babble mix

12/2005 Strike, New Yorker Style

What happens to New York City when mass transit workers say “we’re on strike!” Strike talaga! No buses, no subway lines, which were THE main modes of transportation here.

Sa atin, pag nag-strike, meron pa rin mga buses at jeeps, aandar pa rin ang LRT, MRT, trikes, and all other forms of mass transit. Not here in NYC.

So how do the people go to work in the morning and get home at night?

Take the only form of transportation left – a cab, which happens to be priced by “zones” (hence costing a passenger up to $80 one way for a 30-minute cab ride) and picks up 4 passengers max.

Then, there’s the other choice – walk.

That was the option I had to take, along with thousands of other commuters who had no other choice of getting into the city.

I had to walk today for 45 minutes going to work. 45 minutes of brisk walking, like everybody else who had no luck hailing a cab from the city. I considered myself luckier than those who had to cross the Brooklyn bridge and walk for more than an hour to work or school, but less lucky than those who did not actually have to leave the comfort of their homes.

Ok lang sana if we walked in 25-degree-celcius weather with a lot of sun. That would have been a good morning exercise for all of us. Pero hello, asa pa kaming lahat. Syempre dahil December, winter ang weather – in other words, temperatures that go from somewhere between -5 degrees to 4 degrees celcius. Ganda.

Nino and I came home with very tired feet. Tired, bugbog, foot-spa-deprived-for-almost-a-year feet. I truly hope this will be over soon.

posted by meL @ 7:20 PM