The Matrix

While riding a jeepney on my way to the office this morning, I noticed the fare matrix hanging from the ceiling just behind a front seat passenger's head. It was an old Taytay-Cubao jeepney, one that I may have ridden on when I was still a college student commuting between our home in Cainta and K-Mart, the old UP-Katipunan jeepney terminal. I was curious enough to check how much it cost now for my old commute and was not much surprised to see the amount to be 14.50 pesos. Back in the late 80's I only paid 2.50 pesos for the same 10-kilometer ride from our subdivision gate to K-Mart. And that should have been 2.25 pesos if the driver even bothered to charge a student's rate. I also remember that the Katipunan jeepney ride at the time cost 1.00 peso (the minimum fare for the first 4 kilometers) while an IKOT jeepney ride was 75 centavos. Time really flies by when were so preoccupied by many things and inflation seems to set it pretty quickly, too. I guess, it's our turn telling younger people how much fare cost when we were their age as well as how much a bottle of Coke or a piece of pandesal cost back then. Our parents did so when we were young and even now, reminding us that a peso could get them by a couple of days since a bottle of softdrinks cost only 10 centavos and you could get a decent meal for 25 centavos. Back then drinkable water was probably free and I still couldn't believe that it would be in my generation that we would be buying bottled water when back in the 80's my mother would shrug off the Perriers and Evians in the groceries as something not at all having any demand here. Life goes on...