Out With The Girls

I’ve been in front of the computer for the last two and half hours checking my e-mails, browsing my frequented blogs and websites. I’ve also been listening to my newly bought CD’s – Christian Bautista debut and sophomore album (okay, so I’m a sucker for cute guys with a good set of pipes :D) and Nina’s Live Album (the only reason I bought a copy is because Christian Bautista’s in it otherwise I would’ve just downloaded it. I know that’s bad but times are hard so freebies are very much welcome ;p)

After how many postponements, the girls and I have finally gotten around to meeting up yesterday, Boxing Day. Over the last couple of weeks, it’s hard to pin the four of us together in one room and at the same time what with all the Christmas parties and what-have-you’s cropping up left and right. It didn’t help that Kestrel’s dad gave her a 10 pm curfew which bummed out the four of us.

Anyways, we agreed to rendezvous by 8 pm in Shanri-La Plaza Mall just hours before. We were all relieved that Jewel was able to come since she had a scheduled overtime. She said that she was going to try to make it but it turned out that the programmers weren’t able to finish their part on time. Kestrel was the first to arrive – 7:30 pm – as she was scouting for materials to use for another Crossplay costume. I got there 10 minutes to 8, hoping I could take a quick stroll over at Mango and Topshop (stroll – I didn’t say shop) and see what have they got in there. I would’ve arrived earlier but I waited for Alex (my sister’s boyfriend) to pick us up at home since I was hitching a ride with them.

It took quite some time for Jewel and Cathy to arrive and that gave me and Kes time to figure out where we’re going to eat. I was really hungry but Kes only wanted to eat dessert as she is still quite full. We went around the entire 5th floor checking out the restaurants. We stopped by Cravings and was just about to reserve a table for us when the thought of looking for other places seemed like a better idea. Kes had mentioned a French restaurant that she went to and proceeded to look for it. We failed to find it and just settled for the first restaurant we saw – Bon Appetit.

It turned out to be a very bad decision. The food was great but the service just sucked. First thing I noticed was that the waiters looked very gloomy like that their frowns were permanently etched in their faces. Plus, it took forever before the waiters attended to us. You literally have to hoist your arms up in the air for a long span of time before they’d come to our table. There’s this one guy who saw me raise my arm but just ignored me and proceeded to clean one counter. He didn’t even have the decency to tell one of his colleagues that we needed something! One more thing that irritated me was that they didn’t even alert us that we were supposed to place our last orders, in case we had any. Urrgh! I wanted dessert!

By the end of our meal, we were all grumbling to ourselves and to each other how lividly bad their service is. We were even more pissed when we got the bill – the waiter that went to our booth was very rude and they had the nerve to slap us with a 10% service charge. What the fuck?!? Where was the service? We certainly didn’t see it anywhere. Cathy, upon handing the payment over to the attending waiter, told them off about not deserving to be given any service charge for the worse-than-lousy service. If they call that service at all.

It might be the end of the day but it is absolutely not an excuse to give lousy service. Giving unsatisfactory customer service is like biting the hand that feeds them. Without the customers or patrons of any establishment, they wouldn’t have a job.

Moving on, Kestrel had to go home right after we left the restaurant. Jewel had to go back to the office to start testing the website that the developers have been working on since that morning. Cathy and I still didn’t want to go home so we’ve decided to pass the time in Jewel’s office. Kestrel gave us a ride to Jewel’s office in Emerald Avenue and dropped us off at the Starbucks two building away from Jewel’s office building.

After purchasing our drinks, we went straight to Jewel’s office and managed to fool the guard into thinking that we were working with Jewel. We gave the guard the excuse that Cathy and I left our ID’s on our workstations ;p We had a fun time talking about stuff while Jewel was working. When it came time to go home, Jewel went home with me since she’s lost her keys to the apartment that she shares with her sister in Antipolo and nobody’s in there at the moment.

It’s great to have Jewel at home – a lot of reminiscing about our high school days (we were classmates for two years) and updating each other about our other common friends from high school. Next time that she sleeps over, she’ll be helping me with changing my hair color since she’s the expert ;p

I’ll be seeing those three again tomorrow – they’ll be cosplaying (crossplaying for Kestrel) at the International Gift Show in Megamall. I wish them the best of luck and may one of them bring home the prize of being the best cosplayer :D