The CSB Experience 3: Pedicab Roadkill

    One thing I dread every time I leave the Vito Cruz LRT station is seeing the sight of woman-crazy-business-minded-perverted pedicab drivers who would wait along the first few steps of the station’s staircase just so they could lure commuters. I even despise the mere fact they’re plying the Taft-P. Ocamo area.  Just so you guys know: Pedicab drivers are a menace to society!

    Not that I oppose the existence of pedicabs and other forms of mass transport like tricycles and jeepneys, it’s just that the people who conduct  this mode of transport lacks discipline, moral responsibility, professional ethics and are heavily ignorant of traffic laws.

    I mean come on, Pablo Ocampo Street is a one-way lane yet these pedicabs use it as a 4-way road which they could use and abuse whenever they want. During rush hour, P. Ocampo along St. Scholastica is usually heavily jammed with traffic (Put Taft Avenue in the same position and it’s far worse!).

     But what makes it all the worse is that pedicabs are clogging and hogging every available space in the street, making hazardous “pasikut-sikot” around cars, buses and trucks especially if it means trying to go against the normal one-way flow of traffic in the area. And just so they could have it their way, they would even resort  to scaring unsuspecting walkers who commute these areas by threatening that they would run of them.  The pedicabs-in-yellow are living, breathing DEATHTRAPS!
Evil, huh?

    What’s more evil is the way they rate their fare matrices, if they have any. A short drive from CSB to somewhere just a block away would already cost a passenger 20 smackers. During  rainy days when Taft is under water, they would charge double or even triple of that amount. Compare that to how normal pedicabs would rate their fares in the Manila suburbs, a little over 5 to 10 pesos. It’s a total rip-off!

    Any student who goes to any of the major Taft schools (CSB, DLSU, St. Scho and Arellano) is a Taft pedicab driver’s rich source of income. Their illegally-established terminals are strategically situated near school gates, mall and mini-marts, condos, popular restos and LRT station entrances.  Knowing that the average Taft student has a wealthy amount of lunch money, it’s no wonder they charge their rates that high yet their services is not worth 20-pesos but it is worth your funeral.

    If they see someone dressed in a chef’s uniform, pedicab drivers would yell “AKIC! AKIC! AKIC!” (pertaining to CSB’s Angelo King International Center in Estrada cor. Arellano Street). If they see someone carrying a T-Square they’d yell “SDA! SDA! SDA!” (pertaining to CSB’s School of Design and Arts in P. Ocampo). If someone is dressed like she’s ready to shop, they’d yell “HARRISON! HARRISON! HARRISON!” (Harrison Plaza).

    They seem so desperate to get a passenger, up to the point of  actually going towards a potential passenger instead of the passenger going towards him to give her a ride. There’s this one time when I saw a driver taking away some stuff from an old woman who was merely going down the stairs from the LRT in hopes that she’ll ride on his three-wheelers even if that poor woman may or may not even be interested on doing so. Talk about perverted maniac!

    Some old-time Manilans recalled that there was such a time when pedicab drivers were totally non-existent in the Taft area, or at least are relegated to the residential zones, blocks away from Taft itself.  The dawn of the Taft-based “yellow menace” seems to have occurred only recently.

    The higher-ups of CSB are already doing measures to discourage its students of ever riding into  one of these hazards-on-wheels (this could  actually help reduce a pedicab driver’s earnings as much) by giving them alternatives by either offering shuttle services between the three buildings (which I doubt a lot of Benildeans actually make use of besides field trips, et al) or by telling them to just walk. AKIC is only two blocks away from the main campus and is of walking distance. Same goes for SDA which is only half as far.

