Some of us ask very profound questions when we go to bed at night or wake up in the morning:
“Why are we here?”
“Where are we going?”
“What happens when we die?”
For many who work long hours and experience the daily adventures of hand-to-mouth jobs, however, these questions are quickly overtaken by more mundane ones.
The following are twenty-five (25) sample seemingly trivial questions we may find ourselves asking as we go through our daily lives:
- Why does it take so long for the traffic light to change?
- Why does the traffic enforcer make me and a hundred drivers wait as long as twenty (20) minutes at an intersection?
- Why does my mobile phone conversation keep disconnecting?
- Why does it take up to five (5) times to redial and connect a mobile phone call?
- Why do some fast-food restaurants reject my credit card while the drug store down the street accepts it?
- Why doesn’t the brand-name wrist-watch store have on stock the brand-name wrist-watch strap to replace the one for my brand-name wrist-watch?
- Why does it take months for the big hardware store to replace the light bulb I bought but which stopped working after a few days?
- Why do many new bridges only have two (2) lanes, one for each way?
- Why ban trucks on roads at certain hours of the day?
- Why do traffic cops target and stop trucks for alleged violations all the time?
- Why put speed bumps (we call them humps) on newly-cemented smooth roads?
- Why do some cars not stop when there’s a red traffic light?
- Why does the water company dig holes and trenches on newly-built roads?
- Why does the power company require so much paperwork and time to change the meter of a house?
- Why are there so many fires every March, which every year is fire-prevention month?
- How come there’s always an elevator that’s not working?
- Why are there never enough parking spaces to park my car at the convenience store or at the bank?
- Are Manila’s streets for cars or for basketball courts?
- Why do we have to pay the city’s tax-paid garbage truck to haul our trash?
- Why do I have to renew my business’s environmental permit when I already have a city hall mayor’s permit?
- Why do I have to submit a hundred pages of tax forms when I already had filed it electronically through the tax agency’s website?
- Why does the power company give me only a week to pay my electric bill before they threaten disconnection?
- Why is the bank’s 24/7 ATM always off-line?
- Is it me or is the bread I buy getting smaller?
- Why is fish so expensive in a country surrounded by water?
Ellery's Essays 