After appreciating the flowers and the stingless bees and the kangen water and everything organic at Sonya’s Garden we decided to pay our respects, ie, magbigay pugay, to the most important institution in Tagaytay: Starbucks. I first drove to the branch nearest Sonya’s, and discovered that there was a long queue of frappucino devotees outside the store. We jumped to two other branches along Tagaytay road, also with long queues outside. The other institution, Bag of Beans, was brimming with people, and under the intense afternoon Saturday sun there was no way we were going to wait for a table. I don’t know why I even brought a jacket. We ended up in Nuvali, where the Starbucks also had a long and winding line. Resigned, we just bought ice cream and ate in the car–these frivolities are not worth getting intubated for. Maybe there was a sale we weren’t aware of, or maybe everyone was cramming for the free planner. Who knows, 2021 might turn out to be fantastic. We can hope.

The traffic along SLEX was strangely more horrific than usual, and hashtag slex revealed that there was an accident involving a girder crashing down on a passing car. There’s really no end to the murderous attempts of 2020 is there, it’s like we’re living in a sequel of Final Destination. One of my lingering fears whenever I walk along a busy road is getting impaled by a construction steel bar, and in my wake I will have a huge hole on my forehead. Whenever I drive along Skyway I imagine getting driven off the road and plummeting down on a container van, which will summarily explode. The most murderous of all these attempted murderers, however, is still COVID, as everybody just seemed to have decided to take on a “Fuck it!” attitude, as if you can say “Fuck it!” when your hospital bill is staring at you in the face. Nobody’s even trying to pretend to sit diagonally, or use the sanitized pens, anymore.

After four hours from Mamplasan we were able to climb the ramp to Skyway. We clapped and cheered.

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