Dear Ayala Property Management Corporation,

I am a regular patron of Bonifacio High Street, one of your properties within Bonifacio Global City. Aside from its accessibility and availability as a training ground for runners, I also just love spending time shopping at its establishments and enjoying its park-like atmosphere.

When you raised parking fees last June from P25 for 3 hours and P5 for succeeding hours to the current rate of P30 for 3 hours, P10 succeeding, I continued to patronize the open parking area despite no improvements made to the parking facilities. (In fact, you decreased the total number of paved parking slots and charged the same increased rate for the unpaved parking areas around BHS.)

However, recent events have given me cause to write this open letter, because I have been overcharged for parking not once, but twice already. Tonight, as I exited the elevated parking area behind R.O.X., the cashier charged me 50 pesos for 5 hours of parking. I do not normally distrust cashiers, but after I paid and left, I checked my parking stub and realized I had only been parked for 4 hours.

my parking stub

I had entered the parking area at 1744 hours (5:44pm), and exited at 2135 hours (9:35pm). At 6:44, that was one hour of parking. At 7:44, two hours. 8:44, three hours. I had exited before 9:44, but that fraction of an hour counts as one hour. That’s a grand total of FOUR hours. Why did the cashier charge me for FIVE hours?

Your cashier does not know how to count. I should have argued with her, since this is not the first time one of your cashiers has assessed me an extra hour of parking.

The first time this happened (some time in July), I was on my toes and feeling combative, so I argued with that cashier and paid the proper amount. Tonight, however, I was off-guard. When I realized the mistake, I wanted to go back to the cashier and ask for my 10 pesos back.

Instead I chose to sit down and write this open letter because I am sure other people have fallen for the same thing. I believe it’s my civic duty to expose this practice and make people aware that they may be getting overcharged and scammed at your parking facility.

There is one reason this problem occurs time and again. Manual, non-computerized ticketing and charging.

1. Upon entry, the parking cashier handwrites the plate number and time of entry on a ticket stub, which has been manually stamped with the date.
2. Upon exit, the cashier writes the time of exit on the stub, mentally counts the number of hours the car has been parked, and requests an amount for payment.
3. Upon payment, the cashier tears off half the parking stub and gives it back to the car driver. There is no written record on the parking stub of the amount that was charged.

One would think that with the parking fee increase, Ayala Property Management Corp. could afford to use a computerized ticketing system. If not, you could at least educate and/or screen the people you hire to be your cashiers to make sure they know how to compute parking correctly.

There are two implications should you allow this practice of overcharging to continue.

1. If you are not aware that the cashiers are doing this, and you argue that the cashiers pocket the extra hour’s worth of parking charge, know that your company’s name is on the line. People will still think that you are complicit.
2. If you are aware of this practice, you will most certainly be pocketing the extra money. That makes your company’s parking practices dishonest, and that is unacceptable.

I think your company can afford to use a register that prints receipts recording the amount being charged, at the very least. I hold Ayala commercial areas in high regard and know you will do the right thing, which is to put into place safeguards against overcharging. We are willing to pay, but let it be the correct amount.

Sincerely,
Noelle De Guzman

For the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to go out clubbing on an average of once every month. While initially it was a heady rush, at some point the party life just starts feeling like the same night over and over again, like “Groundhog Day” except I don’t look like Bill Murray and the music playing on the sound system isn’t “I Got You, Babe” by Sonny and Cher.

What drew me to it in the first place? Well, it was an opportunity to get dolled up and wear my most outrageous heels. Most days of the month I live in flipflops and sneakers and don’t feel remotely glamorous. And sure, I got to hang out among beautiful people and bump elbows with celebrities and feel, just a little bit, like some of the glitz rubbed off on me. But in hindsight, I’m not sure how glamorous it is to come home smelling like smoke, with dark circles under my eyes from staying out so late, and have awful drunken-looking photos uploaded onto Facebook the next day.

Initially I also went out clubbing to dance. I teach BODYJAM in the gym and always like taking some of the moves out to the clubs and see if they actually can be used without people laughing. Unfortunately, club culture (at least in the clubs I go to) have people just bouncing around or bobbing their heads to the beat, occasionally singing along to familiar tunes. Nobody actually dances any choreography. Additionally the floors are usually over-packed with people, like sardines in a tin can. Good luck trying to find space to execute a flashy arm combo without smacking someone in the mouth.

These days I like being home before midnight, and I get to dance as often as I want when I teach BODYJAM anyway. I don’t know if this is me getting older, or just getting wiser. I’d rather make a night of meaningful memories breaking bread and getting deep into discussions about life’s meaning with friends than wake up the morning after clubbing to stories of embarrassing exploits that I can’t even remember because I was too drunk.

Not that I won’t go out anymore; of course I still will to hang out with people whom I won’t have opportunity to be with otherwise. But I’ll get my kicks from their company, rather than the nightlife culture itself. I’m over it.

I live in the Q.C. (Quezon City) and it has everything a girl like me would need: shopping malls, parks, restaurant rows, etc. So I very rarely make my way to the other end of EDSA and that imposing structure known as the SM Mall of Asia.

