I have just received my new ( or renewed ) credit card yesterday as the old one is expiring on monthend. A day ago, I was just so engrossed on how I could make a bank transaction by dialling a touchtone phone. Damn! I was able to pay my credit card dues without doing it in an ATM or visiting the nearest crowded and number-crazed bank! And at the moment, this is the greatest discovery for me after the wheel! It just relieves me of having to go through serious hassles of paying my bills or even enquiring about my current balance.
Which made me recall the first time ever I set foot in a bank during my grade school year. I was just about to turn 11 then and my father asked me to run an errand for him ( after he saw me spending my vacation days happily with my friends and kalaro ). He asked me to go to Metrobank and ask the teller to update his passbook. Being an obedient child ( yeah, yeah ), I, of course obliged after being given the instruction which was completely Chinese to me! And what does he expect! At that time, had he asked me to pick up something from the ground using my mouth by bending my body backwards, THAT could have been way, way easier! Or, had there been a touchtone telebanking system...
But then, it's Jurassic age so I left the rock house and my dino-playmates ( definitely against my childish heart's will! ) thinking I could have owned a house ( we call it bahay ) in our game of piko had my father had the heart to let me enjoy the most blissful human development stage called CHILDHOOD.
Anyway, that was a decade and a half ago, and I could only thank my father now for forcing me to realize early on that there is a big, big corporate world out there other than the world of toys and dolls and petty crushes...
I never thought that 5 years later, I would be taking up a degree in Accountancy and finish it after four years in flying colors. And, I have never seriously imagined that after graduation, I would experience a brief stint of a banker's life ( talk about traumatic experience, huh! ).
Yup! I have worked in Landbank of the Philippines in Taft Avenue.