Friday Night in the Armpit of Cubao

I can't recall the last time I went out on a Friday night. I stay at the office until half past ten adding up beansy numbers in a ledger, nose barely two inches away from the pages, wondering whether what looks like a zero is in fact a six, or if that seven is a one. Everyone else leaves at 7:00 to go home to their families or to go out somewhere fun. I stay shut in my 5x8 foot pigeonhole, listening to a radio station's 4-hour mix of pop music from twenty years ago.

Twice a week (sometimes thrice), I go to work at the family business; a drugstore my grandfather built up from scratch shortly after WWII. I used to work there full time, and used to make more than twice the peanuts I make now, until I went a little stir-crazy a couple of years ago. You would too, if you had front-row tickets to every squabble between family members fighting for their piece of the pie, losing their heads if someone gets an extra bite. It's not like it's a huge operation awash in megabucks. The main office sits in a dumpy building a stone's throw from a public market. If you manage to find a space to park your car along a sidestreet, your 5-minute walk to the office is sure to be an obstacle course, the obstacles being all of the following: dog poop, human piss, assorted garbage and at least two speeding tricycles driven by men with slightly more brains than a donut.

I'm not complaining. I'm just telling it like it is. I need this job, even if I like it like I like having a pus pimple in the center of my forehead. It's how I manage to pay the bills every month. It's how I manage to eat thrice a day. It's how I manage to get by when my other occupation presents zero profits in exchange for sleepness nights, which it often does. I'm a children's story writer. A good one, I suppose, if a couple of Palancas are proof enough of some talent. But not quite good enough to justify giving up the office job, and the smell that goes with it.