Four thirty in the morning and I bolt awake in front of my laptop, wondering how and why in the world of Nemo did I get here, on this blank page with the blinking cursor waiting for the questions from my mind to flare to my fingertips and flood the screen. It’s the same bizarre event that happened this afternoon: for some nefandous reason I was squinting at some overpopulated street somewhere which I discerned was at the foot of the rainbow. I thought I’d whack some random trotter’s shoulder and ask where the hell I was and what the hell was I doing there when I caught sight of a billboard informing me that I was in Parañaque. Awestruck dumb and stupefied, I whirled around to see if I knew anything familiar about the place—the dilapidated buildings, the Shell station, the strangely chinese-looking McDonalds restaurant, then the traffic enforcers and throngs of passersby streaming past me left and right, from front and back. I approached one traffic enforcer, a greasy old man with a neon orange vest, and asked him how to get to Edsa. Edsa! he cried. He asked me to ask someone else; he was stationed there for the first time.
I retired at McDonalds where I thought I’d sort things out. I stepped inside and this HORRIBLY APPALLING STINK that smothered the entire floor inevitably penetrated my nose and contaminated my thoughts. I glared at the janitor swobbing the yellow tiles stinking wet with a scummy mop dipped from a bucketful of blackened water. I covered my nose and tottered grunting and groaning past him, since he wouldn’t look at me anyway, and reached the counter where a cheerful midget in red greeted me a singsong welcome note.
“This place stinks,” I said.
She smiled apologetically and yelled at Roy, the mop boy, who stopped abruptly, and barked at him, “Hugasan mo yan!”
“Anong yan?” the idiot retorted.
I looked at the woman in the counter and muttered my order, “Isang—”
“Yang map!”
Then I looked at mop boy.
“Kakahugas ko lang nito kanina!”
Then I looked back at the woman. “Miss, isang chick—”
“Hugasan mo ulit!” the woman bellowed.
I looked back at the imbecilic mop boy.
“Hinugasan ko ng mabuti yung map kanina!”
Then I swivelled my head back at the counter, fire seething out my nose. “Pwedeng mamaya niyo na yan ayusin?”
“Ano daw?” mop boy asked. I looked back at him as if they were in some unstoppable tennis match.
“Wala,” the woman said. “Mamaya na.” She smiled sourly at me and I wished I could just strangulate her with my tentacular infernal rage.
“Isang chicken nuggets, yung may spaghetti… take out.”
We finished the ordering process with me covering my nose. She shoved my order toward me and broke into a chirpy “ThankyouforcomingtoMcDonalds!”
“This place is the stinkiest restaurant I’ve ever been into,” I spat, turned the ball of my heels around, and scuttled away.
I hailed a cab and went home. Once home, I figured I wasn’t even hungry.
