Gear Grinders: Public Transportation

Hello there blogosphere and welcome to a new section of my blog, Gear Grinder, in which I will rant about anything and everything I hate.
I know, there isn't much originally in the name. I can think of a better name, I swear. I'm just too damn lazy to think of something. What? it's in the middle of a sunday afternoon and it's as hot as hell in my bedroom.
Anyway, onwards my beloved words.

Do you know what grind my gears? Public transportation in the Philippines.

Last night I was on my way home from Robinsons Center Point. It only took 20 minutes to get from Pasig to Edsa but it took me almost an hour to travel from Cubao to SM north. Driving in a private vehicle, it would have only took me 10 minutes (Yah, I drive dangerously fast when I drink coffee). Do you know why it took so long? Public bus stops.

My bus waited in Trinoma for around 20 minutes. I didn't really mind since Rise of the Planet of the Apes was on but what really grind my gear was, it look another 20 minutes waiting for passengers in SM North. It took me 40 minutes to go from Cubao to Munoz. If I walked, I would been home, and have enough time to flipped the bus drivers off as I pass by Munoz.

They shouldn't ever call it public transportation because the majority of this vehicles are privately owned. And when public transportation is privately owned, the government are useless to enforce anything to help ease traffic. They make their own rules and most of them doesn't even care about their passengers.

What kind of bus is in full capacity and still take on passengers? Our kind of buses. Even jeepneys have the decency to know it's passenger capacity, though I'm not saying they're any better. But I'll get back on that topic.

I could understand if their is a scarcity of buses but no, they're a centimo-a-dozen out there. I could see buses that looked like they were in business before the Marcos regime and others that old films use to blow up. The sheer amount of those buses makes me wonder why they over load and why people force themselves into this over loaded buses. People, there are still more buses to come. I wait for a good 10 minutes and a more lax bus arrives. Is it because half of our population is running late? (But Filipino Time will be for another blog entry).

The privatization of the public transportation and the lawlessness of our roads is a really sad sight to behold. There are no constants, our time in the road is at the mercy of this ruthless drivers. Traffic laws are useless to them who drives like their above the law. They think that they're just making good business but they may be causing much more than they think.

They became obstructions in both the road and productivity. The common man doesn't have anything reliant for his transportation needs and the ones who own private vehicles are harassed by their constant clogging of major roads. Jeepneys bottle necking major roads to wait idly for passengers and barkers making senseless noise. I can read, my dear barker, and if I need directions, I'll ask the drivers. I can't even grasp why you exist and what's your function. To me, you're just a leech.

It's hard to think of a solution for such a sad state of our road. It's like the wild west. We could regulate the numbers of jeeps in major roads, minimize the waiting time of buses in bus stops, construct and assign specific waiting areas for bus and jeeps (like in SM North) so they won't bottle neck the major roads but as long as they're in the hands of the private domain, we'll have a hard time making that dream in to a reality.

What do you think?

Flowing in the Sea

Since the beginning of March, I have been unemployed.

I was working in a, what we fondly called, factory for the graphic artist. We call them that because we were an assembly line of graphic artist who does nothing but assemble print ads from standard work books. It drained the creativity out of me for awhile and I thought I wouldn't be able to leave. Until one day, I decided to when brighter opportunities popped in the horizon. The sad part is, I counted my chickens before they hatched and I'm stuck here at home, for four months (and counting), with nothing to do but watch television series and jump from one interview after another.

As most people during this time of their lives, I feel like a fool. A drifter and a vagabond. I don't know where to go and no idea what to do or what I'm good at. Not like when I was still in college and my whole future  is  entirely mapped out. I don't even know if I have a future now. I've been through a lot of interviews already and still no call back from any of them. Some I thought would be cool to work in, some I didn't entirely like, and a selected few, I'd dragged the heaven and earth to get in.

I talk to some friends and they say some people go over a year without finding a job, while some just takes a few weeks before hopping into a new one. Where did I go wrong? During my time in college, i was sure that I'll get the job of my dreams at one point or another since I worked hard and applied myself in everything I did. But now, I feel like that wasn't enough. I need to read more about my beloved field I guess and duke it out for a little while in those creativity draining jobs until I can equip myself with the skills that I really need. That field is really demanding, and I thought I was prepared for it, but I guess I wasn't.

I'll continue to flow in this endless expanse of uncertainty until I find what still for me, either by luck or by shear will.

Ideas, I have tons, execution, I have little.