I’ll say this again and again and again: Commuting is an big, fat and inevitable bitch that one poor commuter soul has to deal with everyday. Just imagine dealing with all the smoke, fog, smelly people and all the other bad elements. Imagine all the stupid and the inconsiderate people that you have to deal with in public transportation modes. A combination of those misfortunes will surely ruin your get-up like you’ve been raped back and forth by leprechauns. Worse, people will hurl back at you like lions if you offend them or if you accidentally get in contact with their private parts. They’d howl at you like strong lions and tigers with matching strong bad breath.

Sometimes you just think that you can buy a car or steal one, if you don’t have money, to avoid the unnecessary hassles and the stupid people that also commute with you. You’d also wish that you could drive one if you don’t know how to drive one. You see people, commuting here in Metro Manila is not an easy task. It’s even harder than powering up driving the solar car Sinag 3,000 miles in Central Australia. It’s really that of a big bitch. And it’s hurting people like me, who live quite far from Metro Manila. I travel a little bit over 1 hour going to my destination and back to home and I just hope that every fucking second will just tick off as fast as the blink of an eye so I could go to school (or go home) already. Heavy traffic is also another bitch that one poor commuter soul has to deal with. Traffic jams are very unpredictable that it could just happen during a day where you are rushing for an exam or for a report or an important meeting in the office. It can ruin your whole day. Just imagine yourself riding a filled-up and humid passenger jeep and being stuck on a 3-kilometer gridlock stretch for already more than 2 hours. Now wouldn’t that be a great jump to ruin one person’s day?

When I think about commuting, I just feel like I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s like an everyday penitence for all of the sins that I have done in my entire life - and that God is also making me pay for the sins of our neighbor. It’s more taxing than the BIR especially when you see beggars in the streets looking at you and a pervasive manner. Commuting has already become exhilaratingly boring and it will stay that way. I just pray that God that He will just give me a permanent car to drive around so I could run over these bad elements and kill the stupid and inconsiderate commuters all in one go. I’ve been pleading my mom for three years now to get me a dorm or a condo in front of Taft Avenue where I usually hang out, chill and gimik but as usual, my parents are on the opposition side of the debate, constantly bashing my continuous and unending motions for them to get me a place to stay near school. I’m sure that I am not alone in this sentiment but there is very good reason why we all should be pissed off with the commuting system here in the Metro. It’s inefficient, it’s time-consuming and some vehicle services just do not deserve the price tag for the service that they provide.

A very good example of my point is the public transport bay in the MRT North Avenue station just in front of Trinoma. For the love of God, why are they still allowing the old and grumpy Tamaraw FX as their service unit? Those are already old, noisy, environmentally inefficient and it plainly sucks. The cars are just borderlined for destruction. If you ride there, notice how they always check their engines everytime they are waiting for passengers. That should not be the case if the car is not that relatively old or if the parts are regularly maintained and replaced. Though the general term for the multi-passenger vans that bring people around Manila are called FX, I don’t think that these Tamaraws from Toyota don’t deserve to be in the street anymore. I already encountered one FX that was like that in the same transport bay that I was talking about. The poor vehicle is badly getting outraced even by trucks and the old man driving it tried hard to change gears but the speedometer only reached a measly 40kph. Not bad - if you’re driving in your village streets. Sucker. It also featured an air conditioning system that even an electric fan or the natural air source would beat. It was just an old, beat-up car being drive-raped by an old, grumpy man for his profits - at the expense of the poor FX vehicle unit and the disappointment and the discontent of the passengers. Personally, I already wanted to tell him that I wanted a refund because I felt like they did not do justice to the money that I paid to ride that dirty, old, noisy and pathetic public transport unit. I just did not voice my growing frustration out to him that moment out of pure respect to the elders.

Now the thing with the jeepneys. Jeepneys always fill the capacity to the brim. They’d put two people in front beside the driver, and tons of more people in the back. Of course that’s for profit’s reasons again but commuters are discomforted with such bullshit from the driver and his barker accomplice. They are always successful in mapping out a strategy to maximize profits and no matter what happens, the barker gets a 5-peso tip for being a good accomplice to the driver’s evil profit ways. The barker squeezes each and every passenger so he could fit in another one until that point wherein no one could actually move their legs or that point wherein nobody else can move. And take note, their reference for the optimal quantity of passengers in one side of the jeep is based on average-sized people - they don’t account for huge, fat and flabby people. And their optimal choice is always symmetric. Whatever the optimal quantity is on the right side, that’s also the optimal choice on the left side, regardless if all the passengers in the other side are all fat. Sometimes you can’t blame the driver and the barker, there are just big assholes riding on the jeepney who aren’t considerate enough to think that all of people riding are sacrificing just to saturate the driver’s need for profit. They’d shove off some considerable space for themselves by opening their legs wide like someone’s gonna screw them in the ass and these people will howl back at you if you try to beg for them to move. Whatta bunch of fuckers.

Then there’s the MRT and the LRT - two of the busiest and the most important railway systems in the country, but the two are also the two of the most annoying railway lines in the nation. I really can’t blame the train, it’s some of the people that go and ride there that I loathe. They also have wicked ways like the driver, the conductor and the old, grumpy man driving the amazingly slow FX vehicle. First rant - People get more copies of the free daily tabloids and then they leave all it in the train. This is true especially with people who are sitting down. One of the tabloids have a motto that says “share a copy” so don’t hog the newspaper, assholes. Second rant - people who still enter or exit the train when the buzzer sounds. This is not basketball people, this is a train ride. Those attempts will not be counted, moreover, you will irritate a lot of people. Your attempts at buzzer beaters just irk me that I hope all of you will be sandwiched by the door in one of your attempts to teach you a lesson. Third rant - People who’d die for train seats. You can stand anyway, that’s already a form of sacrifice and exercise. If you don’t want to engage in a rat race for train seats, map out a strategy. That’s allowed, isn’t it? Fourth rant - people who squeeze themselves just to ride the train. There’s always a next train thing, isn’t it? You won’t gain much if you are able to squeeze yourself like a squeezed lemon in the already filled-up train. You’ll just be pissing the hell out of other passengers. You also should realize that you add to the already smelly odor of some passengers once you squeeze and force yourself into the train coach.

Buses, buses, buses - I’m not going to talk about their riding incapacities and their profit-driven ways. That’s not the case with buses because they rarely and seldom have sellouts like in established bus companies. I’m going to discuss how they clog up and mess up several sections in EDSA. Imagine this. A line of 20 buses in one section in Megamall waiting for passengers and heck not even one is coming 10 meters near the buses. That’s how buses have sucked in the Metro Manila Area now. And I’m damn sure with those 20 buses lined up, a minimum of 5 buses are colorum buses - buses that have not been duly registered to the authorities. What these buses can only do is clog the space and occupy N-1 lanes in EDSA waiting for imaginary passengers. Buses are also good at helping destroy the environment by blowing black and smelly smoke from their rotten exhaust pipes from the 70s. Honestly speaking, I really think that our buses were old ones by developed nations - only the established bus companies have the time, effort and money to buy real brand new buses. The colorum bus companies wouldn’t even mind buying new ones - they aren’t even registered in the first place. I wish they decreased the number of buses allowed in EDSA because plainly, they are the one of the primary reasons why traffic is delayed in major roads in the Metro. Buses are big bitches.

You see, commuting is really one big bitch. But it’s inevitable. Like some bitch that you really love. It will make you irate and deranged but you’ll still come back to it.