Commuting a Sentence

Yesterday was the first time in a long time I found myself wondering why I still worked this job and lived in this country. Maybe Cris has spoiled me with all the driving around. Maybe I've gotten too comfortable living and working with home just 4km away from work and a minimum of Metro Manila traffic in between. Maybe my new neighborhood is just that much nicer than my old one.

Whatever the case, I would like to express my admiration for anyone who must commute home from work from Ayala Station every day. Yesterday I felt like crying for all of them.

The sheer number of people in the queue, which just takes over the entire station, is astounding. I walked the length of the station last night and then walked back when I saw the exit was blocked, and in the three minutes it took to do that, the number of people lining up (hundreds), crowded, noses smashing into one another's backs, seemed to have doubled. I could only imagine the number of people crowding onto the actual train platform and the number of people on the actual train.

I'm no stranger to the MRT, nor am I a stranger to the crowd at Ayala Station, but this was the first time in the past four years that I actually tried getting home from there at rush hour. I decided to take the bus.

That, of course, meant walking 1.2km back to the correct loading bay on Ayala Ave. in a storm, but I thought it would work.

Okay, as much as I've been driven around in the past couple of months, I'm still quite proud to be a pedestrian and a commuter. I'm also used to walking, and I actually prefer the rainy season.

But yesterday, everything just seemed to get me down. I'd been sick for almost a week and was feeling nauseous. I'd come from a disappointing, demoralizing meeting that made me question my career choices and crave a vacation. I'd had to put off a doctor's visit to carry out a family errand. I'd had to go up, down, and across three different mall buildings looking for the place to carry out said errand. I'd done all that walking in the pinchy meeting shoes already responsible for the ugly black line across my big right toenail. The downpour (and the puddles) meant that there was water in those shoes. Now I just wanted to go home — like everyone else on Ayala Ave. at that hour.

So, it's no surprise I couldn't get on a bus, either, at least not the bus back to Quezon City. I decided to just sleep over at my grandmother's place in Makati, then commute back to QC in the morning. I crossed the street, which sounds simple but, on Ayala Ave., meant a 200m walk to the underpass and a 200m walk to the bus stop actually across the stop I'd just left.

It was the first time in a long time I found myself feeling miserable about Philippine urban planning, which is why I was wondering why I still live here, which led me to think about getting a job elsewhere, which led me to question what's still keeping me at my job here.

Once again, my teal-and-gold-filtered memories of Singaporean streets, Singaporean sidewalks, and Singaporean public transportation swam before me like dreams of summer vacation. I thought of the difference the position of taped lines in front of train doors made (they're supposed to be at the sides!). I thought of the difference crosswalks made versus under- or overpasses. I thought of the difference trees, clean air, and conveniently placed bus stations made.

My brothers at a crosswalk in Singapore.

I also thought of the children and parents in "I Not Stupid." I thought of how many foreigners often see Filipinos, even successful ones in white-collar jobs. I thought of Philippine beaches and Philippine mountains. I thought of the Chocolate Hills, which I've never visited. For some reason, all that was enough to make me feel torn.

How much would I have to give up just to be able to get on the train without feeling like cattle? Would it all be worth it? Or is there not enough in my native country and culture worth staying for? Do I really live in a world where I have to choose between clean air, a less f-ed-up government, good urban planning, and a manageable population, and staying where I've spent ~7/8 of my life to date? What kind of world is this? Why is it so hard to go home from Ayala Ave.?

--
Here's some language nerdiness that borders on philosophical. I can't find Chinese words for "yes" and "no."

A dictionary like nciku will tell you that "yes" is 是 (shì), but none of my teachers or lessons so far have actually spelled out that 是 and 不 (bù) mean "yes" and "no" in the same sense as "oo" and "hindi." In fact, the very first Chinese lessons say that 是 means "is/am/are/be," and 不 is "not – ," as in,

它是不是红的？ ; "Is it or is it not red?"

So in dialogues, when they answer a yes-or-no question with 是 or 不是, in my head, I translate, "is / is not."

Another way to affirm or negate is 有 (yǒu) or 没有 (méi yǒu), but that's literally "have/meron" and "have not / wala."

你们有苹果吗？ ; "Do you have apples?"
没有。; "(We) do not have (apples)."

