So yesterday, it was 6PM, when my trainer/reporter ordered (word emphasized) me to run to the office to upload the videos we took in the Mendiola rally.
She was so pushy. She said the videos were already late, and practically said I am slow. So I took a cab.
Which costs P60. It was already an expensive day, what with the rally being out in the streets we had to rent computers in cafes to pass stories, repeatedly, and to pay three pesos per photo to transfer photos from the digicam to the PC.
So then, the reporter pushing me on real hard, I jumped out the cab on the corner of Ayala Avenue where the Insular Life building was, and ran about a hundred meters ’til my legs practically buckled, to the Rufino Plaza building. Had to run up stairs because underpass escalators were off (it was 7:30PM then), and the practically pace round and round to the elevator, with exhaustion, to the ninth floor.
Once there, I rang the bell to the office, breathed, and smiled at all of them as they told me that they don’t have an SD card in the office so I’d have to go home instead.
Crawling Running to Ayala Mall in the elevated walkway, all stress fell through me and lingered– like how the reporter pushed me too hard so I took a cab, then knowing that what she says that the videos are late aren’t really true, as the crew weren’t expecting them; that that morning she told me to go directly to Mendiola because she’s on her way already, then when I asked her for directions she sneered at me practically saying I should know it myself and I’m stupid that I don’t; and that when I reached Mendiola at 10AM she told me through text to stay put because she was caught in traffic, and then she arrive two and a half hours later, alighting from the LRT, which apparently, gets caught in traffic; that when I passed photos to the office hotline and finally breathed, the editor calls five minutes later, asking me for captions; that an hour after I passed captions, the editor calls me again, agitated, because she didn’t receive the captions yet, and because she didn’t check the general submission hotline; that thirty minutes later another editor called and scolded me for playing guess-who on who the congresswomen were in the photo I took, and for guessing wrong, my fault, sir, won’t do it again, sorry; and that all the reporter can say about all of the pushing is a little sorry…
So I just smiled, inspite of all the kilometric troubles, and reached home. I admit I whined to Mom about all of it, but because I’m really a whiner at home. Just keeping normal around the house.
Then, before sleep, the reporter tells me to go to Crame at 9Am so we could edit the videos. I agreed, and slept, looking forward to a new day ahead.
***
Epilogue: Next morning, I read the message on my phone. I see the reporter sent another text message moments after I fell asleep. “Let’s not bother sending those damn videos,” it said with resolute anger, I think, for the inanities of it all.
Geeky Yada-Yada