THEORY PT. 2: The Train to “Davos-Platz”

Weeks seem like centuries / hours seem like fortnights when I waited to discern the fate of my job application. How continuous of fate to let my early morning office trips feel the same. It is a most marvelous thing for 15-20 minute ride. My MRT trips to Ayala sapped my energy no matter how great I felt waking up—imagine if I didn’t.

The course of the train isn’t complicated, unlike in London or Japan, there are no fancy rail switches and exchange tunnels in Manila. The MRT travels an almost straight line. Actually, it is like a conveyor belt floating upon EDSA, moving chunks of flesh and sweat—human resources—a main artery supplying the sorely valued citizens of the capital that supplies its wealth, enjoyed and amassed by the few.

I thought of that each morning on the way to work. I mean that or how I didn’t want to do the work I am supposed to do that day, Monday or any other day. I was really disappointed; I regarded the Ad industry as something anyone would be crazy not to aspire to. As I examine fibers/events a year ago—I ask myself what was I really expecting? Because, it still pays better than any other freakin’ job in my line of work.

I guess it’s true when my boss told me, “Nananaginip ka pa ata.” (I think you’re still dreaming.)

Yes, I had certain ideas of how I wanted it to be. My first trip to work, the day that I was hired—I took a taxi. It was special I felt great, I kissed my Mom and Dad I gave a big wave to my sisters as I left the house; I stared outside the taxi’s window to see the tower’s height and I walked cockily inside the enormous lobby. I felt that finally I was a step a closer to a more comfortable life—the good life, the Pinoy dream. All those years of studying hard has finally brought me to this—landscaped gardens and immaculately paved roads driven on by expensive cars; big Ivory towers one phallic symbol after another pointing towards the heavens—big cock and bull buildings with dickheads for workers! And I was one of them hahaha! I paid taxes, got SSS and Pag-ibig membership. Heck! I even had life and health insurance.

Not to mention the killer job title—Jr. Art Director
With a stylish office address to match.

It was something my parents never experienced when they were 21. And thinking of that during those days made me feel that somehow I’ve arrived. I thought of this on my train rides to work. The radiated musk from all those bodies squeezed together encapsulated and regurgitated by the train’s barely working cooling system gave me a high. I was on a high when I thought of where I came from, on those train rides to work. An expensive Christian School student shipped to public school in the middle of elementary, off to an obscure high school with modest dreams—ejected to a big University, where I learned to think BIG.

Maybe when I got the job that was the problem, I was getting ahead of myself BIG time. I appended too much of what I wanted/hoped/dreamed into a single pretty job title.

I never realized that on my train rides to work.

To be concluded.