Santa is coming

I want to bludgeon the friggin' asshole in front of me right now with the heavy CPU, smash his face in the keyboard like that suicidal .gif cartoon who loses his head eventually. He's playing System of a Down on Christmas eve with decibels that can ruin everybody's eardrum in the cafe, but others don't seem to care because their not writing some blog entry or whatever. They are either playing games that make them feel like merciless gods, and others are desperate (old) biatches looking for some online romance.

I was hoping to get a dose of silence but these people can't seem to be getting enough. Great. What a pleasurable way to welcome Christmas.
***
Many years back (childhood seems to be eons ago) I used to recall hanging old socks as makeshift Christmas stockings in our old house hoping to find goodies the next morning. And yes, me and my siblings would find, ocassionally, twenty-peso bills and, albeit a kid that I am, I knew that it wasn't Santa who'd put those bills but either my father or mother.

For a moment, I wanted to put a sock in our dilapidated door, a soiled one at that, and prayed fervently that I would find relief inside it the next morning I wake up.
***
It was my third time to go to SM last Friday and was hesitant because I knew it would take me an hour or so to get there from the usual 20-30 minutes. But no, the ride was smooth and there was no aberya along the way. Curious as I am for such a strange phenomena (it's Dec. 22 and there was little or no build-ups at all), I asked the taxi driver who I know would give a substantive observation. He said that there was no traffic because the new traffic lights were removed. It will be re-installed come January 2007. We then talked a few more of our observations on this phenomena.

Apparently, what caused the heavy traffic, aside from the obvious fact that everybody's on Christmas rush, is the city's newly installed traffic light system. The allocation for the project was indeed huge as I later learned, and if the purpose was to elevate the city's status into some big metropolitan junkie, it sure did. Traffic is after all, a success indicator of civilization.

***
During last Thursday's Christmas party, each of the staff received an 800-peso worth of gift certificate from NCCC Mall. I availed half of it yesterday and was welcomed by a multitude of people, the thickness could be likened to a glob of goo. The line was stagerring and there goes my vertigo again. When I came down, anxious to get home, I heard Chad (from the reality TV-show-contest Pinoy Dream Academy) and managed to get a far glimpse of him in the mall's activity center. I couldn't take anymore the loud shrieks so I eagerly rode a jeepney.

It clogged somewhere in Uyanguren and the badjaos went waving their empty plastic Coke cups at the disgruntled drivers and commuters. One badjao woman was carrying her months-old child and was incessantly knocking the glass window of a van. She waved once more the cup, gestured her hand towards her mouth and then pointing her child, which obviously meant 'para pang-kain lang ng anak ko". Indeed the influx of the badjaos during this season is quite alarming considering they seem to have grown in numbers each year. I fear that their population might reach to unmanageable proportions that the government might consider, for lack of an efficient social services policy, gassing them up into some chamber similar to that in the Holocaust.