Paying the electricity bill

Today I had a bit of an adventure paying our electricity bill. My father had always been the one to go to the bank or else to the payment center to pay our electricity and our phone bills but since he recently had surgery and is unable to drive a car in his condition, the responsibility fell to me.

My father also used to write a cheque out to pay the bills but as I was the one paying the bill this time I only had cash. I knew had to pay the exact amount knowing that the payment center usually is unable to give back the exact change especially when the amount payable involves an odd number of centavos. So as soon as I had some time to spare at my office, I decided to prepare all the cash and coins I needed to pay the bill and place them into a small plastic bag. That way I wouldn't waste time by digging into my wallet when I arrived at the payment center.

Unfortunately, having just withdrawn some cash from my bank account and used the smaller bills to pay for my lunchtime meals, I had mostly Php500 bills in my wallet and still lacked two Php100 bills to pay the exact amount for the bill. I had no choice but to try withdrawing cash again to get more Php100 bills. (When ATM machines here give out cash, they give out cash in Php100 and Php500 bills: five Php100 bills and then the rest in Php500 bills.) So off I went to withdraw a total of Php500 (the minimum withdrawable amount) after my 10-11am class hoping I'd get five Php100 bills. To my disappointment, the ATM machine spat out a single Php500 bill. Arrgh! So much for trying to get Php100 bills.

Anyway, I just walked on to the paying center just outside campus with my Php500 bills and coins.... only to find out when I arrived there that their payment machine was offline. Okay, I had to pause and consider how to deal with this new road block. When I inquired where else nearby I could go to pay the electricity bill since it was already due today, I was instructed to go to an area near the town proper to another payment center.

So I did just that after my last class for the day. I got on a jeepney from behind our office building and got off at the area I was told about. (I had an interesting jeep ride, by the way, since the jeepney I took took a roundabout route through campus before going out towards town.) I had to ask around a bit before I finally found the payment center. After paying without any trouble at all, I considered going directly back to office. But seeing that I was near a pharmacy and shopping center with a supermarket, I thought I'd take advantage of being in the area and do a bit of shopping. I needed medicine anyway and some things from the grocery. Besides, I had not been to that area for a long long time (thanks to heavy traffic which I'd rather not wade through when driving) and needed a bit of a break. At the same time, I was hoping that nobody important I knew from work would see me there shopping during office hours. Funny thing was I actually ran into one of my officemates at the supermarket.

Needless to say, I managed to get back to work (after another roundabout jeepney ride through campus) with lots of time left in the workday to me to use for making more slide presentations for my classes.