Philippine Airlines Midnight Madness F**ked up

Dear Philippine Airlines,

When you promote on your website that you’re going to have these great specials but only from midnight to 6am Manila time only on one particular Saturday night/Sunday morning (so that we have to stay up all night to get the special deal which we don’t even have details on ahead of time), maybe you should make sure your website is ACTUALLY AVAILABLE to handle the traffic. Like when your website said to the likes of “this time we’ll be able to handle the traffic so make sure you stay up all night for the great deals”. And what about the likes of “we realize we had tech problems last time we tried this, but this time we’ll be ready for you”.

Got a tip for you: You know why your website is down because of too much traffic? Because you ADVERTISED IT WAS ONLY AVAILABLE MIDNIGHT TO SIX AM MANILA TIME – so that’s the only time we could all try to access it all at once. Great marketing, make everyone hit your website at the same time so it crashes.

I’ve got three people that wanted to go to Puerto Princessa in Palawan Philippines and I stayed up all night for your deals (and several hours trying to access your website).

Are you trying to get us all to just book with Cebu? I don’t get it. This is not very “Mabuhai” of you. It really sucks. I’ll grant you that the Philippine Airlines “Midnight Madness” did indeed grant me madness, just not the kind I was expecting.

Your biggest fan,

Conrad Askland

Tourist Scams and American Guilt

One thing I have learned (or should I say real world lessons I have paid for) while being in Southeast Asia is how naive and guilty Americans are. When we are traveling abroad our guilt is used as a powerful leverage tool to part us from our money.

Two things to keep in mind when traveling in tourist areas in Southeast Asia:

  1. There are police EVERYWHERE and they are there to protect you. You will probably not get outright rolled over or beat up just minding your own business. (Although there’s always pickpockets.)
  2. The police can NOT protect you from simply being overcharged. So the main tool of the scam artist is using guilt to get your money. And guess who the number one easiest target is to use the guilt trip? Americans!

Continue reading “Tourist Scams and American Guilt” →

James Randi exposes Uri Geller and Peter Popoff

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo

James Randi is a leader in the skeptical community who has been debunking paranormal and supernatural claims for most of his life. A magician himself James Randi is excellent at exposing the frauds that make up the paranormal and psychic communities. He offers a one million prize to anyone who can prove a paranormal claim scientifically and to this day nobody has won the money. Sylvia Browne has been ducking him for quite some time.