meeting bruce and foolishness

was with my auntie today helping her hook up to earthlink (an internet connection server) when after determining i had done everything possible to verify the modem and establish a connection, i decided to just call the hotline number of the company.

fast forward to conversation with operator after voice prompts.

i'm already talking to bruce who basically confirmed i had done everything the earthlink manual mentioned for a dial-up connection (and other 'kalikots', as neophyte and professional techies are wont to do on their pc's). but when he came to asking me the account name, i had to call my aunt over for the information, and i had done so in tagalog. then bruce asks me, miss, pilipino ba kayo?

ABA, TUWA!!! and as one kababayan does one seeing/hearing another, we immediately conversed in tagalog, as if we were friends. naging close ba. we began talking off-pc-topic and talked about the weather in both of our locations and what we were doing. his name wasn't actually bruce, it was his foreign name daw (to which we both laughed). he was working lunchtime in makati and i laughed again. this was more so not because the philippines had scored another outsourcing job from a US companies, but because earthlink had aired (and continues to do) commercials of caucasian people working as phone operators. granted, the ad itself did not lie because it did say that there were real people on the people; they just didn't portray the kind.

but i didn't tell bruce abt that. instead, i asked him what name of the company he was working on. he laughed, then, surprisingly a moment of silence followed. i said, uy, hello? he then speaks again, but in english. not a big deal, but for a split second, my mind imagined a possible scenario. his supervisor must have appeared. then it hits me. or maybe, it hit both of us. THIS CONVERSATION IS RECORDED. the very last line from the voice prompter before it hooks me up with the operator. yikes.

i quickly said my goodbyes to bruce and thank him for the wonderful job he did (i might have overdid the praising part).

i told my aunt abt the conversation, but of course, it still didn't help her at all since the connection server wouldn't work. then for the second time, it hits me. HARD. all this time, i had forgotten the simplest thing -- attaching the phone modem into the pc. ouch.