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Flying Without Wings; A Hot Air Balloon Adventure

It was a not so ordinary Wednesdaymorning as I woke up knowing full well I would be crossing out a section of my bucket list. I took a red pen and marked the phrase “ride a hot air balloon”, a statement that once stood only as a dream. I left Manila for Clark, Pampanga at 3:30am, the venue of the Hot Air Balloon Festival since the time it was established 19 years ago.  As sunrise creped in I knew we were only minutes away from lift off. To join in on the experience, I brought with me a PLDT SME Cloud Asset Tracking device so that my family and peers would be able to monitor where I was going and where I would be landing. All they had to do was type on their browser this link “www.fastrackonline.com” and log on using their username and password. The web-portal was flexible enough to accommodate a range of device platforms from laptops to tablets and even mobile phones, giving them on the go access to the journey at hand.  

The Journey Across the Sky

I gave myself a few minutes to shake of the cold feet before I entered the base of the balloon. The ropes were slowly released and before I knew it we were 5 feet of the ground making our way into the bright blue sky. The experience of ascending could be compared to an elevator heading straight to the top of a building, smooth and stable. According the PLDT SME Cloud Asset Tracking Web App, we left at exactly 6:56 am heading towards friendship highway. As the captain maneuvered the balloon away from the airfield, I could monitor our movement and direction through the PLDT SME Cloud Asset Tracking web app. I was on board the third balloon that took off giving me a great 360 degree view of other Hot Air Balloons trailing us, the crisp 6:30 am sunrise and the lavish mixture of man-made structures and rice fields, it was breathtaking. The pilot warned us that we were at about 1,200 feet, I took the liberty to show him through the web app that we were heading towards Porac Province. The information on our real time location gave him a better understanding of what kind of terrain we would be landing on. After the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, the province of Porac was home to acres of lahar fields from the volcano’s smog and lava. We were in for a bumpy landing but safety was in clear site. We found a safe place to land in one of the many lahar lands. With our knees bent and head tucked into the basket like structure, we braised ourselves for a hard landing. The Basket bounced twice before our pilot caught the wind on reverse and managed to stabilize the balloon. There was a public school a couple meters away from where we landed; a large number of kids came running towards us just to get a glimpse of the man-made wonder. Another passenger on board the balloon was designated to call the rescue team; he asked me to share with him our exact location so he could dispatch the message with accuracy, I showed him a wide view of the map on the PLDT SME Cloud Asset Tracking web app and it that did the job. The same vehicle that escorted us into the airfield was the same group that took us back to Clark, Pampanga.  We reconvened at the Holiday inn and shared our experiences with the pilots and the other passengers before we parted ways.

PLDT SME Asset Tracking Solution

When talking about businesses assets, these are referring to the many variables that deliver work to keep the business in motion. That being said, the importance of knowing where these assets are and how they are performing is crucial. PLDT SME Cloud Asset tracking is a solution that faces that problem head on, giving businesses the power to monitor their assets wherever they are. With GPS technology at its core, tracking your vehicles can be viewed in real-time on a cloud based portal (www.fastrackonline.com) with minute to minute updates of their current positions. To learn more about the PLDT SME Cloud Asset Tracking solution, go to www.fastrackonline.com  or check out the suite of solutions at www.pldtsme-nation.com.ph.