Reasons to Hate the Commute

#1702 A Condo Unit or Else ~ anonymous; #1730 Era Five Drivers ~ KirbyisKing

#1702

Riders of the Era Five buses going down Molave Drive would know about the ladies in the black veils and the big black dresses. You know, the ones that give out flyers for the newest Sinauna Group condos?

A lady in black would appear as the bus is coming into Molave Drive, and start handing out flyers to everyone on the bus. If you don't take the flyer because you're rude and don't want to encourage the practice, she'll drop the flyer onto your lap and put her face close up to yours for a few seconds. You think the chill you feel as she passes by is bad enough...? Try not taking a flyer.

You can't see their faces, or any part of their skin, because it's all covered in thick black cloth. But be careful not to touch them, as the chill WILL cut to the bone. Some careless/curious/short-tempered/lecherous passengers learned this the hard way.

If you try to ask them a question, they'll just point to the phone number on the flyer and move on. They don't talk. When they're done giving out the flyers, they sit behind the driver, if the seat there is empty, or stand near the door if the seat there is not, and vanish just as the bus is exiting Molave Drive.

Wish the flyers they give out would vanish along with them. But nooooo.

------------------------------

#1730

My friends and I have long been wondering about the Era Five bus drivers. We all know their caps are pulled down over their eyebrows (how can they see the road??), but we couldn't get over how you can't take a photo of them (they'll always come out blurred), look at them through their reflection (their faces will always appear weird and choppy, like static), or look directly at them for more than a few seconds without being compelled to look away.

So the three of us - Allen, Jinky and I - undertook a project to observe as many things as we could about the Era Five bus drivers. In our limited view as high school kids, this would only entail sitting or standing as close as we could to the drivers, and stealing as many glances as we could... though people who ride the bus normally sit nearest the driver first, so we were aware that this was rarely doable.

We weren't in a rush. Hence our "research" took over three months. And this was what we gathered:

1. The Sinauna drivers don't make any unnecessary movements. They may change their minds, say, and move their hands from the shift to the steering wheel, presumably if they decide it's useless to change gears. But overall, if a movement is unnecessary, they don't do it. They don't shift in their seats. They don't yell back at rude drivers. They don't talk to anyone at all, even passengers who end up causing trouble in their buses (and end up being thrown out by the conductors). The most they've done outside of their routine that we observed was nod at something the conductors told them.

2. Allen came to the conclusion that Era Five drivers have their left hands stuck to the steering wheel. He has NEVER seen a driver with his or her left hand leave its spot on the wheel. As someone who regularly takes a route that goes though a roundabout, Allen expected that the driver would remove his or her left hand in order to make a sharper efficient turn. This has never happened.

But then, he suspects, it has never been necessary.

3. Jinky isn't sure that she saw this, but she wants to make it known anyway. The faces of the drivers are made of metal. The angles are smooth, like a regular human face, but they're also silvery and SHINY, with a surface like a multitude of tiny stars.

More than that, Jinky says, she saw that one time a driver was crying. Real liquid tears were streaming down his face. But he still looked at the road ahead and never spoke and drove smoothly down the highways of Manila like he was supposed to.

She had the sudden urge to get off the bus right after she noticed that. Even if she wasn't at her stop yet. She was also seized with the urge to keep that observation to herself, so she wrote it down quickly and showed it to the rest of us as soon as she could.

(Editor's note: the three high schoolers mentioned here have since retracted this writeup. The Sinauna Group appeared in a PR campaign shortly after this writeup went viral, and the three children were shown slowly and robotically repeating the words "None of it is true" on national livestream. 

(Said Group has also approached the creator of this app requesting a retraction. But due to lack of legal merit, the Sinauna Group's request was ignored.)