Walking in Sunshine

I literally walked in sunshine today and it was not a very good experience.

No, I'm not disavowing the pleasure of my existence. It's just that I had the (mis)fortune of re-experiencing EDSA in the middle of the afternoon.

As part of our case report tomorrow, a couple of my groupmates and I commuted to the SEC office in Mandaluyong to interview some people and collect some reports as well. Since neither of us has ever been to the place, we asked for directions and opted to take the MRT instead of my usual taxi. My officemates suggested that we get down at the Ortigas station and walk to the SEC office instead of getting down at Santolan. Since I was familiar with the area, I followed their suggestion.

We got off the Ortigas station at around quarter to 3. I froze in my tracks when I first glimpsed the length of EDSA that we had to traverse in order to reach our destination. According to my vague memory, the SEC Office was right under the Ortigas flyover. And the flyover looked so far! So there we were, walking along EDSA with the hot afternoon sun beating down our sweat-soaked backs.

Good thing my groupmate was not one of those maarte kinds (heck, if she was maarte, we would not be commuting in the first place!). We valiantly trudged along. Braving the pollution, impolite commuters and the hot sun. We arrived at the SEC Office with 5 minutes to spare. We hurriedly looked for a restroom where we were able to freshen up and face our interviewee not looking like we were dragged out of a DSWD van. (I saw a pink DSWD van drive along EDSA, picking up homeless people and street kids. Wow. Didn't know we had that. Our government is doing something with our money. Hah!).

It's been a long time since I sweated sweat that was not exercise-induced. Sweat excreted while walking along a busy street in mid-afternoon. That kind of sweat. I'm talking about the nitty gritty, soaked-through-your-shirt kind of sweat. I guess I've been spoiled with our office aircon and my daily hatid-sundo c/o my brother and/or SO. When I told my siblings about my EDSA experience, they said that I should experience that from time to time since they experience it everyday.

Nevertheless, I'm not looking for a repeat experience. When in doubt, take a cab (with a companion, of course).