A Very Old Woman And A Turnstile That Would Not Open

       "Disappointment haunted all my dreams..."

                                              The Monkees, "I'm A Believer"

       Yesterday, I had a dazed and surreal day.

       I got out of the house at noon to go to an office complete with a red umbrella, a jacket and a peanut nougat bar in my pocket, the only thing lacking was the reason I  got out of the house— the documents I needed to deposit at the office. I went back to the house—I had already walked several blocks— grabbed the precious documents, braved the rain once again and boarded a passenger jeepney.

       While inside the jeepney, the woman beside me was blatantly lying to someone she was talking to on her cell phone. “It’s a verrrry slow-moving traffic here, we’ve been stuck on the same spot for thirty minutes,” she claimed while the vehicle we were in was fairly moving “And oh, the rain was so heavy and (she mentioned a name) has fallen asleep beside me,” she said. But she was alone and it was just a drizzle. I subtly moved away from her.

       Then, while she continued to lie, a very old woman, who was probably already 342 years old, okay, she’s a lot younger than that but I was almost certain that she’s more than a hundred years old, boarded the jeepney alone. She looked so fragile that we, her co-passengers, were worried that she’d shatter every time she moved and she strangely kept moving from seat to seat.

       I alighted from the jeepney and climbed onto an LRT station, bought a ticket and repeatedly and exasperatedly swiped it but the goddamned turnstile just wouldn’t open. I kept on swiping the ticket, with the queue behind me getting longer until someone pointed out to me that I was swiping the ticket on the wrong part of the machine—too embarrassing, yes and I was at that station at least once a week.

       I finally got in and the train was already arriving when I noticed that I was standing too close to the edge of the platform and was in danger of being hit by the train. Fortunately, I was able to step back in time, boarded the train in one piece and reached the office alive.

       I got out after a few hours, boarded a jeepney again and while fighting the urge to doze off, The Monkees’ “I'm A Believer” started to play in the vehicle’s crappy stereo.

       And today, I woke up sick.

       Most peculiar day, indeed.