The South Luzon "Not-So-Express"way on a Monday Morning

I am late!



For the very first time in my 17 months here in JPhil, I was marked 15 minutes late this morning (I timed in at 8:05 but since the company has the 15 minute rule, I was charged 15 minutes), thanks to the "express" of the South Luzon Expressway.



It was a monday, the first day of the work week. So I will be going to the office from our house in Malabon and not the usual dorm. I left the house at 5:30 am, as usual. During ordinary mondays, this time frame of mine assures me that I am at office by 7:15 am. So that means, if worst comes to worse, I still have more or less 45 minutes to spare.



But this monday is unusual. The bus I took at the Pedro Gil station of the LRT leaves the station at 6.37 am (that's what's written in the bus ticket altough I checked my watch and it's only 6:20 am). The bus didn't stoppped into many stop-overs, because probably the driver is on a race with the other bus company's bus driver. So I thought I would arrive at the office early. So the bus passed by the Skyway and that is the beginning of my early agony. Traffic is very much terrible, I even saw a man, alight the bus he is into along SLEX, seeing a very small and low hole in the expressway's fence, and hop in to have his walk at the service road instead. Just before the bus touched ground from the Bicutan exit of the skyway, upto pass the Sucat interchange, the traffic is literally moving the phase of a turtle. So I thought, it maybe because of the on-going construction of the phase 2 of skyway to Alabang.



But no, the construction hadn't created that very heavy traffic even in rush hours (o yes, the construction of skyway phase 2 makes you finished the entire rosary before even approaching Sucat if you entered the Alabang toll, but this heavy traffic in the morning is? No!). So I asked myself? what could went wrong? The funny thing is that the reason that comes into my mind is that many Filipinos are going back to the provinces after they watched the Pacquiao-Hatton fight at restos in the metro, hehehe. What a nice thought!



The real reason is still uncertain to me, but I saw something that might be a clue for the real reason. I saw sawdust and stinky gasoline (I think so, it's red liquid and it smells one) scattered along the road (southbound just before entering Cupang). So maybe I guess, there must be a tanker that toppled over a few minutes before. I hope nobody was hurt.

The other not-so-good part of that morning, I was scheduled to talk to my CLP facilitator for our one on one discussion that morning. Fortunately, he understood.