A Nonstop Kind of Day... Friday, August 18

Uber no longer works in the Philippines, well hopefully just temporarily.

I had a meeting at 2pm and then another business meeting at 7:30pm.  The 2pm was at The Fort Strip in BCG and the 7:30pm was in Poblacion.  No problem.  The two cities are but only 20-35 minutes apart, depending on the traffic.  

I showed up well over an hour late for my 7:30pm and thankfully so did the lady I was meeting.

No Uber equals big problems.  We have Grab in the Philippines but with Uber accounting for thousands of drivers and them no longer being able to be on the road working, this meant Grab drivers were being brats and being super selective with who and where they were driving.  

No Grab drivers took my request despite trying to bribe them with extra cash.

No taxis were around either.

It was a rainy night and it was a Friday night... a rainy Friday night on the start of a long holiday weekend, great.  It was the perfect receipe for a disaster, hence why I arrived late to my second meeting.

Ended up checking into a new ice cream parlour with Skittles.  It was set in a possible location that was originally offered for his business but he declined.  We wanted to check it out and we needed to kill time while we waited for the rain to slow down and the Grab drivers to pick up our request for a ride.  Ended up getting into a random discussion with the place's location manager and in talking with him he then asked one of the owners to join us.  The owner then sat down beside me, ordered a coffee, and then we discussed business for the next 20-30 minutes together and exchanged contact information.

Showing up for my second meeting an hour late was definitely not like me but the owner's wife whom I was there to meet also was late so it actually worked out just fine.  She had heard about me earlier on this week and had passed on her business card to Skittles because she wanted to meet me after hearing about my business idea.  So tonight we met and in talking about my business idea and my boxing, we discovered something we both had quite the giggle over.  Remember how I was scheduled a fight here in the Philippines, a fight with that female fighter I had seen fight a bit over a month earlier, and how she canceled the fight?!  Well, guess who she trains.  She trains the very lady I was sitting right beside, having tonight's business meeting with.  I tell you, in the Philippines, it's not a matter of six degrees of separation but instead a matter of one or two.  My would-have-been and should-have-been opponent works over at Tiger Gym apparently, the very gym that just this past week I had been reached out to and told to go spar at.  This is like the fourth or fifth run-in with this particular female fighter.  I tell ya, I'm either going to fight her or hire her.