FiLiPiNo time

There's this thing known as "Filipino Time". It means running late, being late, a later time, not on time, so on and so forth, you get what i mean. And as much as i love being Pinoy (i really do), and i love a lot of the values and beliefs that we all so strongly possess, the whole Filipino time thing, i really hate. Hate it. I abhor it. And hate is a very strong word.

I value my time. I value it a lot. I don't have a lot of it to myself and most of it is spent worrying about something, stressing over something, or working on something really hard. A tiny bit of it is spent resting and relaxing. So when i feel like my time has been wasted over something so unimportant and something so dumb, i get really annoyed, irritated, and just straight up pissed off. I've been snapping a lot lately and i seriously don't know why... but everything has been getting to me and i've been extremely bitchy for no apparent reason. i wonder why...

anyway, yesterday, i had a meeting with someone at 2:30pm at Glorietta. I get a text at 12:30pm, right before i started getting ready, that she was exhausted and needed to rest before our meeting, therefore moved it to 3:30pm. That was cool with me. I got to spend extra time with my family, relax a little bit before heading out and just chill. Finally, i started getting ready and headed out of the house at around 2:45pm. The timing was perfect because when i got to Glorietta, i had 10 minutes to spare which was enough time for me to walk to our designated meeting place. I get there, and my "meeting person" was nowhere to be found. I immediately texted her, and she claimed she was on her way. I said to myself, Oh well, she'll be here in a few minutes. But i was so wrong. 5 minutes dragged on to 20 minutes, and then 45 and then 50 and then finally!!! an hour and 15 minutes later... she was at glorietta. We started the meeting at around 5ish. At 5:30pm she says she has to run. Had another meeting to go to, she says. I was left there, sitting, dumbfounded. I was like, what the hell? i wasted my afternoon for this?!?! we could've just texted the information back and forth and it would have saved me the cab money to get there, the coffee i bought, the trip i made to get there, and the time i wasted doing nothing. I decided not to waste my time being ticked off. I was out already, i didn't want to waste the rest of my afternoon, so i decided to get in touch with an old friend and spend the afternoon with her. It was a great plan because i had a really good time yesterday. But that's a whole different story.

You know what else really irritates me? Doctor appointments. The problem? They don't have any!!! It annoys me when a doctor says that office hours are from 9am-12am, and when you try to schedule an appointment they say it's "first come, first serve". I brought Dylan to his pediatrician last month to get some shots. We were there, 9am on the dot. We think the earlier we get there, the earlier we're through, the earlier we get out of there. To an extent there is some truth to this... but in a way, it's just a load of denial crap we use to make ourselves feel better. i think.
Anyway, we had to wait 2 hours before Dylan got to see his doctor. Can you imagine waiting in a hallway of a hospital full of sickly people with a 6 month old baby? I know thousands of people do this, but i prefer Dylan spend as little time as possible in a hospital. Did you know that around 80% of people get sick from a virus floating around in a hospital? and that 90% of that 80% DIE from it? uh-huh. It's true. I saw it on Oprah. ANd i don't mean to be a paranoid mom... but it's better to be cautious... and better safe than sorry. Millions of people are getting sick. There are millions of viruses out there and you can seriously catch it. Worse, the people you love can catch it.
Dylan was nice enough to behave the whole 2 hours we were there... but that's beside the point. Not only was it not good for both Dylan and myself, it was also a complete waste of out morning. And you know what? we were out of that Doctor's office in a mere 15 minutes. That's just wack.

Again, i value my time. And i would really appreciate it if other people just respect that. I'm a very punctual person and always have been. Give me a place and a time and if i give you my word, i'll be there. More often than not, i'm always left waiting for people to arrive and more often than not, they're more than 30 minutes late. Out of all the people i know, only 4 people are reliable enough to show up on time. That's it.

Sadly enough, i myself will soon start to use this whole "filipino time" excuse. Because i predict that they will be an hour late, i show up an hour late too. It's no excuse, but it beats having me waste my time waiting and doing nothing. And it usually works! It's annoying though, isn't it? and sometimes my entire itinerary for the whole day is messed up because of one lousy late meeting.

I say, be more considerate. When you agree on a time and place, just do it. please.
And doctors/offices should really come up with the whole appointment thing... *ahem ahem* ST. LUKE's!
ah... venting.