and humid although I was thankful that there were no flies, insects, or mosquitos.

Dinner was quite interesting: they spread long tables with banana leaves and the rice and vegetables and meat were placed on top of it. That was my first time eating with my hands in God-knows-how-long. The evening was so unbearable because of the humidity and the heat and the absence of any breeze.

I was knocked out before 11pm and I had to be thankful for the other 2 guys who fell asleep before me. The boys' bedroom happened to be the karaoke room and initially I was worried that people would be singing all night. The room was so messy and I did not know who would sleep where but since I was one of the earlier sleeper, I just could not be bothered and chose my spot first. I kept waking up when people coming in and still having conversation until almost 3am. Essentially I only had uninterrupted sleep from 3am to 5am.

Looking back after the day was over, it was actually not really a bad experience. I survived a day without internet since the reception was so bad. I survived sleeping in a room with 14 guys and common toilets which were ew.. Lucky the boss (not my direct boss) that came with me from Singapore allowed me to use the bathroom in her private room so for bathing etc was alright for me.

The bus ride to Makati took 5 hours as we made quick stops to get souvenir as well as Twin Lakes Tagaytay. It was too foggy to look at Lake Taal and Volcano, though.

So difficult to see the lake and the volcano. Photo also does not capture the mountainous terrain as nicely as what my eyes saw.

I tried to use Grab to go to the airport and that was a better choice than taxi. Another good learning point. Thank God the flight back was not delayed although I was irritated by the fat lady sitting next to me who had no consideration with the amount of space she took when she was eating. Why on earth she took a middle seat considering her size and inconsideration of others around her.

I was so tired from this trip that I slept through my afternoon nap from 5pm to past midnight yesterday. I forgot to switch on my alarm. Haha.. Because of that I requested to work from home today as my tummy was very gassy. It is not bad to work from home when there is a lot of admin work but it is not ideal for actual editorial work. Well, coming back to office tomorrow.

Anyway I should learn to be grateful. Last time I was jealous with people who got the chance to travel frequently in their work. Now that I get to experience work travel, I should be happy instead of complaining about being tired, not flying with SQ, bla bla bla. Forgive me, Lord, for my ungratefulness.

For now, I would like to rest until the end of the year. Going to 4 countries (Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and the Philippines) in 2 months is very tiring. I am old liao.