Yesterday, Monday, the barker at the terminal where I catch a ride to Makati was distributing flyers to the commuters waiting in line. A captive audience for flyers, he does this every month or so. This time it was an announcement that their member drivers were going to use the Gabriela Silang car park for their terminal for the evening commute back to Marikina. Well and good, I thought. The Marikina drivers had used this car park before and besides, it's almost just across from the office building where I work (the Makati offices, that is).
Several shuttle lines have been using the Gabriela Silang parking lot as a terminal through the years, and it is practically at the center of Makati, being right beside the Makati Stock Exchange building. It was named that because right at the corner of Ayala and Makati Ave. is a statue of Gabriela Silang riding a horse. And for all intents and purposes, the area is the oldest developed block in the Makati business district. It's located at the Ayala Triangle, a large green area which was formerly an almost park, but now just waiting development with more Ayala buildings. Right beside the car park is the old Nielsen Tower, now the Filipinas Heritage Library. This is the oldest building in the whole Makati Business District, predating the business district. The two storey building was called the tower because it was the control tower when the place was still the airport during pre-World War II. Notice the three streets bounding the triangle, Makati Ave., Paseo de Roxas and Ayala Ave. were the airstrips at that time. The Nielsen Tower restaurant is now located right across the old Nielsen Tower, in the Peninsula Hotel. And yes, there's Shangri-la Hotel Makati just across the intersection. But I digress...
So late afternoon came and end of shift, I walked to the parking lot, asked where the queue was for those going to Marikina, and was pointed to the right van. There were two vans going to Marikina, one via Bayan, and the other via Masinag. I got in to the Bayan van and waited. There was only one passenger besides me. So we waited. And after thirty minutes, the van still had space for about six passengers. I didn't really count as I was busy snoozing in my seat. I just approximated by the number of voices in the chatter. The driver noticed that there was a very thin trickle of people who knew about the terminal, decided to move out of the place and find passengers. There's always two long queues at Ayala for Marikina passengers. He parked in front of the Stock Exchange and tried to get some passengers, those crossing the street to go to the long queues. Since this was a no parking space, and there were lots of jeepneys, he wasn't able to properly position the van at the pedestrian crossing, he drove round the block, through the traffic and tried again. This time he was able to park right at the pedestrian crossing. After fifteen minutes of this, and sans one passenger who decided to get off, he finally decided to drive to Marikina. A wait of more than an hour, with a tour of the triangle, before finally leaving Makati.
The good news was that, considering it was a Monday evening, there was relatively light traffic. I got home about an hour later. Normally this would have been an hour and half ride from Makati via a shuttle. And about the same length of commute if riding the train and jeep.
All in all, a different end of workday for the start of the week.
--andoy
29 January 2008
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