I spent two hours at the POEA today. An hour and half in the morning and another half hour in the afternoon. Between those two periods of chaos, heat and immersion into the sea of humanity, I killed time at home counting shirts for the movers who'll come by next week. The process was not as painful as what people had described. In fact it was not bad, not bad at all.
(This is of course what they call the benefit of hindsight. When I was there, I sweaty, cranky, uptight and impatient. Sort of like me on a regular day, sans the sweaty part.)
POEA opens at 8 in the morning. When I got there at 8:07 there were 59 people ahead of me. The direct-hire receiving desk takes in only 60 people a day. You have one guess who no. 60 was.
Most of the hour and a half was spent waiting for my name to be called by the harassed lady at the counter. When I finally got there, harassed lady was on the phone. She looked at me, took my documents, and gave me a badly mimeographed piece of paper.
"Come back after lunch", she said with a smile. I guess she was happy to see the end of the line.
The mimeo sheet was a PDOS (pronounced "pee-dos") referral. PDOS stands for Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar. From one line to turn in my docs, I need to fall in the PDOS line, to get myself "enrolled" for Monday's 8am-12noon class. I'll blog about it.
By the time I get my PDOS scheduled, it's only 930. The malls aren't open yet. I figure I can wait and say a prayer at the EDSA shrine or go home, veg, have lunch and count t-shirts. That was a tough one. But I went home.
6 hours later I'm back at POEA. I wait for about half an hour, then my name gets called. After a careful review of my documents, the lady at the counter points out that my contract with the Feerm (the largest law firm in the state of New York) does not have a repatriation clause. You know, that clause that says if I die, my employers need to repatriate my remains to the Philippines at their cost. Yes, that repatriation clause. She says I need to go back to the Feerm and ask them to sign this addendum to my offer letter.
Hmmmm.
It was at this time that I considered grabbing my documents and running out of there. To erase all record of me being ever at the POEA. I would rather swim to Hong Kong than have to go back to the Feerm to ask them to sign a piece of paper that says they have to pay for the cost of airlifting my cold dead body back to the Pilipins.
I was eyeing the exit and how fast I could make it there if I did make a run for it when the lady at the counter said,
"Or you can sign a waiver." I guess she saw how mortified I looked.
I thought, "Where do I sign?! I want to sign now. Please make me sign now. Please. For the love of God."
I signed the sheet, but as Philippine government offices go, the person who is supposed to take the sheet wasn't there, so I need to come back on Monday. Which is just as well, since I have to go back anyway get PDOS-ed.
The day's trip to the POEA was surprisingly short. And if I had a handle on the process from the beginning, I imagine I wouldn't have been that uptight. But it really is a madhouse out there, thousands of sweaty people milling around, looking lost, clutching plastic folders with pictures of themselves plastered on the shiny pink, or sometimes green transparent folders. If you thought about it for one second you would realize that these people just want to leave the country to make more money elsewhere. They're there for a shot for a better life, a brighter future.
Just like me.
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