A New Year's Tale: The Tale of the Blasted Cough
Well, it's the new year and what better way to greet it than with a big round of... coughing.
I got on the bus this morning and was glad that there weren't a lot of people in it yet, meaning I could pick and choose any seat I wanted. So I sat in front beside this totally harmless-looking chubby med student. The bus TV was stationed to some morning show so, with nothing better to do than check-out the variety of passengers getting-on the bus, I decided to glance casually at the tube. With that single casual glance, I effectively ruined what would have otherwise been another uneventful, boring, SAFE bus ride. I had caught the tail-end of some disturbing DOH (Department of Health) update on the case of little boy that nearly killed a whole village in Laguna by infecting it with some disease caught in Cavite or something like that. At the PRECISE moment after the DOH guy enumerated the myriad of drugs they administered to the hapless little boy to supposedly cure him and make him less contagious and dangerous to the human race, the Blasted Coughing erupted. The eruption originated from my harmless-looking chubby med student seatmate.
Of course, as you can imagine, I freaked-out. I couldn't help make a lightning-fast connection between the doomed, cursed, disease-carrying little boy on TV and my suddenly not so harmless-looking seatmate. At first, The Coughing started softly, at irregular and well-spaced intervals. Then, as time went on, The Coughing progressed into something louder, raspier, and scarier-sounding. The intervals also became more regular and more closely-spaced. I tried to move as far as I could away from the source of the Blasted Coughing, but the seat handle digging in between my left ribs prevented me from going any further, like, say, to the floor ass first. Suddenly, the passenger behind me started coughing as well. That's when I almost lost it. After having only 1-hour of sleep the night before due to my holiday-season-ruined body clock, I started having paranoid thoughts that the little boy carried within him a new strain of SARS, or worse, SARS's bastard, mutated, never-spoken-of brother, and had spread it from Laguna all the way here to Metro Manila.
Packing tape T-SHIRT! I didn't know what to do, so I scrunched-up in my seat and tried to breathe as little as possible. This was not a good idea since, coupled with lack of sleep, the lack of oxygen almost made me faint. What stopped me from actually fainting was the thought that I might fall on my disease-carrying chubby med student seatmate. The thought almost made me gulp-in a great big lungful of air to prevent a fainting catastrophe, but the thought of breathing-in contaminated air caused me to hold my breath in again. It was a vicious cycle.
Finally, salvation presented itself as a sloping concrete highway off ramp leading to the place where I usually get off the bus. As soon as the bus paused, not fully stopped, but PAUSED, I jumped-out of my seat and practically ran for my life through the sliding door, onto the highway, and to the other side of the road. Although part of the reason I ran was, not only to escape the virus-saturated air within the bus, but also to avoid the gigantic grills of an oncoming truck. I managed to avoid getting splattered by the truck and arrived at my office building relatively safe and disease free. Considering that I also had to walk through the smog-filled air of Makati to get there.
This experience has only re-enforced my belief that public transport systems and television shows here in the Philippines are dangerous.
Happy New Year everyone!