the boredom of ramfree17

Everytime Mommy cant eat I’ll kid here thay I’ll buy her a blender/oysterizer so she can ingest her food through a straw. She will vigorously shake her head and respond with an adamant no because she has memories of my grandmother’s last days where she can only consume liquefied food.

Now I am eating rice congee using a straw.  I had a molar extracted and I need to avoid getting food particles or have hot food  in it to hasten the clotting. I have the choice of eating through a straw or going hungry. I chose the former.

Karma is a bitch, and it is real. ?

Gist: When paying via your online wallets then make sure to take a screenshot before payment.

My internet provider bill (from PLDT) is nearing its due date and I was paying the last few month’s bills via my Maya.ph wallet to take advantage of the crypto coin “cashback” feature. I logged into my Android app and saw that I still have more than 6000 pesos in the wallet which is sufficient to pay for my internet bill. I proceeded with paying for the bill using the saved template and adjusted the amount to Php1900.

Upon submission, the app encountered an error that it didn’t receive a response from the provider and to try again a few minutes later. When I refreshed the app home page my wallet balance dropped to Php4200 but there is no transaction listed for it. I waited for 5 minutes to refresh the Maya app but everything remained the same.

The Maya chatbot is useless and doesn’t want to connect me to a human helpdesk agent so I called up the Maya hotline. The agent who answered it is helpful enough but she does not have any ability to view my prior day balance to confirm the deduction. She can only confirm that there is no new transaction logged to my account since what she saw is the last payment I made a few days back. She suggested to call the PLDT hotline instead and to email support@maya.ph to do a deeper check and to request for an online receipt if needed. It has been 2 days and yet there is still no response on my request except for the automated ticket number.

I dont have any tangible proof other than this claim so it will be very easy for Maya to say it didn’t happen. This is a very costly lesson in proper documentation, and a very negative experience that will prevent or at least minimize my use of the Maya payment system in the future.

Happiness is an elusive treasure for most but in reality it is hiding in plain sight.

Happiness is located at the crux of being content with what you have and what you are willing to forego.

Getting more means exerting additional effort and taking on more responsibilities. If those start being a burden then it is a good sign your personal inflection point is already known. The question now becomes “are you ok to maintain this as your status quo, or do you still want to achieve more?”

I prefer training my team using the pavlovian conditioning, with a slight bias in negative reinforcement. This has drawn the ire of the Human Resources department in the past.

The reinforcement that I usually employ is done via penalties. The penalties are monetary in nature, and increases in severity if the infraction happens close to each other. An example is a first violation is worth Php50, but any violation in the next 2 weeks will incur a higher penalty of Php100, and so on until a set limit (normally Php500 per infraction). If there is no violation after 2 weeks then the penalty goes back to Php50 as the next violation will be treated as a first offense. The reinforcement is only effective if the team sees that I have my skin in the game too. If the violation is something that applies to me then the same penalties cover my violations. Usually I also sweeten the pot wherein if there is no violation for 2-3 consecutive periods then I automatically contribute the highest penalty amount to the collected funds. I “lose” either way but my goal is not to collect funds but to make the team learn a certain behavior.

The funds collected do not go to my own pocket. The team decides what to do with it. Normally the team spends it on a lunch-out or a series of snacks. I had one team donate the collected funds to charity.

The whole point of negative reinforcement is to make sure that the subjects do not deviate on the prescribed behavior as it will be too inconvenient. Positive reinforcement on the other hand makes it pleasant to meet the prescribed behavior. I just prefer the former because I find it more effective in getting results in a much shorter time.

ciao!

I am not a handy man as I never inherited that skill from Daddy. I am very of wary of powertools even if I am fascinated by them. I always treat the tools with respect whenever I use them. Much like today.

I am glad to say the powertool I am using today (portable impact drill) didnt cause me harm. It was the underside of the monoblock chair that did me in and caused a mini red fountain in my  foot’s second toe. It was a perfect storm of carelessness, stupidity and timing.

I did see Daddy again in that brief 30 seconds of pain though. I squealed the same way I imagined he would have. Murmuring self-directed invectives while brimming with pain.