Rain, rage, and a little hope

It’s hard to describe the specific kind of frustration that fills you when you’re stuck for hours on Quezon Avenue during a monsoon downpour on a Monday morning on your way to a meeting in Manila.

- 

Last Monday, July 21, was one of those days. The rains came strong and steady — the kind that makes you wonder why you had decided to go to work. There was an option to send a link and do the meeting via zoom, but with the stop-and-go, gas-and-brake traffic, I had no hands to send one. When traffic crawls like molasses, one goes with the flow, or risk the ire of impatience driving each vehicle with taillights glowing like weary red eyes through rain.

Meanwhile, my phone buzzed orange rain warnings, and I couldn’t even stop the earsplitting sound. Then it beeped messages, one which flashed — Turn back now! — sent by a friend concerned and anxious that I had ventured into monsoon rain. In front of me, floodwaters crept higher — a fourth of a tire, a third, halfway.