I’m only here when I need to a) see some friends for whom MOA is the closest/most convenient mall; b) attend Fashion Week or any other event held at the SMX Convention Center in the MOA complex; c) attend work-related meetings at Fitness First MOA; or d) visit a specific store not found in any other mall in Metro Manila.

It’s for Reason D that I’m at MOA right now, having made my way through the 2-hour traffic jams caused by payday Friday (and I should note that it’s Friday the 13th as well). I’ve brought my entire mobile office with me as well, since I don’t want to pop into the store, get what I’m looking for, and then leave MOA to go work somewhere else on my articles.

So here I am ensconced in my little corner of Coffee Bean counting the reasons I don’t come to MOA more often.

Reason #1: It takes too long to get to MOA! I live about 15 minutes away from SM North EDSA, and 10 minutes from Trinoma. Today it took me 2 hours to get to MOA. One hour into the trip and I was only on EDSA-Santolan.

Reason #2: MOA is huge! While I appreciate that there might be more shopping choices in a mall of this size, most of the stores also have branches in other malls in the metro, and since stores of similar pricing and products aren’t located near each other, it can be quite tiring to window-shop in MOA. In fact, it’s making me tired just thinking about it… And good luck if you’re trying to find a specific store but don’t know where it’s located: there may be touch-screen store maps around the mall, but some of these terminals aren’t working anymore, and the listings may not be updated.

Reason #3: MOA is crowded! You’d think a mall of this size would have ample space for people, but during certain times of the day you won’t be able to find a place to sit down or even stand in line at the restaurants and fast food chains. There are always throngs of people here no matter what time of the day as well. Don’t these people have jobs they need to be at? Or maybe they’re all freelance, like me?

Reason #4: It’s too hot to walk around in MOA. Apart from the main mall, which is fully air-conditioned, getting from store to store involves walking along a non-airconditioned corridor. I know boardwalks are vey popular in other countries, and MOA is built right on Manila Bay with that boardwalk feel. Unfortunately, this is the Philippines and “al fresco beside the ocean” translates to “sticky and sweaty”.

Still, it’s always an adventure to come here. I just always need a whole day — and comfy shoes! — to take it all in.

Over the many years I’ve been alive, I’ve discovered and dealt with many allergies — from the milk formula I had as a baby, to a period in my prepubescent years where my parents had to put me on a prophylactic medicine because they couldn’t figure out what I was allergic to, to learning I could never fearlessly eat shrimp, crab, or lobster again. In medical-speak, I’m “atopic”, which means my body reacts to small allergens in a big way. They’ve always been rather temporary incident, however, and I’m thankful to God that I’ve never had to undergo desensitization because the things I’m allergic to are easily avoidable.

The past two weeks, though, I’ve had to deal with a new allergy. It’s not one that has me scratching at hives, or struggling to breathe, as in previous instances. It’s not even an allergy that’s immediately visible.

Not many of you know that I grind my teeth while I sleep. To keep my teeth from grinding down to a pulp (eww!), my dentist had a mouthguard custom-made for me. In order to keep it from becoming a harbor for bacteria (another eww!), the manufacturers treated it with an antibacterial agent.

The first month I had that mouthguard, I had nightmares regarding teeth falling out, but I reasoned that it had something to do with my brain adjusting to having something in my mouth while I slept. Now that I think about it, though, it might have been my subconscious telling me there was something wrong with that mouthguard; my body had started reacting in small ways to the material it was made of and/or the antibacterial agent it was treated with, until it finally could take no more.

Two Mondays ago, I woke up with swelling in my gums and my mouth’s inner lining, and my tongue felt burnt. I initially thought it had come from using a strong breath spray. It was so bad that I couldn’t chew or swallow anything solid without pain. I stopped using my mouthguard and waited for my mouth to heal, which it did by last Sunday. In the back of my mind, though, I had a nagging suspicion that the swelling had something to do with my mouthguard, since all the areas that had swollen had been in contact with it.

Last Tuesday evening, I put the mouthguard back in for the first time. Four hours later, when I woke up early Wednesday morning, the swelling was back. I knew then that it was an allergy. It was so bad that I had to take two corticosteroid tablets, and people thought I’d undergone collagen lip injections. (LOL!) And then began another cycle of being unable to eat. But since the second allergic reaction happened so close to the first one, it was even worse this time around. Even drinking water to moisten my tongue brought tears to my eyes, and talking was definitely out of the question. It got to the point where I actually began wondering if my mouth would ever return to normal.

I woke up this morning with the pain lessened just a bit, so I know the worst is over — and I’m never using that mouthguard again!

You may wonder, why would God allow me to go through the whole painful experience twice in a row? And why couldn’t this allergy be dealt with as painlessly as the previous ones?

Well, I do believe it was no coincidence. I work with words for a living, but sometimes I don’t realize how powerful speech is. Due to my enforced silence, I’ve realized a new economy of words. I’ve learned how much of my side of a conversation could be pointless or unproductive or just hampers other people from speaking their minds. I’ve also learned to listen more, and that it’s okay not to have to entertain people with “witty” yet fruitless conversation that, at its worst, is a series of sarcastic put-downs. Let’s not waste words, but instead use them to encourage, inform, and empower each other.

If I learn this lesson well, my pain for the past two weeks will not be for nothing. Ü