Reasons to Hate the Commute

# 895 The Lambingan Bridge Guardian ~ yayFries

Someone gave the Lambingan Bridge Guardian access to the Web a year ago, and things were never the same.

For those who don't take the Pasig river ferry and enjoyed its many quirks, the Lambingan Bridge Guardian (LBG henceforth, as it likes to be called) was dredged up by the Sinauna Group during their excavation of the riverbed, supposedly as part of its cleanup drive cum flood control initiative. Lots of strange things were unearthed during that time; the LBG was just one of them, and isn't even the most regularly weird one.

No one is actually sure what the LBG is. A Sinauna press release identified it as an "entity," without gender or any definite corporeal form - but, strangely, with property rights.

The LBG, being sentient, was labelled a citizen of the country with rights to "ancestral property" - that is, the area it has occupied for millennia, that is, exactly where Lambingan Bridge now stands. Hence, it is entitled to occupy the dark spaces beneath Lambingan Bridge whenever it wishes, as compensation for having been awoken so rudely by the excavations. Yes, it had legal representation, and yes, it won the court case.

So there are days when it sleeps in its muddy bed...but there are days when it's awake, and killing boredom by lightly harrassing the people passing through Sta. Ana, Manila over water.

It's like passing under the window of an ornery old person who likes to throw things at you, or else block your path just to shake its walking stick at you and watch you squirm uncomfortably.

I say "lightly harrassing" because its antics are never harmful - just annoying. Enough to put people off from taking the ferry all the way past Lambingan bridge (they usually get off a station before, then take the bus or train or something).

But somehow, it was able to access the Web, and somehow it became even MORE annoying. I blame the kids who live near the bridge and occasionally play with it.

In the past it just posed ancient riddles, known as bugtong, to passing ferries, stalling trips until the Sinauna Group river patrol came and reasoned with it, and it slunk back into the water, holding the (supposedly existing) answers close. Like a giggly formless Sphinx.

Now it incorporates meme stuff, sometimes from way back in the annals of cyberspace. It's kind of corny and kind of hilarious, though the amount of time you lose while forced to help it kill boredom is never funny.

For example, it once stopped my ferry and asked stupid questions like "What do you call two Filipino pilots? (A: a pair of pliers)" and "What do you call a small crema de fruta cake? (A: hijo de fruta)." Of course, the LBG also temporarily turned off all our gadgets, so nobody could search for the answers online.

These are really old jokes and occasionally, someone would remember the answer. This would tickle the LBG. "Very good, very good," it would crow. "Give the dude a jacket."* But it still wouldn't let the ferry pass until it got bored again, or until the patrol made it slink back into the water.

It has "quickie" tricks, too! For example, it loves to pull hair. Occasionally you'd feel your hair getting pulled back, and when the invisible grip loosens, you'll hear a chuckle that sounds like "jejejeje" filling your left ear.

Anyone else have any interesting LBG stories to tell?

* a catchphrase attributed to former gameshow host Willie Revillame, during the time when television still ruled the country. Legend has it that it was uttered whenever a contestant on the show won a major prize.

However, the LBG rarely handed anything out. There were a couple of accounts of people who had their pockets filled with gold coins as a prize from the LBG for guessing one of its corny punchlines... only to have the coins turn into globs of mud after passing Lambingan Bridge. Unsanitary! And hell to remove from office clothes in the wash.