TheFranciscos.Net

Naknangweteng ‘tong Blogger na’to o. I apologize for not having any updates for the past few weeks. Frikkin’ Blogger was just not cooperating… first, they lose the templates that I use to build my blogs, then after going through the process of rebuilding them, they had a problem with saving my new template. Anyway, I’ve finally succeeded in getting it to work, but I’m considering using another blogging tool, preferably something that completely resides on my own server. I’ve heard good things about Movable Type so I’ll probably explore that during the weekend.

Anyhow… the previous few weeks have been quite hectic, with Zoe’s finger getting cut, Aileen’s mom undergoing surgery, our fiasco with Cathay Pacific (more on that later), and our whirlwind trip to Manila, it’s been a bit fast-paced for us here. So what we’ve done during the past days have been to just kick back, relax and do as little as possible.

Our trip to Manila was fun, but getting there was a totally different story. This deal I was talking about a few months back turned out to be a disaster. After flying from Pitt to JFK airport in NY, our $125 tickets were not honored by Cathay Pacific, but we were told this only after putting our baggage on the plane and after we were giving out boarding passes and were already waiting for the boarding call at the gate. About 30-40 minutes before flight time, I was called down to the ticketing office and was told that the manager had decided to remove our luggage from the plane and cancel our itineraries. My first reaction was “you’ve got to be f**king kidding me”… but no amount of pleading would change their mind. These SOBs just said if you want to get on the plane, you have to pay for the tickets. And paying $1600 each is something I don’t on a whim you know…. so after a couple of minutes of deliberating (and getting the ticket price down to about $1000 each), Aileen and I decided that we were going anyway. The ticketing agents were assuring us we would get on the flight that night… unfortunately, the computers just weren’t cooperating and the manager made the harsh decision to leave us behind. If we wanted to go to Manila, we would have to do it the next day. At least the kind ticketing agent got us food and accomodations. We were finally able to leave for Manila the next day and go on our vacation.

In the end though, Trip.com was good enough to reimburse us for the tickets we had to buy from Cathay, and our only expense was the $375 we paid originally for our tickets. But what really pissed us off was the airline manager’s decision to not honor the tickets… which was bought legitimately. How they treated us was totally wrong… and because of this, I plan to file a formal complaint to the consumer board, IATA and Cathay. I don’t know what good will come out of it, but at least it’ll make me feel some sort of satisfaction.