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Ambient temperature in Metropolitan Manila: 39 degrees Celsius. That’s a fever. If your temperature is 39 degrees you get to skip school and stay in bed. My systems shut down and refused to do anything lest they generate more heat.

We spotted this sign at the entrance to the Ayala/Edsa underpass. I thought I was seeing things in the frizzling heat, so I looked again.

What is this?
a) a tribute to the former head of Singapore
b) a pun/a riff
c) the Metro Manila Development Authority being cute
d) a mirage, like the desert visions induced by heat, thirst, and hunger in Temptation Island.

On our way home we saw this window display.

Didn’t know store displays were so interesting late at night. Or maybe it was just too hot inside the shop.

Taken by Butch on the Tarlac-Nueva Ecija border while avoiding the lemmings on MacArthur highway.

Photo: I Lego NY by Christoph Newman in the Abstract City blog.

So I’m in a taxi on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon, crawling through the traffic on McKinley Road, and we stop at a red light. The driver opens the glove compartment and takes out a sheaf of papers. I don’t mean to look but I can read the print clearly over his shoulder. I wish I hadn’t looked because it’s a document issued by a Regional Trial Court. A warrant of arrest.

For Murder.

I straighten up in my seat. This is more interesting information than I’m used to reading in a taxi on a Tuesday afternoon. Also more disturbing information than one hopes to hear in a moving vehicle, even if it’s caught in traffic. Unless that’s the driver’s typing exam, someone has been killed, and the driver may have had something to do with it.

No, I’m not getting out of this cab, what am I, nuts? It’s hot, the traffic’s awful, try getting a cab on this street at this hour…

Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Top Ten lists are gimmicky, trendy, political, highly subjective, and facile. So bring on the Top Tens of the year, beginning with Books. Here is NYT’s Best Books of 2008. I have been looking for a copy of Netherland by Joseph O’Neill for months, nada. The Lahiri and the Barnes are widely available. Otsu has read Patrick French’s biography of V.S. Naipaul—the man treated women in an appalling manner, but he gave his biographer access to damning material. Horrible, but brave. The Millhauser is at the Greenbelt branch of Powerbooks, whose shelves have been looking thin lately—when will the new books arrive?

Read History of a Disturbance by Steven Millhauser. 

The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane lists his Top 10 Films of 2008. Lean year, he notes. Maybe the good stuff opens in December?

At Salon, Laura Miller’s Top 10 Books of 2008. Bolano’s 2666 and Mayer’s The Dark Side (Scarier than vampires: the war on terror that became a war on American ideals) are also on her list.

Robert McCrum names his Top 10 Books of the Year, with full disclosures of his relationships with their authors.

The Xmas rush was suspended until 1pm today as everyone in the archipelago was glued to the Pacquiao-De La Hoya match. For almost an hour I had the mall to myself. “Manny Pacquiao confirmed his status as the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer last night with a stunning, lop-sided victory in Las Vegas over Oscar De La Hoya. . .Lighter, shorter and less illustrious, Pacquiao was billed as De La Hoya’s inferior in multiple ways but when the boxing started he was so superior that this hugely anticipated contest rapidly developed into a ritual humiliation.” Pacquiao masterclass stuns De La Hoya in the Guardian. Does the Arroyo administration know how much it owes Manny Pacquiao for its continued employment?

Art: You can’t eat it but you’ll starve without it. “Adoration” by Jay Lozada in One By One, a group exhibition at Monumento art gallery in Marikina Shoe Expo, Cubao. The show opens tonight at 6pm.

You can tell a lot about a country from its road traffic, and the profile presented by Manila traffic is not exactly flattering to Filipinos. Today I was waiting for a taxi. It was lunchtime and vehicular traffic was heavier than usual. The holiday rush has truly begun, although from what I’ve seen people aren’t exactly rushing to clear store shelves of merchandise. I suspect the crowds are rushing because they’re expected to rush, because that is what one does when December sets in.

I was standing on the side of the road when a woman started waving at a passenger bus that was in the middle lane. As the street was congested, and there was not enough room for the bus to maneuver, the bus simply stopped in the middle of the street. The woman ran towards the bus and climbed aboard as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if stopping to pick up passengers in the middle of the freaking street were legal, as if they were not inconveniencing every motorist following the bus and courting a vehicular pile-up.

The Soul of Traffic, in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Transit map of Manila by Ige Ramos

Matagal na akong hindi nakikipagtalo sa tsuper ng taksi. Napagpasyahan ko na mahalaga ang aking oras at hindi ko ito aaksayahin sa walang kwentang bagay. Nguni’t minsa’y sadyang nakakainis ang mga tsuper.

Kanina’y sumakay ako ng taksi sa Makati. “Maari bang dumaan muna sa gasolinahan na may LPG? Diyan lang,” sabi ng matandang tsuper. “Sige po,” sagot ko. Napansin ko na may kalayuan ang gasolinahan. “Sabi ho ninyo ay malapit lamang,” sabi ko sa tsuper. Siguro’y dalawang kilometro ang layo ng istasyon. “Mahirap kasing makahanap ng LPG,” sagot niya. Hindi na ako nagreklamo kahit nakababa na ang metro at ako ang sisingilin para sa dagdag na distansya.

Pagdating sa aking paroroonan, P55.00 ang presyong nakatala sa metro. Binigyan ko ang tsuper ng eksaktong P65.00; wala nang “tip” dahil ako ay nagambala. Pagkatapos tanggapin ng tsuper ang bayad ay pumatak uli ang metro. Hindi pala niya ito itinaas. “Kulang,” sabi ng tsuper. “Dagdagan mo pa.”

Hindi na ako nakapag-isip dahil umandar na ang aking bibig. “You have the gall to charge me extra? In the first place you charged me for your trip to the gas station and I didn’t complain because I was being charitable, and now you try to bilk me for change?”

Totoong mabilis akong magsalita kapag ako ay nabubwisit. Tiningnan ako ng tsuper na parang ako’y taga-ibang planeta. Baka hindi niya alam na sanay akong matingnan na parang ako’y taga-ibang planeta. Madaliang umalis ang taksi. Kapaskuhan na talaga—lumalabas na ang sungay ng mga tsuper.

Ikinuwento ko kay Mike ang pangyayari habang kami’y nanananghalian. “Mayroon din akong kuwento tungkol sa taksing nasakyan ko kanina!” sambit ni Mike. At narinig ko ang kahindik-hindik na kuwento na saka ko na ibabahagi sa inyo.