Freebies are my personal nicotine. Indeed, I have always been up to bat in every contest or promo invented for the persevering–Pinoy. From free monthly supply of doughnuts to the undying souvenir ballpens, me and my husband have been notorious in investing sweat, lack of sleep and yes, dignity, over these goodies.
I have discovered that my officemates are equally as vicious in this art, inasmuch as I have committed myself to indulge in the career of bargain-hunting. We were a syndicate. It didn’t matter that the loot was something as petty as doodle pads or bags of chips. We simply loved the adrenaline and the sheer titillating experience of outwitting (and out-swindling) the generosity of our corporate benefactors.
Our latest project scored us free pads of post-its and free prawns –but with a LITTLE sacrifice on our part. After registering for our free post-it coupons and playing online-games for complimentary tempura at Tokyo-Tokyo, we industriously planned the lunch date when we were to redeem our giveaways together. Having postponed our rendezvous yesterday due to uncooperative weather, we ventured off to SM today. Our first disaster came when halfway through our walkathon to SM, Ms. Grace realized that she left her mobile phone at the office –the same phone she was going to use to redeem her free lunch. We went ahead of her to the mall as she marathoned back to Intramuros.
We were done placing our orders when she finally arrived at SM, armed with two phones. Both proved useless because the one where the message was stored was completely power-drained. She dragged me to the topmost floor of SM where she was fully convinced that KFC had charging stations –only to get there and find that there weren’t any. I vaguely remembered though, that there was one at the ground floor so we SPRINTED all the way down. Until today, I have never ran down the flight of escalator steps, skirting people who were standing still to get on the platform. Anyone who would have seen us would have imagined nothing short of a heart-stopping emergency.
With sweaty palms and sporadic breaths, we got to Burger King only to find out that her phone was incompatible with any of the free chargers available. Unrelenting in our task, we jogged to the basement to find the last charging station in the entire mall--- which would have cost us a beautiful 30 bucks. Skilled as we were in the Filipino art of “dugas”, we charged for a few minutes enough to open the phone and led the cashier to believe that their Jurassic charger wasn’t working.
True to the saying that karma is now digital, the now-open phone wouldn’t scroll to the Inbox where the relevant message was kept. Since lunch break was up in five minutes, we dejectedly made our way back to the restaurant.
On our way, Wee called my mobile asking if I ordered beef misono, tempura add-ons and other what-nots aside from the freebie tempura meal. Someone apparently screwed up with the orders and I was getting an extra perk to my existing-perk. The free meal would have been a brilliant substitute for Ms. Grace’s frustrated freebie, but honesty got the better side of Wee.
After 45 minutes of waiting, the prawns were still yet to be delivered, as if they were still in the process of catching them from sea. With our minds clear after we stopped jogging though, we realized that Ms. Lyn who was also with us actually had another entry on her phone, good for redeeming another meal. Needless to say, our whole lunchbreak of running turned to be a complete waste of time.
It was 20 minutes past our lunch break when we finally received our orders for take-out. If the meals weren’t free, I’m sure we would have raised hell. I myself have been known to go ballistic on incompetent service... but I wasn’t about to boil mad when I got my prawns for free.
Oh, and that wasn't even the end of it. Wee left the rice he bought for Sir Ryanne so he himself stretched some leg muscle to jog back to SM.
All this we did.... for the love of free prawns (which by the way, would have been more aptly called breaded breading).
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