Street novelties

I was not born early enough to see double decker buses roaming the streets of Manila, but when we heard a stationary double decker bus serving as a restaurant stationed at the CCP  Complex, my then college friends and I went to Pasay to at least experience how it was to be in a bus of that kind. It was a novelty for me. The food they served was forgettable but the experience on the bus was not. I did not know much about the reason for the demise of the double deckers of the Love Bus franchise, but just one look at the vertical clearance warnings emblazoned on all concrete and steel structures around the city would give me an idea for a possible reason.

During college also, I constantly wandered who he was or what this Chinese guy did to have many streets named after him. I first saw his name in front of De La Salle University along Taft Avenue. I did not hear of any news renaming the Estrada Street to Ped Xing, but I supposed the latter must have done something equally good. Only after seeing Ped Xing's ubiquitous presence did I realize it stood for something else. On hindsight, perhaps he did something good to merit a universal acclaim. He made sure that when we take his lined street, we would be safe.

These were some of the street novelties in my college life; they may be not new to you, but they were to me at that time. Anything new was a source of excitement and fascination. Now, in this busy life, I  rarely see anything new on the streets, maybe because there has not been anything new out there or perhaps the ugly seems to mask the new.

But I know that it's the ugly that necessitates for new things, and I know, for a fact, that we are progressing. With all  the ugliness out there and the development going on, we should have new and better things to see. Perhaps I did see novelty in those rare occasions when I was not busy even though the streets had ceased to become a venue for appreciation.

Those rare occasions were the times when I wasn't working, a payday weekend.