Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Big Brother is Watching You


Arrgh. It may be true that the dream of most Filipinos is to migrate to the U.S. However, I didn't realize that it could be such a pain driving around in the land of milk and honey.

I found this out the hard way when I accompanied [identity-protected] and her family, as well as two other friends (who we'll disguise under the names of Cookie and Big Bear), to Subic over the weekend. For those who don't know, Subic used to be an American naval military base in Olongapo and which was later transformed into a duty-free zone/international trading port after the bases were closed.

Unfortunately, the description that driving in Subic is like driving in the U.S. was quite apt. This is not good for those of us who are used to the ah, freewheeling style of driving here in the Philippines.

Off the bat, on our way to the hotel, I got tagged by a traffic cop for swerving. And then while we were on our way to check out Ocean Adventure, another traffic cop tagged Cookie (who was driving the other vehicle) because Big Bear wasn't wearing his seatbelt. As if one wasn't enough, Cookie got tagged again on our way back to the hotel because he ran a stop sign. Fortunately, this traffic cop was forgiving since he saw Cookie already had a traffic violation citation on his slip.

Heh, it came to a point that Big Bear wanted to use the traffic violations slip as a checklist of things-to-do while in Subic.

To wit...

[identity-protected]: "This is just like driving in the U.S."

me: "Well, I wanna go back to the Philippines then!"

5 comments:

Don said...

GALING KA NG GAPO???

Why didn't you tell me..I could've met you there or...something...heheh...

Yeah, mahirap talaga magdrive sa SBMA..buti na lang mga pinsan ko maraming connections sa LTO..heheh

skinnyblackcladdink said...

for those who may not get what bc is saying: Filipinos don't drive. they *operate* motor vehicles.

banzai cat said...

fuhrer: Hehe oo nga no. Sorry, forgot about this. Though didn't you tell me you lost your phone? As for SBMA, caramba we felt so paranoid driving afterwards, we were wary of driving past those STOP signs again.

skinny: Hey, that's the fun part about driving in the streets of Manila. There's something to be said about how buses careen in order to pick up passengers. Raises the hair on the back of my arms.

Don said...

bc: yeah, but I still have my smart number. thats the number I used when I told you my phone got lost. haha.

banzai cat said...

Whew. Good thing I didn't erase that number!