The Gridlock

 The transport strike has turned the Metro into a parking lot of silence. The fuel crisis is all anyone can talk about. The jeepneys are gone from the roads, and the people who usually rush past my window are standing in long, frustrated lines, waiting for a ride that might never come.

The city is paralyzed. And for once, the world looks exactly how I feel.

There’s a strange comfort in the gridlock. When the whole city stops, I don’t feel so "behind" anymore. We’re all just stuck together, looking at the same hazy horizon, wondering how we’re going to afford the next mile. Being unemployed and depressed is a permanent transport strike—you have the engine, but you don't have the fuel to move.

I almost let the blog go dark tonight. The "Fuel Crisis" felt too heavy, a metaphor for my own burnout. But then I saw a post online of people offering free rides to strangers in their private cars. Small acts of kindness in the middle of a massive mess.

It made me realize that even when the system stops moving, we don’t have to. We can still reach out. This post is my "free ride" for anyone else stuck in the gridlock today.

We might be out of fuel, and the road might be blocked, but at least we can sit in the silence together. Tomorrow, maybe we’ll find a way to walk.

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The Sun Finally Won

It’s a hazy Friday afternoon in Quezon City, and for once, the noise of the tricycles outside feels muffled, like the city itself is struggling to process the headline. I’m sitting here, staring at a half-eaten plate of cold rice, and scrolling through a news cycle that feels like a glitch in the universe.

Chuck Norris is dead.

For nearly two decades, the internet built a cathedral of myths around him. We lived in a world of "Chuck Norris Facts"—the man who could slam a revolving door, the man who had a staring contest with the sun and won, the man who didn't die, but simply allowed the grim reaper to live. As a teenager in the mid-2000s, those jokes were a shield. They represented an indestructible kind of masculinity, a certainty that somewhere out there, there was a force that couldn't be broken by time, or taxes, or a failing economy.

But yesterday, on March 19, in a hospital bed in Hawaii, the "Facts" finally ran out of breath.

When a legend like that passes, it does something to a Kulaspiro like me. It strips away the last bit of pretend armor. If the man who was supposed to be immortal can be taken by a "medical emergency" at 86, then what chance do the rest of us have? We, the footnotes, who get exhausted just by waking up at noon? We, the unemployed, whose only "action sequence" is walking to the corner store to buy a sachet of coffee?

The memes feel hollow now. "Chuck Norris's tears can cure cancer," we used to say. "Too bad he never cries." I wonder if he cried yesterday. I wonder if, in those final moments, he felt as small and as frail as I do every single morning. There is something deeply depressing about watching the "toughest man in the world" succumb to the same biological decay that waits for all of us. It makes the haze over the Metro feel a little thicker, a little more permanent.

The world is losing its anchors. We are losing the people who represented a time when "good vs. evil" was as simple as a roundhouse kick. Now, we just have complex wars, rising fuel prices, and a digital void that swallows our attention in eight-second increments.

I’m looking at his final birthday post from ten days ago. "I don't age. I level up," he said. He looked so strong, so vibrant, even at 86. It was a beautiful lie we all wanted to believe.

But as I sit here in the quiet of my room, I’m trying to find that "hopeful" angle I promised to keep looking for. Maybe the hope isn't in immortality. Maybe the hope is in the fact that he was human. He wasn't a god; he was a man who worked hard, stayed disciplined, and became a myth because he refused to give up.

If he could "level up" for 86 years, maybe I can manage to level up for just one more day. I’m not going to kick any doors down today. I’m probably just going to wash my dishes and maybe send out one more resume. It’s not a movie ending, but it’s a movement.

The "Facts" might be over, but the story isn't. Not yet.

How are you handling the news today? Does it feel like a part of your childhood just turned into a shadow, or are you finding a way to keep your own legend alive?

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The Slow Evaporation

 The heat has arrived. It’s not just the temperature; it’s the way the humidity clings to you like a damp shroud. I read that some towns are scaling down their fiestas to save energy. The Metro feels like it’s being slowly cooked under a lid of smog.

When you’re depressed, the heat feels like an endorsement of your lethargy. Why move when the air itself is trying to pin you down? My room feels like an oven, and the whir of my ceiling fan is just moving hot air in circles. It’s exhausting to just be awake.

I spent the morning staring at a blank screen, convinced that I had finally run out of things to say. The "well" felt dry, much like the dams we keep hearing about on the news.

But then, late in the afternoon, a sudden, short burst of rain hit the roof. It wasn't enough to cool the city, but it was enough to make the dust smell like earth. It was a reminder that nothing stays dry forever.

If you feel like you’re evaporating today—like your energy and your hope are just disappearing into the heat—just wait. The rain always finds a way back eventually. Drink some water. Breathe the humid air. We’re going to make it to the rainy season together.

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Safe Spaces and Quiet Rooms

 It’s March 4, and the air in the Metro is already thick with the kind of heat that makes you feel like you’re breathing through a wet towel. It’s the start of International Women’s Month, but the headlines aren’t celebrating; they’re echoing with the sound of a man in power reducing a woman to a "desire."

I spent the morning watching the news about Rep. Bong Suntay’s remarks regarding Anne Curtis. It’s a strange feeling, sitting here in my room—unemployed, barely holding onto my own sense of dignity—and watching someone with so much influence treat a person’s existence like a punchline for a lewd analogy. If an icon like her can be objectified in the halls of Congress, what chance do the millions of women navigating the MRT or the dark streets of this city have?

Depression makes you hyper-aware of how the world treats people it thinks it "owns." For me, it’s the feeling of being discarded by a system because I don’t have a job or a "purpose." But for the women of this city, it’s different. It’s a constant, aggressive surveillance—the "leering," the "remarks," the feeling that your safe space is only as wide as your own skin.

I’ve tried to write this post three times today. Each time, I stopped because I felt like a fraud. Who am I, a guy who can’t even fix his own life, to talk about the struggles of women? I felt like I was failing them by even trying to speak. I almost deleted the whole thing, just like I did back in January.

But then I thought about the women in my life—the ones who keep going even when the world is "nag-init" with disrespect. They don't have the luxury of giving up.

So, I’m hitting publish. This is my retry. To the women of the Metro who are tired of being looked at but never truly seen: I see you. I see the weight you carry in a city that often feels like it’s built to keep you uncomfortable.

The haze is still here, and the noise of the headlines is ugly, but maybe we can at least respect the space we’re all trying to survive in.

How are you finding your "safe space" in the middle of all this noise today?

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