你给她打一个电话了吗？; "Have you given her a phone call already?"
没有。; "(I) have not."

Maybe it's just me, but saying that something is or is possessed requires more conviction than just a simple "yes" or "no." I wonder if this is reflected in Chinese culture somehow. I could just be a geek.

Cut, cut, cut

Some of you might have guessed from this post (not that I was terrifically discreet) that something big was coming for me in the arts and crafts department. Well, yesterday, everything finally came together.

What happened was, the creative director of our newspaper's luxury magazine saw one of my popup buildings and asked me if I could make some for the Christmas issue, which would feature some really, really, really pricey fountain pens. In a moment of hubris, I said yes.

After the meeting with the photographer, I spent most of my spare time drawing buildings and cutting models. I also sat through three howtoarchitect playlists (1, 2, and 3) in one day for tips and ideas.

I also spent a day with Highlife's production assistant, Nina, going to stores and picking out pens to feature. It is a little ridiculous to walk into one of those stores, ask for the most expensive thing they have, and be taken seriously.

There are more photos from the shoot here, and I'll be posting the actual shots in a week or so. It depends on whether I can sit on them till the magazine actually comes out.

I am trying to play it cool at the office, but inside, I am kind of panicky about the whole thing. None of the work is as great as I'd like it to be. On the other hand, it was nice to be asked to spend a day on something that I really, really love to do.

Baby steps, I guess.

In this picture, you can see the backs of Kathy Chua, photographer, and her assistant Eric. They are cool people, and Adphoto is a cool agency.

Triggers

It takes me days, weeks, or often months to shrink my longing for other places into the type of discomfort that you sort of just live with every day, and even forget that you have. On those days, I can imagine myself settling in this city and somehow being happy with it--and that thought makes me happy, also.

But it doesn't take much more than a photo, the sound of a distinct accent on TV, a news report, or a 30-minute drive in the countryside for whatever emotional dams I've built to crumble and the mild ache to froth like acid, eating away at me from inside.

Last weekend, I went with my cousins to Cavite, where the rain and the garbage made the beach depressing and the swimming pool taste strangely of rust. I was asleep on the way over, but on the way back, the sight of rice paddies, lonely little towns, and even lonelier little houses, and the sense that the sea was just over that ridge there, reminded me of how things looked and felt on drives home from a Sarangani beach with my own family.

In Martin's house on Monday afternoon, I alternated between the news and food channels, where updates from Socsargen and shows in Malaysia and Singapore and the voices of the locals made me wish alternately that I was there, or there, instead of here.

In another week, my parents will be in town, and I'll be taking another trip to the countryside. Two triggers in one weekend, while I'm still patching up from the last one. This doesn't bode well for my state of mind to start the second half of the year.

Martin and I had a conversation once about the differences between our country and the one I wanted. He said that for all the difficulties he's had to deal with here due to some absent or inefficient system, including the difficulties that likely led to his and his family's current misfortunes, he still felt loyal to our country--and to this city especially--because it was his home.

I find it hard to feel that kind of loyalty because, for one thing, my home in South Cotabato feels like it's not part of the same country as this city. For another, the loyalty sounds to me like the kind of loyalty a battered wife would have to an unrepentant scoundrel of a husband.

I do actually believe, however, that the Philippines has it in itself to become like these other countries I envy. If all these executives I've interviewed really walk their talk, if people get in line behind the real good guys in our government instead of waiting for terms to end so they can go back to their good ol' days of self-service, then maybe not just my kids but also all future Filipino kids will enjoy decent public transportation, good public education, affordable healthcare, affordable housing, proper sanitation and waste management, and, yeah, clean air, billboard-free skies, trees to climb, constellations to learn, etc., etc., etc.

It's just that some days, I wish I didn't have to wait that long.

Currently reading: "The World Without Us"

I've finally started reading--that is, gotten beyond the preface of a book I bought a few months ago: "The World Without Us," by Alan Weisman. As soon as I saw it on the shelf of the Fully Booked branch at Bonifacio High Street, I knew that it was something I had to read, and every visit to the store afterward would include a trip to the science section just to look at it, pick it up, think about buying it, decide that I couldn't afford it at that time of the month, and put it back with regret. This is the reason many interesting-seeming books escape me, because I tell myself that maybe I should wait till next time. For once, though, my dithering was rewarded with a sale at Powerbooks, where I managed to get the book for near-half price.

