Sunduan

I am a morning person. I probably got this from years of being trained to wake up early and start my day before many other have. I am at my most efficient self in the mornings although through the years I have learned to pace myself and bring out reserves when I need them, especially during deadlines.

In my childhood days my mother used to wake us up early in the morning. There were 3 of us siblings and by the time we all were attending school, we had to follow a schedule that allowed us to eat our breakfast, take a shower and dress up before our school service arrived to pick us up. As the eldest, I was usually the first one up and I remember I preferred it that way so that I was first to the bathroom and first to take breakfast. This despite having my school service usually the last to pick me up (my brother and sister shared another school service).

It's about these services that the Clairvoyant and I fondly talk about when we encounter them in the morning at our village. We always wonder how early (if indeed) parents or yayas woke their children/wards every morning to prepare for school. We also wonder if the children arrive early, in time or perhaps chronically late for their classes considering that school services usually went around for other children as well. I remember that in some cases, the parents are not so cooperative with the schedules so that we often hit a bottleneck when we had to wait for quite some time before a child emerges from his/her house. It always seems unfair that they take the service but don't care that other children become late because of how they spoil their child.

When I was in grade school, I remember one school service driver, Mang Rudy, who was great in compensating for the lost time. He would drive like mad after picking up the last child. (Kulang na lang wangwang.) And we would likely arrive at school on time considering now the distance that we had to cover. I lived in Cainta and we had to go around several subdivisions in Cainta and Pasig before we proceeded to St. Paul Pasig and Lourdes Mandaluyong. Still, there are times when the aggressive driving of Mang Rudy won't be enough and I had one year when I had a lot of tardiness on me. Fortunately, I changed school service the following year and never got late again for the rest of my schooling at Lourdes.

I got used to waking up early and this I carried with me even when I was at university. I came to appreciate its benefits when I started commuting to UP from our home in Cainta. In fact, when I attended university I always chose morning classes in order to travel before the congestion along Katipunan set-in. Even back then, Ateneo and Miriam (Maryknoll) generated so much traffic that it was usually congested at the same hours in the morning as now. And at the time, Ateneo still had those big blue school buses providing service to their students. It is much worse nowadays when you see the traffic between 6:30 - 7:30 AM, when students arrive and converge at the school in mostly their own vehicles (of course, some are driven to school).

Today, I still prefer to go to school (this time to work) early. And the Clairvoyant usually chides me for this as she is not a morning person - unless of course, circumstances required her to wake up early like when she has a conference call that's scheduled based on their overseas offices' schedules. And then of course there is the number coding scheme that requires us to leave early or leave later during the window period.