In my bus to work, a conversation overheard —- a conversation I strained my ears to hear.  The bus driver took the day off last Sunday and helped his eldest son with homework.  They had to go to SM, perhaps buy a book, because the homework had something to do with Ibong Adarna.  “Bertday pa niya, kaya nag-Jollibee kami pagkatapos.”

The things we take for granted.  A meal that some people don’t put any thought to in buying for lunch is somebody else’s birthday celebration.

The beauty of using public transportation to get around Manila is that you get out of your little bubble of comfort and familiar faces and see what and who really makes up this city, this country.  The other day while on the MRT, I was admiring the several unique permutations of faces surrounding me.  Imagine that, 80 million ++ people and no two faces are exactly the same.  And then today, having decided to take the jeep home instead of a cab (a P53 difference), three unrelated females were right in front of me, and they looked like different versions of the same person at various ages - an eight year old, a teenager, and a grandmother.  It was also amusing to have the jeepney driver joke around, asking each passenger their name as they were paying, “Anong pangalan?” (“What’s your name?”)

The only downside of using public transportation for me is when I have to walk past mounds of garbage on a random street corner.  And that scenario is entirely preventable, if people only cared and thought more about the consequences of their actions, or the perks of actually doing the right thing.