"Integrating" Past the Tellers

Its amazing when you know where you need to go, who you need to talk to and what you need to say how quick and easy getting things done in the Philippines can actually be. For all our complaining about how slow the pace of life here is, I begin to wonder how much of that is just because we have no idea how to get things done when we're not in our ultra-efficient, 24 hour convenience world.

I think back to the first time I tried to get a few of the travelers checks mom send me with changed over. I was in Solano during training and since my bank account was based out of Manila (even though it was the same parent bank) I had to argue my way through three different people just to see the bank manager who distrusted me & my travelers check just as much as I distrusted him and his bank tellers telling me they needed the security stub from the check and that they stopped processing checks at 10am (which if you've never used TCs before is the part of the check you use to reclaim your money if the original gets stolen, ie, the part you don't carry around with you.) In the end I left my signed no-less-than-four-times check with him to be processed the next day and till next week when I could pick it up just hoping he didn't "forget" about the whole business by then. I was on pins and needles all that week, but everything worked out just fine in the end.

Today I rolled into the Santiago City PNB branch, where I just so happen to have my account based out of, walked right past all the guards & tellers to the Sales & Services Head's desk and sat down. Within fifteen minutes I was ready to leave, once again leaving my check in his hands to be processed on Monday (they stop processing checks at noon) complete with his cell phone number so I could text to find out when the money goes in. Of course, the first time I pulled out a travelers check in this bank one of the guards panicked and told me the bank closed at ten despite the fact that he had opened the door to let me in, it was already one, and there were plenty of other customers about. That was the time I learned to skip past the front if I needed something besides general banking services.

Patience is swiftly ingrained way past what anyone could believe their limits are. So much so that a member of my batch, upon meeting the PCVs who had been in country a year at his site for the first time, called them all apathetic to their faces. Now we all understand the changes that occur. I wouldn't call any of us apathetic today, but you slowly learn what situations you can impact and which you just need to sit and wait and it will all shake out. I still think a lot of things in this country are simply slow. Take the bus from my site for example, but its also good to be reminded how much of it is also because we don't know all the "rules" of the game we're playing. Those can be learned. The bus, on the other hand, is always going to be slow.