I'm even happier now that I've actually started reading it (kudos to you for getting this far in the entry, by the way, and not closing the tab after that long exposition), because it's turning out to be all I imagined, which is an exercise in imagination. "The World Without Us" is just that, a peek into the future of the planet should our race suddenly disappear:

"Picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow.

"Unlikely, perhaps, but for the sake of argument, not impossible. Say a Homo sapiens-specific virus--natural or diabolically nano-engineered--picks us off but leaves everything else intact. Or some misanthropic evil wizard somehow targets that unique 3.9 percent of DNA that makes us human beings and not chimpanzees, or perfects a way to sterilize our sperm, Or say that Jesus--more on Him later--or space aliens rapture us away, either to our heavenly glory or to a zoo somewhere across the galaxy.

...

"Could nature ever obliterate all our traces? How would it undo our monumental cities and public works, and reduce our myriad plastics and toxic synthetics back to benign, basic elements? Or are some so unnatural that they're indestructible?

"And what of our finest creations--our architecture, our art, our many manifestations of spirit? Are any truly timeless, at least enough so to last until the sun expands and toasts our Earth to a cinder?"
-- from the Prelude: A Monkey Koan

The first reason I was attracted to this book was that I was already trying to write something like it, though less a scientific projection and more, "What if a virus killed everyone, and Metro Manila existed only as a tribute simulation program run by anthropomorphic biocomputers, and none of the humans left over knew if they were real or just program code?" Yes, it is just as pulpy as it sounds, which is why I don't talk about it often.

Mostly, though, I'm attracted to the idea of ruins, particularly the idea of ruined cities. I like watching Metro Manila crumble around me, even as I'm in the middle of my morning commute. I like looking up at the underside of a flyover and seeing a patch of weeds that has sprouted 20 feet above the ground and in absence of deep soil. It's particularly gratifying to visit a retail and recreation center and see the cracks in the sidewalk, the grime gathering on the fake Hollywood-Mediterranean-Balinese facade, the paint on the fake concrete trees fading to a more turd-like color.

A good part of the area where I live now is packed with ruins--dilapidated old banks, hardware stores, and closed restaurants, with their windows broken or boarded up, and their overhangs shelter for no one but a dozen homeless families sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes. When I pass by these buildings on the way home, I think of something Geoff Dyer said in "Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It," something along the lines of, ruins don't show us the past, but the future; ruins tell us that this is what the future looks like. This is what the future always ends up looking like.

So when I walk around the city, particularly in places like Cubao that--as my colleague's father said recently--were once the place to be but are now shells rotting from time and weather and neglect, I imagine that I'm in the future. And when I see some sign of us trying to fight entropy--these Manhattan Garden condos, and the New Frontier Cinema with its soon-to-rise-type sign announcing GATEWAY TOWER over its old name--it's just as easy for me to imagine dead and sagging concrete giants, rusting girders and cables, and empty, littered streets, as it is for the developers to imagine a gleaming new mixed-use development bustling with commercial activity.

And I have to say that half the work of imagining all this has been done for me by the huge degree of urbanization. Imagining an empty city gets easier the bigger that city gets. When you take the train from one end of EDSA to another, or a cab from one end of C5 to another, you don't always see the people who live and work in these thousands of tenements and high-rises and informal settlements and processing plants and schools; more often you just see these walls and window frames staring silently at one another and the road and you. Unless you're travelling with someone, you don't talk to people on the train or in the jeep; you might as well be riding alone. That's why it's easy for me to imagine that the people I do notice are the survivors of a 21st-century plague.

All that, in turn, is why I like Mr. Weisman's book so far (I'm still in the chapter where he's describing how nature will take over New York City--plenty of flooding and crumbling and invasive flora and fauna and even explosions involved; not too far from what we saw at the deepest dream level of "Inception"). It lends scientific likelihood to the things I imagine, explains the order, for instance, that certain species of trees will take during the reforestation of Manhattan.

Of course, that's just a really long way of saying, "This book is full of the kind of geeky details that appeal to a person who's maybe too affected by life in the city and should go lie down."