On the Bus (The Field Trip Part 2)

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With a hasty breakfast from a nearby convenience store, we gathered at the rendezvous point, awaiting the arrival of the buses. Despite my sleepless night after the Bamboo concert, an energy drink had me feeling unusually energetic. As we arrived, the buses began to pull in, and we boarded bus number 6. However, we had to endure an hour of waiting for those who overslept due to malfunctioning alarm clocks before we could finally set off for Manila.

Unfortunately, our bus was assigned the most irritating tour guide in the history of tour guides. He introduced himself with the lamest joke I had ever heard and proceeded to bombard the bus with trivial questions that only he seemed to know the answers to. He wore a smug smirk as everyone struggled to respond. If we had known those answers, we wouldn't have needed him standing there in the first place. Nevertheless, to be fair, he did share some interesting facts that I hadn't known before. Here are a few of them:

1. Luzon has six expressways: NLEX (North Luzon Expressway), SLEX (South Luzon Expressway), SCTEX (Subic Clark Tarlac Expressway), and the Star Toll Way in Lipa, Batangas, which was named "Star" as a tribute to a well-known celebrity/politician in Lipa. I can't recall the names of the other two expressways (I was too annoyed to pay attention).

2. EDSA stands for Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue. It was previously known as Highway 54, a name derived from its total length of 27 kilometers. If you add the lengths of the two lanes going in opposite directions, you get... ta-dah! 54!

3. Before it was called Highway 54, EDSA was commonly referred to as Calye Hunyo Disi-Nuwebe (I'm not sure about the spelling). In English, it translates to June 19, which is the birthdate of our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal.

4. As for the current favorite pastime of Filipinos, it involves wiping the windshield of a moving bus with the face of an egotistical tour guide.

The last one was purely a fabrication, in case you were wondering. Stay tuned for more trivia in my upcoming posts!

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