Week 26 of the coronavirus quarantine: ‘Ibagiw’

I AM back from a quick trip to Baguio where I had been asked to attend “Ibagiw,” the Baguio Creative Month events. I had planned to leave on Thursday, November 12, but then that was when Typhoon “Ulysses” came a-calling and my garden took a big hit, the floods made parts of NLEX impassable. I left two days later. The expressways were operating normally except for the RFID pass. After torturing people by making them wait hours to get an RFID pass and not even allowing for credit card use, which entailed having to deposit cash ahead of time somewhere else for the vehicle to enter the expressways, meaning wasting man hours in the process, it was a dud. The RFID would not work automatically; the driver of the vehicle had to fish out the card and show it to a security person for the car to enter. Please, expressway management, especially Metro Pacific Tollways, get your act together.

Everyone who wants to enter Baguio has to register online. Except that online registration did not work. The Baguio end blamed it on the servers. You too, Smart and Globe, get your act together on the Baguio online registration. All I can say is that I tried for three days with only one of our party’s applications getting through. So, we went anyway, without registration but taking with us the original documents requested: a Covid-19 test and a barangay clearance. That, or we would have been grounded here due to the hassle. We were, of course, made to register when we got there and led to the John Hay Convention Center where we were courteously assisted by personnel in full personal protective ensembles. We were then given a pass that allowed us to go all over the city.