The Taxi Driver's Pissed Off

I flagged down a cab along Rizal Drive at The Fort the other morning and the first thing the driver told me was, "Ma'am, naiihi na po ako (Ma'am, I really need to pee)". What do you do if a stranger tells you he needs to pee? The driver and I both know that peeing on the snobbish condominium walls of the Fort is unthinkable. His discomfort was apparent, because he was squirming in his seat and he can't even remember where we were going. As I have no intention of dying in a car accident with somebody who has a bursting bladder, I suggested we look for a gas station. Fortunately, we saw a construction site. So the driver illegally parked on the curb and literally jumped out to relieve himself.

Happier with an empty bladder, he told me how this has happened before, and he had to pee in a small plastic bottle. He said he almost filled the bottle to the brim. He was expecting me to say something so I said, "Imagine if the content spilled...uhm, your hands would've gotten wet (as if THAT was the most pressing issue...)." 

At the back of my mind I was thinking, "Oh God, I hope I have exact change. The guy just pee'd, didn't wash.........oh dear, manong, keep the change. I insist."

Who Missed the Bus?

I never thought I will ever, and I mean ever, come to the buses' defense considering our long-standing battle for EDSA-space. I told myself I will try to remain apathetic towards government policies as I'm in the brink of getting an epileptic seizure from incessantly rolling my eyes. But like an itch that needs to be scratched, I just have to blog about buses being included in the unified color coding scheme, which I've mathematically proven as ineffective in the first place.

Yes, they're big, they're nasty, they honk like mad, and they consider the MMDA a figment of their imagination (traffic rules? what traffic rules?). And as much as we'd like to get rid of them for good, buses are part of this delicate ecosystem called public transport. A bus can transport 30-50 people at any given time, making them the most efficient transport system next to the MRT. Take the buses away and you'll have hundreds of passengers stranded on the road (that's them waving at the news camera right now).

The problem is, we're not getting to the root of the problem. Too many people, too many cars, too little space. There is no control over the volume of private vehicles. There's Mr. Politician who has 10 cars - one for each child, one for the wife, and one for each mistress. Potentially, that's 10 cars on the road carrying one passenger each, or maximum two. Inefficiency, anyone?

What's worse, because of the color coding scheme, people are being 'forced' to buy two cars, which aggravates the whole volume problem to begin with.  Good for the car manufacturers, bad for you and me.

We don't need any more stupid traffic schemes like "U-turns" which is the root of all bottlenecks and dangerous swerving. We don't need more flyovers or road extensions...what we need is an efficient public transport system. We need more interconnected railway systems (how come nobody has thought of building an MRT line along Espana/Quezon Avenue, connecting to EDSA?) We need stricter law enforcement. Slap bus operators with tickets and fine them for their drivers' misdemeanors. If they refuse to play nice, teach them a lesson and suspend a few of them, and let them take a financial hit for refusing to obey traffic laws.

We need to control the volume of cars. Impose higher taxes on the purchase of third vehicles, fourth (to the infinity) vehicles. If they can afford to buy a third car, they might as well contribute to the public fund, so we can give our traffic enforcers a pay raise so they would stop taking bribes.

Also, why not incentivize private corporations to provide shuttles for their employees? They don't need to shoulder the entire operational costs; I'm sure employees wouldn't mind coughing up a few pesos for bus fare in lieu of paying for gasoline.

If these don't work, just air a Pacquiao fight - zero traffic jam guaranteed.

The Math Behind Traffic Jams

Last week, I was stuck in traffic, which is pretty much a natural phenomenon in Manila, and thought I'd put my math review to good use.

I wanted to find out if the unified color coding scheme actually has an impact on the overall reduction of the volume of cars in Manila. There are a couple of unknowns which put limitations to my asusmptions.

Unknowns:
The number of registered private vehicles in Manila
The distribution of plate numbers ending from 0-9

So, on with the calculation.

There are 10 possible plate number endings: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
Philippine plate numbers contain 3 numbers, and there are 1000 (10*10*10) possible ways to rearrange these numbers  (e.g. 341, 213, 111 etc.)

There are 26 letters in the alphabet that comprise the first 3 characters of the plate number. There are 17,576 ways to arrange these letters.

Combining the two, there's a total of 17,576,00 possible plate numbers that can be issued in the Philippines.

Assuming the LTO has only issued 10% of these plate numbers in Manila, that means we have 1,757,600 cars on the road, private and public inclusive.

If we take out 2 plate numbers every day, a total of 14,060,800 cars will be banned on the road for one day every week. Since we don't know how many plate numbers were issued for each number between 0-9, and how many are private vehicles, we'll assume that only 2% are on the streets (roughly, this means 2 out of 100 cars end in 1 or 2 and are private vehicles). That means we take out 281,216 daily, which translates to an overall reduction of 16%. And what about the other 84%? They're still honking their way along EDSA, Makati, C5, C3....

English, please.

I took my TOEFL exam this morning. The first reading comprehension article screwed me up. I guess I needed to jumpstart my brain into thinking mode, especially if it came from a night with Christian Bale (Dark Knight was on HBO last night). I didn't pace myself well during the first part, and probably missed a couple of questions. And it didn't help that people were doing their microphone tests while I was reading an article about the Pleistocene Era (This is for illustrative purposes only. I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement, duh. Don't even think I'll let you have it easy by giving you clues when I worked my butt off in there.)

But I recovered and did better in the consequent articles. I did fine on the listening part, though some of the questions were a bit tricky. By the time the third listening test rolled in, I had trouble concentrating...I was getting hungry. So I just fought my way through the questions and took the mandatory 10-minute break where I ate my sandwich, took a pee break and mentally braced myself for the speaking and writing part. I started out shaky, cause I didn't know what to expect. We had very little time to prepare and gather our thoughts, and being the motormouth, I always went over the time limit, and got cut off. Not sure if that will count against me (for talking too much?). I'm pretty confident I did well in 2 questions. The writing part was a piece of cake cause I had a lot of practice (blogging included). Just struggled with the last part cause I had a last minute brain fart, and that rendered the concluding paragraph a bit loose. I'll find out how I did in 15 days. If i screwed up, well, I'll just take it again. No biggie.

One of the things I've learned is never take exams too seriously. By that I don't mean completely drop studying and hope your prayers will save you. Hit the books, take classes, do whatever you have to do but take the stress factor out. The more I stress about a test, the worse I perform on the actual test day. If you screw up, just take it again. It's completely useless to try and ponder why you didn't do well (mental block, too cold, too noisy, Christian Bale, etc.) cause what's done is done.

So, the 15-day countdown for results starts now...

And then you remember...

This is one of those days when you remember, "I have a blog where I can rant about the inconsiderate neighbors doing a karaoke marathon because it's someone's birthday and political victory party, so they're going to sing their hearts out regardless of their offkey singing and bad taste in music. Who cares about that kill-joy bitch upstairs who's trying to find some quiet time to study for an exam?" There. Done venting. I hope you choke on that sizzling pork's face, you lousy alcoholic bastards.