Palaboy

At midnight I found myself walking on foot from Bonifacio Global City to Guadalupe-EDSA. In flipflops. Lugging a gym bag, a backpack, and a Ministop chicken meal in a paper take-away box (of ALL things). I spotted a dead rat, a dead cat, and a live rat (in that order) as I uneasily trod the dark, dirty sidewalks along Kalayaan Avenue.

Don’t ask.

For the first time I felt like a palaboy, with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay. Except this palaboy had a credit card on him so he was able to check-in at a cheap motel for three hours. Because six hours was too expensive for a short, unexpected pit stop. (Also, I would accidentally leave my credit card at the concierge because I was still reeling from this unforeseen turn of events.)

Sleep wouldn’t come so I just stayed up, working on a project on my laptop until the phone rang to inform me that I had 20 minutes to go before check-out. I left the motel at 3am and walked to the nearby McDonalds. The cherry on top of the sundae was discovering that I had no cash in my wallet, right when I was about to order.

This was certainly not how I expected to spend my Wednesday morning, much less the first day of June.