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Do you know the Queen song “I’m going slightly mad”? I’ve been humming and even singing this song more and more often to myself recently. I’m a quick, efficient person and I struggle with the concept of time in the Philippines and how complicated just every little errand turns out to be.
I’ve been having problems with my eyes, slowly getting short-sighted after a laser correction 20 years ago, massive floaters and veils in combination with the onset of age-related far-sightedness on top of that giving me headaches and making it impossible to get any work done on the computer. So I wanted to see a specialist to discuss options.
I called a clinic in Cebu and got an appointment for last Wednesday at 11.30. I went out for the bus at 8.30 am as it takes about 1.5 pothole-filled, dusty hours to get to the outskirts of town, then another half hour of stop-and-go to reach the city, add another hour to get from one part of Cebu to the other.
So I reached the clinic at 11, only to be told that the doctor was actually seeing patients at another branch today–this time I took a taxi. At 11.30 I was told to wait in line to receive a number. Then “Get back at 2″. I killed two hours in the vicinity (no time to run any meaningful errand), got back at 2 waited until 3 to see a doctor, a superficial examination, drops to dilate the pupils, another hour waiting, then another examination at 4 and the advice to get reading glasses–not the expert opinion I had hoped for. Plus there was no optometrist present at that day at the clinic, so I was told to come back another time.
Great, through rush hour in the city and with another bus up to Carmen I got back at 8.30 pm: 12 hours wasted.
I mean, why bother to make appointments when there’s a queue after all? Why not just give out appointments on the phone to patients staggered every 20 minutes, so you can simply arrive in time to the see the doc like in any other country??
The next day I was seen fairly quickly by the optician, had my glasses prescription made, picked frames, wanted to pay by card, but that wasn’t possible, even though the clinic does accept card payment–just not for glasses. The ATMs in the vicinity didn’t work, so I gave up.
Another attempt at a different optician closer to Carmen yielded more success. After about 2 hours I was at a stage where I could pick glass qualities with the two women behind the counter giggling and acting like they had never gone through their own lists before. My questions whether they could order daily contact lenses for me led to half an hour of phone calls, yes they could order but only big quantities, no actually just 2 boxes, no actually they were not available and did I have “a sample of my previous lenses”? What sample? Well, a photo of the box maybe, they asked!?! At that point I was looking over my shoulder to search for the hidden camera.
But no, no joke. Just the reality of trying to get things done in the Philippines…
