Ten years ago, I sold my car, an aging Mitsubishi Lancer that was on its last legs anyway.
The traffic situation in Manila is something we all have to live with every day. Unless your job allows you to telecommute (work from home), there is no escape. Or is there?
I live in the southern part of the metro, so heading to work every day means enduring heavy subdivision traffic, paying the exorbitant toll for a bit of relief on the Skyway, and then enduring heavier traffic in Makati.
I thought I would never beat my record for most hours spent behind the wheel in traffic: four hours, driving home to Marikina from Makati after the July 16, 1990 earthquake.
“Traffic” has ceased to become an excuse for tardiness, at least in Metro Manila where commuting is a hell of a chore.
I walk to work. Renting a pad so close to the office is one of the best investments I’ve made. Sure, the rent is higher (the Inquirer is in Makati) for such a small space (50 sq m), but the daily horror of commuting to and from work has become a thing of the past.
You can be jealous a little: Unlike you, I don’t have to make the daily commute to work since I can be in the office in five minutes—on foot—even if I sashay down the gravelly 150-m path from home à la Kendall or Gigi in my stilettos.
Commuting daily from the house in Bacoor, Cavite, to the Inquirer office in Makati by jeepney, bus, and tricycle costs only P76 and used to take roughly an hour’s travel.
I used to drive my SUV every day to work in Makati. Even when I had coverages around Metro Manila, I’d bring the car to avoid riding a cab and being ripped off by taxi drivers. That’s my pet peeve.
Metro Manila is impossible to navigate without public transport. Cars have been rendered Schrödinger’s vehicles, where, really, you have no idea if you are going to get to where you are going on time whenever you get in.
