Philippines - I made it!

Here I am, and I'm exhausted! I finally made it to the hotel this morning at 6:00 AM Philippine time. Right now in Manila it is 11:30 in the morning on Wednesday. For everyone in Utah, it is 9:30 on Tuesday night. I lost a day! I'm going to make this entry brief, because I am exhausted, and want to sleep. I figured some good old fashioned blogging would make me tired.

I flew to San Francisco on Monday night on United Airlines. The flight was short, and I spent most of it reading a new book I just bought called "Remember Me?" It's by the same lady that wrote "Confessions of a Shopaholic". It's pretty good, but I haven't read a book in so long it was fun to read something again.

We arrived in San Francisco about 2 hours before our flight out to Manila. I had to go to the bathroom so bad! We found a bathroom finally and checked in for our flight. The line for Economy class was so long, probably close to 200 people waiting to check in. Because eBay is awesome, we got to fly Business Class. We didn't have to wait at all. We checked in and went to have dinner.

By the way, the "We" in this conversation is a coworker of mine, her name is Karly. She's close to my age (we're one year apart) and she is super nice. We're a lot alike, which is cool. We ate at this grill and then went to wait for our flight to board. We got to board first, and when we walked in, it was amazing. I've flown first class before and I've flown business class before... but only on the main airlines most people are used to. I've never flown business class like this business class. The seats were amazing! You could recline and lie flat. We were served a 4 course dinner. I got a hot towel to wipe my hands with! It was a pretty posh seat, for sure.

I didn't sleep extremely well on the plane, mostly because it's hard for me to sleep soundly if I'm not in a bed. It was more dozing for me. Karly slept soundly the whole night through, which is awesome. The little TVs we could watch didn't work to play movies or radio, it would only play a few TV shows and games. The games were ok, but I didn't really feel like playing video games when I was so tired.

We had a "technical stop" in Honolulu, Hawaii. I've never been to Hawaii, and it sucked that the first time I could go there I couldn't even get off the plane. We literally sat there for a full hour while they refueled. I did get to check my facebook and email Arthur, which is good. It took us 4 hours to get from San Francisco to Hawaii. It felt like so much more time... and I realized that we still had like 12 hours until we would get to Manila. It was going to be a straight shot to Manila from there. Once we started back in the air, I tried to sleep a little.

I did ok, and the rest of the flight went by pretty quickly. I mostly just read my book and dozed. When we were about 3 hours from Manila, they served us breakfast. The food on the flight was so good. The night before, I ordered a Curry Sea Bass with Jasmine Rice. It was the most delicious seafood and curry I'd ever had together. The curry was kind of spicy, but not too spicy for me. I ate it so fast and was tempted to lick the curry from the plate. I figured it wasn't a good idea because I was surrounded by high-class people.

For breakfast, I had a croissant, a bran muffin and some kind of weird omlette. The omlette was served with ham fried rice, which was weird, but it was good. For the most part the food was delicious for airplane food.

When we got to Manila, I was pretty happy to get off the plane. We got our bags with no trouble. We had been told that it was likely that our bags would be lost or left in San Francisco for our layover. It didn't happen, they showed up within the first few minutes. That was a huge relief.

We were told to go outside and look for a man in a red coat that would be there with the hotel we are staying in called the Shangri-La Makati. He said we didn't have a car reserved, but he would get one there for us quickly. It was awesome, they only charged us for a Camry rate, but we got a Mercedes! Wooo! It was pretty sweet. The guy who picked us up spoke really good english and told us a little about the city while we were driving to the hotel. When we got here, we got checked in and went to breakfast.

Here is the lobby that greeted us when we walked into the hotel:


This hotel is famous at eBay for having the most incredible breakfast buffet. The food was amazing! I had like 4 plates. If you know me, you know I don't eat 4 plates at a buffet. I usually have 1 - maybe 2 - at the most. I had french toast, a chocolate croissant, a big chunk of granola, a plate of jasmine rice, salmon on a skewer, a piece of sushi, watermelon, pineapple and more. It was so perfect, since we were hungry and tired. I can't wait until tomorrow so I can eat it again.

Here is the buffet:


After we ate, I came back to my room. My room looks exactly like the room below, except for the TV isn't old and boxy - it's the new flat screen. I stole this picture from the hotel's website. Check it out!


I couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on, though. I figured it out with Karly that we have to put our room key in a little slot in order for the lights to work. It makes sense.

I wasn't extremely tired yet, so I got my clothes that needed to be ironed in a bag and sent them off to be ironed. They will arrive tonight before I go to work.

You're probably wondering what I'm doing here anyway. eBay is rolling out a new dispute resolution process for items not as described, or when items aren't received by buyers. The resolution center will now be on eBay and not on PayPal, and I am here to support the agents as they begin to take calls for buyers who need help with the new process. I am considered a "subject matter expert" otherwise known as a "SME". I will be running around helping agents with questions they have about the new tool and the new process. I'm pretty excited, but scared that I won't be able to get to everyone who needs help. This is an outsourcing center with over 400 agents. I hope I do ok. I will wear comfortable shoes and try to do my best.

I am getting a bit more sleepy and I think I'm tired enough to go to bed. I am happy that I was able to talk to my husband for a few minutes. He told me it snowed there in Utah. Is that true? Insane. Ok, I'll try to write more tomorrow. I want to go to the pool after work in the morning if I can... and I'd like to take a picture or a video. Check back for more Manila Updates! :) Miss you all...