the day toronto became manila

Part of my morning ritual here in Toronto is to tune in to my favorite channel, CP24. It's the ultimate multitasker's dream -- on a single TV screen, you can get the news, the date, time, weather, stocks, traffic conditions, some features (depending on what time of the day you tune in), and even a list of upcoming events around town.

Not that I'm some uptight workaholic who feels the need to squeeze every second of her day. (Okay, so sometimes, maybe I am. :P) But for the most part, I watch CP24 for the weather, so I know whether to dress in my winter/spring/summer collection. Teehee.

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So today, I was doing my ordinary morning ritual, except there were three not-so-ordinary things in the headlines:

1. TTC workers were on strike today, and that meant there were no subways, no buses, no streetcars, and no way for me to go to work.
2. There was an extreme heat alert because the temperature was supposed to go up to 33C today.
3. There was a smog alert.
   

I was horrified.

Okay, actually, I clapped in glee first about news item #1, because that meant I had an excuse not to show up at the office today.

Then I started laughing because, hello, 33C is nothing in the Philippines. And their air quality with the smog alert is probaly the normal air quality back home.

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Then I got to thinking.

May strike din pala sa Toronto.

You always get these smug OFWs saying "walang ganyan sa States!" and trying to convince everyone else that their lives will change drastically for the better once they go abroad. For the most part, they usually succeed.

But I look at the lives of immigrants here, and I realize it really isn't all that better or easier. I've met highly-educated immigrants who've had to work blue-collar jobs in order to survive. I've met kids my age who've had to work several jobs since they were teenagers in order to get an education, whereas I have never had to work for anything until I got out of university. Even coming from a school like UP, I hardly know any working students -- much less students working two or three jobs at a time. So, maybe it isn't really a case of having more opportunities abroad, but of Filipinos back home being more passive about their future.

But, as I turned back to the news unfolding on my television screen, I saw this:

The streets were filled with commuters walking back home, and I realized for the first time how different a government-controlled public transportation system was from the system we had in the Philippines. Good samaritans picked up complete strangers from the street in light of this 'emergency', offerring rides to whoever needed them.

I watched the health department issue warnings about the heat and the smog, which ironically was still probably much better than the air quality we had in the Philippines. They even had several cooling centers open for people who were at risk from the heat.

At that moment, I realized how this so-called chaos reminded me so much of the way of life back in Manila. How was it possible that something deemed so unacceptable here was normal, everday life back home? I felt like we were being short-changed. How could we let ourselves settle for so much less?

And suddenly, I didn't know whether I wanted to laugh or cry.