    I think there we should put pressure into the city government or even to Alfredo Lim to help elmimate or at least minimize the presence of pedicabs in areas where they are not needed. He should not make reason that hundreds of people depend on this livelihood and that there are no alternatives. I think this form of livelihood employs more than enough Manileños and I believe there are alternatives to it if Lim has the political will to provide such. He should look into the countless violations these drivers committed, the traffic laws that they continue to ignore and the threats they pose to students, workers and other commuters.  Not only should the Lim government revoke their franchise to ply their cabs in Taft or anywhere else in Manila, they must be given alternative and more sustainable opportunities that could make no more of them a menace within the city’s jurisdiction.

For the sake of no more “pedicab roadkill”.

"The Milktea Bottle" (Director's Cut)

Here it is guys!

The Milktea Bottle Full Trailer

Full Trailer of the biggest short film on this side of Taft Avenue!

The Milktea Bottle (Teaser)

A teaser for the movie, "The Milktea Bottle". Directed by James Habitan

Created for Vidprod2 under Sir Dodos dela Cruz

De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

School of Design and Arts

J Pics 3D Pics: Crate, Etc

Used Maya 2008 for 3danim2

Running Out of Books to Read/DVD's to Watch

I feel like a drug addict suffering withdrawal symptoms for the longest time I haven;t have my dose of coke. I also feel like a smoker who tries to quit the habit in vain but can't seem to move on without the cancer stick fix. That's what it feels like 13-going-14 days of absolutely no internet, phone, and cable inside the Habitan household. Since the onslaught of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy), our phone line's as dead as silence while the only "clear" channel we get from our TV is TV5. What else could go wrong?

This past few days, I've been trying to cope up with my daily fix of TV and Internet by occasional visits to an internet cafe just beside my subdivision/across the border of Valenzuela and Obando, Bulacan plus staying in school longer to keep my mind occupied.

But if I'm stuck at home, I had to find ways of keeping myself sane like looking for books to read and DVD's to watch on that Blue-Ray player my dad bought a couple of months back, plus listen to some tunes through my cellphone's FM radio. But with things going from bad to worse for every day that we still don't have access to the outside world, so does our resources to feast our hunger for sanity.

I've already done reading a number of books like:
1. Pikachu Shocks Back!
2. Pokemon Adventures (2 Books)
3. Magical Pokemon Journey (3 Books)
4. Pokemon Adventures: Yellow Caballero (2 Books)
5. Ragnarok: Into the Abyss (10 volumes)
6. Posh and Becks
7. Eraserheads: Tikman Ang Langit
8. Pugad Baboy 15 and 16
9. Beerkada Books 1, 8, and 9

As for DVD's, I have watched:
1. Fiddler in the Roof
2. Hey Arnold the Movie
3. Friends Season 1 Top 5 Episodes
4. Friends Season 10
5. Friends Top 5 Baby Episodes
6. Bourne Identity
7. Bourne Supremacy
8. Bournce Ultimatum
9. The Mummy Returns
10. Mamma Mia
11. 13-Going-30
12. Band of Brothers Episodes 1 and 2
13. An Ideal Husband
14. Big Girls Don't Cry
15. Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

Waagh...I think I'm going crazy!!

The CSB Experience 3: Changes For the Nth Time

It's been a while since I made an entry for The CSB Experience so I might as well take the time to do this.

Because of Typhoon ondoy, the school is once again forced to extend another trimester by by adding a few more days well until mid-January and declaring some state holidays into regular school days.

My Webdev2 prof sent me an email containing the dates of those decraled as regular school days so lo and behold:

Due to the suspension of classes (from the afternoon of 26 September to 03 October 2009) brought about by Typhoon Ondoy and its aftermath, the Second Term calendar is revised as follows:

November 27 (Fri) - Regular class day
November 28 (Sat) - Regular class day
December 08 (Tue) - Regular class day
December 16 (Wed) - Regular class day
December 17 (Thur) - Regular class day
December 21 (Tue) - MONDAY SCHED
December 22 (Wed) - MONDAY SCHED
December 23 (Thur) - MONDAY SCHED

The revised term calendar utilized two special holidays (27 and 28 November) and 08 December as regular school days. Furthermore, school days for calendar year 2009 were extended until 23 December 2009