It's not all good with Chowking Eastwood

Having limited choices on where I can buy food on the last day of the year, I picked Chowking in Eastwood City since it’s the closest one. I ordered a chicken supreme lauriat with pineapple juice for take out because I don't think I'd be able to eat there when I see some flies hovering over some tables and water on the floor leaking from the ceiling. I think it's this time of the year when they don't mind those flies much. At least some of their crew is working on the floor. With my hunger getting the better of me, I just thought that it won't be that bad in their kitchen.

I got the pineapple juice first which had a lot of ice in it when I specifically told the lady who took my order not to put ice since I have colds. The crew nicely took the juice away and replaced it with a new cup. Then, I got the lauriat. It has the pancit canton, siomai, rice, spring chicken, and buchi. Everything looks great but there was not a single piece of condiments there.

Since it's for take out, I just went straight to their order counter to request for the missing condiments. To my surprise, I was told that I need to pay extra to get them. I told the crew that it is common sense that people who take their orders out would also want the same food experience as to what they are used to having when eating in their fast-food. Filipinos eat their pancit with calamansi, sometimes with toyo. The same thing can be said with their siomai. It's like eating kare-kare without the bagoong because it's for take out. The guy won't budge and won't give me a single condiment without having me pay for it. He doesn't care if the condiments are practically unlimited for people who choose to eat there.

At that point, I was already thinking of returning my order and just get food somewhere else. I asked the guy if he would give me some if I just eat there and he said he would. So, I told him so. He gave me those precious little condiments and went back to their counter. Instead of unpacking my order, I went straight out with my condiments. No questions were asked. Nor, was I apprehended for not paying for them.

I still ended up having what I should have but not without losing my appetite due to this sick policy. Should there be so much fuss about these tiny condiments? Come on, I never thought Chowking is this bad. They're really living up to their slogan "Dito kumakain ang masarap kumain." You don't get to experience their good food unless you eat it in their premises.

NTC Allows ISPs to Cap Internet Service

In a bizarre move to potentially improve the internet service in the country, the National Telecommunications Commission has allowed the Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the country to cap their service through a revised Memorandum Order on Minimum Speed of Broadband Connection. For starters, this will just cap the amount of daily volume a subscriber gets. This means goodbye to your unlimited surfing and downloads.

I find it quite disturbing for NTC to even have thought of this idea to improve the service. Yes, everyone’s aware of the false advertising that all ISPs are doing. Yes, everyone’s aware of the generally poor service that most ISPs in the country are giving. But how in their right minds would they have thought of this as a solution?

Wouldn’t it be logical to first look into addressing these false advertisements? People won't complain if their expectations were set properly. Wouldn’t it be better to check first if these ISPs are promising their subscribers something they wouldn’t even get? Wouldn’t it be better had NTC try to use a bit of their brains first before even coming out with this outrageous solution?

Can they not conduct a simple root cause analysis on why they are getting a lot of complaints about the poor quality of service from these ISPs? Even an idiot would have noticed that in a slum area in one of the major cities in Metro Manila, where there are only 2 Smart Base Stations, literally hundreds of households are sharing the connection. A few phone calls to Smart Technical Support would let you know that the base station where you are connected is already congested and you will just need to wait because a supposed upgrade is already underway. In the first place, selling these services to new subscribers should have been halted had they known that their infrastructure won’t be able to handle any additional subscribers without taking a hit on their service quality.

Internet connection is now deemed as a commodity much like electricity, water and food. Have you ever heard of water service being stopped because your household already reached the allowable number of kilowatt per household? Or probably, you can no longer take your bath because your household already reached the allowable cubic meters per household. In Japan, 5MBps of connection costs around P750. Way off from the current rate and current bandwidth that we’re getting. People would now be complaining “Hoy!!! Magtipid naman kayo ng kilobyte!!!”

The bigger picture here is the inability of NTC from becoming an intelligent thinker. I can’t see this as a step forward towards progress but a huge leap back to the dial-up connection days. One can’t help but wonder if some big ISPs have bought their way into having NTC implement this.