A natural in so many things

It's weird how Calamba in Laguna doesn't have a decent hotel. Even a motel. Nil. It's an okay enough city. It's near Metro Manila, it has several malls, some universities. You would probably expect a hotel, too. But surprise. Zero! I needed a place to stay while I was in Calamba for an interview. I looked up hotels in Calamba in the internet. I thought it was convenient to book online. Most if not all hotels now have websites where you can book in advance. But I came up with nothing. I thought I must've entered the wrong search keywords. But searching in the internet isn't so hard. I've done an encyclopedia's worth of research already for my unforgiving course. I've searched for the most obscure topics and wrote a full-blown thesis proposal worthy of a masters degree (according to my professor). I have crisscrossed the virtual portal for hours on end reading everything that strikes me as remotely interesting. But here comes this moment when I needed something I thought the web could provide. Tada! Nothing. Zilch. Congratulations Calamba, you have made yourself my favorite city to hate.

I still pushed through with my interview, though. I ended up staying in a run-down dorm located 2 hours from where my interview would take place. How is that for an adventure? What is more, the dorm is nowhere near a landmark. It existed almost randomly in a very, uhmm, unhappening place. One must get off on  a highway, between far-flung barangays, to reach the dorm. Lucky me.

I almost lost hope with the web, until I happened to log-in to this site where anybody can advertise things to sell. I wasn't counting on it, but i searched for places to stay in Calamba, and voila, an ad for a vacant room in a dorm came up. I called the number immediately and asked if the room was still available. Yay! It was. And only for two hundred Pesos overnight. What a deal! I only needed one night in Calamba, so I took it. It didn't matter to me how I'd get there. As long as I had a place to stay, I was solved.

Up to now, I still wonder how I was able to survive and find the dorm all alone. It was one of my first ventures alone to foreign places. The farthest probably before my trip to Vietnam. That Calamba adventure actually strengthened my confidence that I can do anything. It's not like I had experience being away with family and things like that. I went to university in the same city I was born and grew up in. So this was pretty much my first foray into independence. I also wondered why in the world my parents allowed me to go. It was so unlike them. Or maybe they finally realized that I've grown-up and they can't keep me tied down forever. Before that trip, I still had curfew...LOL

So anyway, I flew to Manila, found my way to Alabang to get on a bus to Calamba. I arrived at the place they call 'Crossing', which is like the core of Calamba traffic, with numerous roads radiating away from Crossing like spokes on a wheel. In my poor Tagalog, I asked how I could get to this place and that place. Finally, I road this jeepney to nowhere. It was also my first time to ride jeepneys outside of Negros, so i didn't know how everything worked. The payment system ,the getting off, getting on system. I just feigned being a native while observing my co-passengers discreetly how to do things. I got off, looked for the intersection, and proceeded to follow the directions given to me by the dorm owner. I still don't know how I knew where to get off. I just got off randomly and it was the right place. God, I'm a naturally gifted navigator. haha. So I got lost a few times. But I managed to find the dorm. What fun adventure.

Now the dorm wasn't like a dorm for students. It was a dorm mostly for people working in BPO companies. I arrived at 4pm, I still remember clearly. It was a Sunday, and the person I contacted about the dorm wasn't there. His daughter was, and she said her dad is still in church. So I waited until 7pm, got into my room, and freshened up. I went out later to eat at Chowking. My interview the next day was still at 10am, but I woke up at 6am, got ready by 7am, and proceeded to the venue. Good thing I decided to go early, as the venue was 2 hours away. I got there pretty much 5 minutes before my scheduled interview. The rest is history.

What boring post.