Pursuit of Yuppyness

Walk down the streets of Ortigas and you'll see all sorts of people. You'll see rich folks with their perfectly pressed expensive-looking suits, the yuppies looking hip but professional, guys wearing sandwich ad boards trying to recruit people, letter couriers, etc. etc. Just by looking at them it's really hard to say which ones are earning loads of cash and which aren't (Sadly I belong to the latter and I'm not just saying that). And you'll be more surprised to hear that a lot of them/us come from far places. I even have a friend who works in Manila but goes home to Batangas. Every. Single. Day.
It takes me about an hour and a half each way to go to work. I spend about 200 bucks a day on transportation. That's a lot of money because I live in Fairview (classic joke: Ahhh..FARview to which I just think to myself "wow, I've never heard that one before"). So with the rising cost of, hmm..let's see, EVERYTHING, it's no wonder that within each office building there exists a micro-economy. Like this morning, I didn't have a packed lunch nor merienda with me and no spare money to spend either. But for lunch, I had pork guisado, salted egg, sliced tomatoes and rice wrapped in banana leaves. For merienda, I had sweet and crunchy turon. How did I manage this? Courtesy of Manang and Kuya. A very polite guy comes in at around 11 a.m. and stands at one corner of the pantry with a big bag full of food and softly says "Ma'am, lunch po" always with a shy, sweet smile. He has this small notebook where the choices are written down. And the best part is, you can get a meal and just put it on your tab. Same thing with the merienda. Manang has a multitude of snacks like spaghetti, pancit, bread pudding, sopas and a couple more goodies. One co-worker sells candied sampaloc (which are always sold out), another one sells coffee and catalogue items. To date I've bought maybe 10 bags of the sampaloc and 2 pairs of shoes. All delivered to the office and sometimes even to my desk. I find that just awesome!
It's Filipino entrepreneurship at it's best.

PS My brother says that to be allowed inside office buildings, these vendors bribe the security personnel with free food :)

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I was recently hired by an Ortigas-based company. I was excited and a little nervous. First, because the position isn’t the type of job that really related to my university degree and secondly, my means of transportation going to and from the office. I don’t have my own car so I really had to rely on some kind of public transportation to get there.

My sister also works in Ortigas. And since we live in the same house most of the time (long story), I figured that I’ll just do whatever she does.  Her husband and her take a cab from our village to the MRT station and from there she takes the train, gets off and walks to work. Sounds simple enough. Fine, I’ll try it.

The cab part of it was a piece of cake, cabs were aplenty along Commonwealth Ave. during that time of the morning. Cab fare from our place to the station averages around P130-150. We split the fare three ways so it’s not really that painful.

I’ve ridden the train before so I know how jammed it can get. But a considerable amount of time has passed since I was last on it and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when we got off the cab. There was a loooooooooong line of people just to get into the station! I’m talking a queue worthy of free tickets to a Judy Ann movie. The throng of people going up the stairs was crazy! The people seemed to move like one animal with thousands of feet. It totally caught me off-guard.

It takes about 20-30 minutes from the time we get down from the cab to the time where we can actually put our cards in the slot to get into the station. And once there, another huge crowd of people are waiting to do battle. And my sister, the veteran train rider that she is, doesn’t ride the all-female car of the train. She said there’s less chance to get flattened if you ride where the men are allowed, because they tend to be less aggressive with women. Make that, a little less aggressive. All of the train’s cars are packed and I get flattened, elbowed and pushed. Wheeee.

Needless to say I was miserable. For the first 3 weeks of my new career I dreaded that part of the day.

This is what it felt like on the train. Only, most of us were wearing corporate attire.

Until one fateful day one of my best friends happened to mention that there were shuttles from Philcoa going to Ortigas. It was like the heavens opened up after a heavy rain and the sun started shining on me again! All around me flowers bloomed, birds chirped and butterflies flitted. So I tried it. To my pleasant surprise, the fx’s route included the street of our office building..Just one comfortable air-conditioned ride and I was hooked!

I still have my multi-ride or stored value MRT ticket in my wallet. Writing this blog has reminded me that I should just give it to my sister because I don’t plan to use it anytime soon.

(For the curious/interested: fx fare from philicoa to Ortigas is P50. Mrt from North ave. station to Ortigas is around P20. But the price difference is so worth it for me. Going home, I take a Fairview FX from Megamall which costs P60/passenger, “malayo-malapit”)

Sardines photo taken from foodeducate.com