So as you may already know from my previous entry, I was in the Philippines for some business in the past couple of days. It was a short trip packed with meetings in and out but I made the most of the time I had there at the office.
Every time I go I’m reminded about how I love the area in which our office there is. Fort Bonifacio is to me the most beautiful part of Manila. There are parts of Manila that have more character or are more adventurous of course but I love Fort Bonifacio for how clean it is, how organized and how well developed it is.
Look at it. I took this random pictures while outside the Nuffnang Philippines office. It looks like we’re in California or something.
I had time to catch up with some of the Nuffies in the Philippines there.
And after a dinner together we ended up with a big group photo.
It’s amazing but whenever I visit Nuffnang or ChurpChurp’s offices anywhere in the world I feel the same culture there among different people from different countries. Everyone is young, fun and love what they do. I like how some of our Nuffies have really unique hobbies too. Like Carlos here who has this Mercedes which is almost 30 years old (a car that is older than him).
I asked him why he bought it and he said he just always loved classic Mercedes. So he bought it and then rebuilt the engine so that everything works like new again and the car hasn’t broken down ever since. When I asked him how he knew what to do… he said YouTube videos… everything’s on YouTube these days.
My Little Singapore Airlines Misadventure
I got back from Manila just last night with a bit of an inconvenient trip though. I was flying Singapore Airlines which meant I had to transit from Manila in Singapore before I could head back to KL. My flight arrival at Singapore was delayed some half an hour because we were stuck in a holding pattern above Singapore Airport due to heavy air traffic. So when I finally landed I had just 15 minutes to get to my next flight.
When I got out of the gate, there wasn’t anybody to guide us which gate the flight to KL was so I rushed to a screen to look for a flight and scrambled to my next gate. Fortunately the gate I needed to get to was just next door. When we were at the gate though we were told that they won’t be able to get or checked-in bags on to the flight in time. That I could choose to still get on the flight and they’ll send the bags to KL with the next flight which was an hour plus later.
Caught up in the moment I was furious and lost my cool but after a while realized there was nothing they could do anyway. So I opted to hop on to the next flight and wait for my bags to arrive an hour plus later. Turned out the flight from KL to Singapore was delayed too for like 30-40 minutes. I asked the flight attendant that since the flight was being delayed, if they had time then to load our bags from our Manila flight but after checking with her supervisor, she said they’ll try but there’s a 50:50 chance. I asked her then to just advise us by the time the flight takes off if the bags got loaded in time or not so that we know if we have to wait for it at the luggage belt upon arrival. She never got back to us on that… so I assumed that they didn’t manage to load the bags.
When I got to KLIA, there wasn’t any Singapore Airlines staff around to help apart from one guy that waited at the arrival gate to tell us to go to the KLIA Lost & Found Baggage department. It wasn’t a Singapore Airlines counter or they had no Singapore Airlines staff there so when we got there initially they had no idea what was going on too. The KLIA staff were helpful though and found out on their own what was going on. I was in a rush to go back so I headed back first and passed my baggage tags to Min (who was travelling with me) to collect for me.
Later on in that night I learned from Min that the bags never came as promised. They said they would deliver it the next morning. I’m lucky that KL is home to me. I can’t imagine flying to another country only to NOT have my luggage with me even for a night. That means no phone chargers, no toothbrush, no spare change of clothes, no nothing.
So that was my slightly unpleasant trip with Singapore Airlines. They’re supposed to be known for being efficient and for the best service but I didn’t see any of that yesterday. I hope my bags come as promised later this morning.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space