Reasons to Hate the Commute

#875 The Mist Portals ~ EchoMusic

They should get rid of the mist portals.

I'm talking about the ones that suck you in then whisk you off to your intended destination as soon as you step off the jeep.

Sure it reduced the number of tricycles along the highway - after all, why'd you wanna take a trike if a mist portal can save you a couple of bucks? Also, why walk from the jeepney stop, when a mist portal will get you where you want to go, as long as it's within 500 meters from where you got off?

But I still hate them.

At the start people didn't like using mist portals. That was cool. I wish that took root. I wish people had just boycotted mist portals altogether so they wouldn't be around now.

In 2024, mist portals were buggy. If you didn't know how to step off the jeep, you fell into them and landed on your butt or on your face on the other side. And, if you didn't know how to firm up your destination in your mind, you ended up in weird places.

The first time he took a Sinauna jeepney, my neighbor Tonyo, failing to correctly visualize the inside of his own house, found himself inside a sauna 300 meters from his home, while naked people yelled at him from all sides. He was so embarrassed.

Eventually they got mist guardians to help, so that if you needed to get off the jeep, a clump of mist would reach out, take your hand, and help you through the portal. That worked, but it was awkward, because mist guardians didn't talk or even have faces and you didn't know if you should thank them or if they were getting pissed off or what.

Now everybody knows how to use the portals, and the portals themselves are much more streamlined, and nobody needs the guardians anymore. Good thing. 

And now, enough with the history lesson.

Bottom line is: I hate Sinauna jeepneys. People say "Just don't take the jeep!" and I say they don't get it. I live on the outskirts of the city and can only get to my house from the bus stop via jeep.

I could take a trike, but there are no trikes at the bus stops anymore because the Sinauna jeepneys with their stupid mist portals are there to make travel more convenient. There aren't even any other jeepney lines anymore, because people don't want to ride any other kinds of jeeps except for Sinauna ones. Monopoly, much?

So I have no choice. But I still hate Sinauna jeepneys. And I'll tell you why.

In 2024 I was 13 years old. I was with my parents and my little sister in a Sinauna jeep. My parents had been fighting over a lot of things, every day for the past several days. They wouldn't even look at each other.

I was in charge of my little sister, who was 4 at the time. Wriggly as anything. I couldn't take my attention away from her. So I wasn't able to notice what might have been going on with my dad.

What I noticed was that my dad was fidgety. Angry fidgety. I thought, maybe he just really hated mom at the time. Mom had her eyes on the road and was coldly silent.

Then, suddenly, my dad said, "Para."

The jeepney driver braked on cue. My mom and I looked at my dad.

"What's wrong with you?" my mom snapped.

"Just getting something from Ka Bene's store," my dad said. Ka Bene was an old neighbor who relocated to another part of town. He was one of dad's oldest and best friends, and we knew he went there sometimes just to talk. "You go ahead. I'll see you at home."

My mom muttered something under her breath, rolled her eyes and ignored him again.

I didn't think anything was amiss. I didn't try to stop him. I didn't even look at him as he was making his way out of the jeep.