Or, Why I Hate Philippine Trains at Rush Hour

Let me tell you about my train ride home today. It was not unlike being stuck inside a sardine can, let me tell you that much.

You see, today marked my fifth day of working over at The O.C. (Ortigas Center, for y’all who are living under a rock) and for the past four days, I’ve found a ride going home to the North, where I live. Today was not the case. Today, I was faced with the seemingly impossible task of getting to the North Avenue station from Ortigas in one piece.

As work ends at 6 p.m., I had a hard time, as work ends at 6 p.m. for everybody else, too.

After a fifteen minute walk from my building to the station, I had to climb two flights of stairs and wait for a train. I queue behind a row of people so that I could board the next train¹, but found that I could not, because the incoming train was already full of people from the other station. By full, I mean full.

If I could have squeezed myself into that place, believe me, I would have. But I couldn’t.

I had to wait for three more trains to go on without me, because I really would not have been able to fit. By the fifth train, I was getting a little tired of waiting (half an hour on a train platform, y’all), so I FORCED MYSELF INTO AN EMPTY SPACE. And then held my hands against my side, my hands gripping the tops of my bags to avoid thievery. And then I stayed that way for two very long stops, until most of the people alighted the train upon arriving at the Cubao/Araneta station.

I couldn’t even move to scratch an itch on my forehead because I couldn’t reach that high. Someone’s phone was ringing, but she couldn’t answer it because she couldn’t move. There was a bit of giggling and joking among the passengers already inside the train, about people who were trying to cram themselves inside an already full car. An odd sense of camaraderie against those who didn’t get that we were already a full train, even though that was what we were all trying to do, just a few minutes before.

I hatehatehate commuting by train during rush hour, but I don’t really want to have to ask my parents to pick me up, or to have to ride a cab alone and pay insane amounts of money everyday. The train fare is more than reasonable, and it gets me to most places that I want to go to.

I don’t know what my point is, but I guess it’s a little symbolic of that point in my life where I really do have to do the things I don’t want to even if I don’t want to do them. Because I have to. There’s a need for me to do this particular thing. No one can really do this for me, or in lieu of me or whatever. Unless I want to end up sitting on a ditch somewhere or something.

Besides, I now at least have a reason, other than wallowing in self-(inflicted) pity, to post cathartic Tweets like this one:

Believe me, I enjoyed the frak out of that biscotti.

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¹ I have discovered that, in the Philippines, people seem to think it’s O.K. to parallel-queue, so that all of you are in the same row. Yep, makes perfect sense to me!

Hey guys!

Here’s the list of winners for this give-away. Sorry it was a little late; some things came up so I wasn’t able to post it on time.

Anyway, the answers I picked were the ones I found funny, poignant or mysterious enough without being too melodramatic or personal. Two of them, I also picked, because I felt they told a story. Without further ado:

Runner-up Winners:
• Martin — (It pays to be Whedonesque!)
• Evee
• Ching
• Baddie
• Pineapple

Winner: Dani

Congratulations!

I don’t have a picture of what to give the runner-up winners, but I have some things in mind. (If you don’t want it, well, tough.) To the winners, wait for an e-mail from me! I’ll send them in the morning, because I have to take care of a couple of things, but yay, congratulations!

To those who participated: thank you so much. It makes me glad that you people are still interested in reading! If it helps, John Green books are located in the young adult sections of bookstores. It’s actually on sale now, in Amazon. At $3.69, that’s a frakking steal.