Greetings of a prosperous new year from right here, live (and dead several heartbeats later, unless I hit "REPAIR" on the Smart Bro LAN Connection) in Quezon City!
I'll hit my new year right with a blog entry about our famous Metro Manila eyesore (or eyecandy, *snicker* lol), the MMDA footbridge.
A few years ago, I found myself on one of these hulking monstrosities of steel (probably from the chairman's own steel mill I digress) in Quezon Avenue, near Capitol Medical Center. And from there, we got our own personal view of the people's champ, the man, the legend, the Alaxan junkie, the Extrem Magec Seng(tm) endorser, the one, the only, Mr. Manny 'the PacMan' Pacquiao. World Champion in his own right, Champion of the Filipino masses; right there with former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza - waving in front of the starstruck (or trafficstruck) crowd as they and hundreds of 'mirons' in their fancy floats went on a Metro-wide tour to celebrate his championship victory. Mr. Manny Pacquiao deserves a blog entry but it's not him I'm about to dissect, it's the viewing platform slash steel pedestrian overpass that I'm about to make famous.
How typical of us Pinoys to turn one object into numerous other things for which it was not designed. Just like using fruits and vegetables for numerous other pleasurable things, like using patola as a nightstick or billy club or using bananas as ballistic missiles (or was it our neighbors, the Thais?)
Right now, the footbridge has been turned into a peddler's lane like all over and underpasses in the metropolis. Kudos to Manila City government for turning the underpasses in their city into near-safe places by sanctioning and legalizing trading within them. But I cannot say if these ambulant vendors in the footbridges are actually making people just using them from getting from point A to point B feel safer with their presence. Personally, I don't mind. It's actually sad to think that these illegal ambulant vendors are always on the run. Whenever raiding parties come near, the vendors go on a comic mad rush and are gone in less than a minute. hehe.
When the Aurora Blvd. - EDSA Footbridge was installed, the Cubao denizens used the footbridge as a, well, footbridge by day and as a cheap sex trading spot by night. How freaky it was to find these poor girls in their ghastly make-up and blacktooth grin offer you a "night you will never forget" right there in the sanctity of the Metro Manila Development Authority's Blue and Pink Steel Footbridge? ¡Que Horror!
And right up north, where the mayor's moustached smiley face/caricature is all over the place - we have one of our more infamous footbridge. Let's just say, the footbridge has been also turned into a viewing platform, but the view is from a different angle. lol
