seeking a Sepak Takraw ball

The boys of Baguio Gold expressed interest in a Sepak Takraw ball and net a week ago. So when Dom and I were in Baguio City, we diverted to Tiong San Harrison Department Store to ride the escalators up to the fifth-floor sporting goods department and see our acquaintance, Jonalee.

I barely knew how to pronounce the name of the game Sepak Takraw although Ricardo had told me and wrote it for me a week earlier. And I wasn’t sure what a ball looked like. I thought that it was smaller than a volleyball and woven of strips of leather or reeds.

Dominic and I had gone to the mall to look for a uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and a transformer, so while there, I also asked for a Sepak Takraw ball in sporting goods stores and an athletic apparel/shoes/accessories store which had dozens of basketballs prominently displayed.

The sales persons in each store initially didn’t understand what I was asking for (as usual). And when they did hear me and comprehend “Sepak Takraw ball,” they each said, “don’t have” or “no, sir” with a wave of a hand. I thought that Rick and Nick had said that Sepak was the nation’s signature sport, and alongside basketball, the most popular. So why couldn’t I find a ball in a sporting goods store in a big, modern, indoor shopping mall? I didn’t ask in every sports store there. I gave up in favor of comparison shopping UPSs and voltage step-down (220-110) transformers.

A mile away, in Tiong San department store, which three weeks ago suffered a nine-hour fire on floors 6-8 (stockrooms/warehouses) Dom and I rode up to the fifth floor and began poking about in the small sporting goods/mobility aids department. Dom checked prices of wheelchairs while I looked for Sepak Takraw balls. Wire bins held basketballs, soccer balls and volleyballs of various sizes, as in Wal-mart stores in U.S. But I sure didn’t see anything that looked to be woven of rattan. I asked another customer, and he graciously directed me to a small shelf stacked with small cubic boxes holding the balls.

They Sepak balls were all hard plastic vaguely resembling pale woven reeds. I asked the gentleman about them, and he told me that “synthetic” is the new standard and that rattan is out of fashion. It’s not as durable. I looked at the balls of two makes and three prices, from Malaysia and Thailand and chose one. I didn’t see any difference between the balls, and I couldn’t read the foreign language(s) on the boxes. Later, I think that the three (or more types) of balls for sale were different weights. I only saw three different prices, but there may have been six different weights for men and women.

Only after Dominic and I found the Sepak Takraw nets did fifth-floor saleslady Jonalee show up, so she didn’t help us choose merchandise today. She carried the merchandise four meters to the sales counter so that the sale would count toward her monthly sales quota, and after the cashier had registered the sale and I presented a credit card, Jonalee took the register tape, my card and the bagged merchandise down, down, down to the second floor, ground level so that a cashier with a credit card-processing machine could charge the sale to the card issuer.

Following Jonalee down the stairs to ground floor is no problem; we wanted to go down (then exit) anyway. The pain is that TiongSan adds two percent to the sale total to cover it’s credit card-processing fee. And AmEx and Wachovia (Visa) add two percent to every transaction. Wachovia calls it “international service fee” and American Express says that it adds two percent to the foreign currency exchange rate. Let’s say that a dollar is worth 41 pesos. If I charge the purchase of a ball priced at 410 pesos, AmEx records the transaction not at $10 but $10.20.

If I use a card in Tiong San department store, Tiong San first registers the sale in the pertinent department at the item’s sticker price (including VAT) plus a 2% convenience fee to cover its fee from Visa, MC or AmEx. Then we go to the first floor so that a cashier can swipe my card through the scanner. I receipt for $10.20 from that merchant. Later Wachovia or AmEx records a purchase of $10.40 because it also wants 2%. Big deal, right? How about when I buy a big-ticket item?

If I go to an ATM in the beginning of May to withdraw cash to pay for rent, water and electricity to our landlord, pay half of the phone/DSL bill and spend cash everywhere else ( jeepneys, taxis, grocery stores, aid to the poor, drug stores, Ace Hardware, restaurants, vegetable stands, collection basket in church), a withdrawal of P20,000 will not cost me $487.80, but rather $497.56, a difference of ten dollars. Oh, well. †

from : http://tenpesos.com/2008/04/sepak-takraw-in-baguio-gold/