Pet Peeves In Public Spaces

I find it interesting now to ride the jeepney. Gone are the days when the only thing you would normally see would be people blissfully enjoying their short but oftentimes turbulent slumber. As a kid, it has always been a source of fascination as I pondered on how in the world they were able to manage to achieve quite a feat – disregarding all the different smells and noises that surrounds them in order to sleep.

Today, however, the jeepney patronizing species is very much worlds apart from those of my yesteryears. Just the other day, I happen to meet two of them. The first one was this student with a really long and straight black hair. Hands down to her for managing to turn our mode of transportation into her very own salon. She kept on brushing her hair with what seemed like an improvised comb – someone must be looking for a missing piece on their hair styling kit. You have got to give it to her as she kept on undoing and redoing the way she tied her hair into a ponytail, always making sure that not a hair was out of place. What was her total styling time? More or less, about 15 minutes non-stop.

The second specie is a lady that I sat next to. She seemed normal at first but when it came near the place where she’s supposed to get off, she took out a small vial of perfume from her handbag and started to liberally apply the fruity scented liquid all over her torso. From her neck to her wrists, it even reached her back and then back again to the former. It was a good thing that my nose is nowhere near the sensitivity of Felix Unger’s (Jack Lemon’s character from Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple). Felix’s allergy would have acted up, he would have politely told her off, try to move to another spot or do all three. Another saving grace was the fact that she used a roll-on fragrance vis-à-vis a spray-on.

The week before, right across me was a lady that must have thought that the jeepney was her dresser at home. She changed her gigantic pearl earrings into a pair of large hoop earrings and continued putting on her jewelry from her silver necklace with a small, faux diamond-encrusted crucifix up to her bracelets. Much to my surprise, she didn’t stop there. She proceeded to fixing her make-up from her face powder to her lipstick. It wasn’t so much amusing as dangerous. It’s as if she was yelling to the snatchers in the area to pick her as their next victim. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
For the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about whether the traffic situation in the country is that bad so as to accustom people to make the public domain an extension of their dressers. I am not entirely sure if that attitude is a peculiarity to us Filipinos but somehow, I become even more convinced that it is with every passing day. I’ve taken the bus in New York and Los Angeles and never have I seen anybody doing what I have observed here in Manila. I guess we’ll just have to bear with it and see what happens.