twelve minutes

twelve minutes is what's needed if you have to boil a kettle of water for hard-boiled eggs. twelve minutes is the short time spent to reach fort bonifacio from ortigas center after rush hour traffic has dispersed. twelve minutes is what separates the arms of my watch from the makati towing brigade's clocks...

for the second time in a little more than a month, my car got towed.

i parked at a "5pm to 7pm tow-away zone" at 7:00pm in salcedo village. upon returning to my spot 33 minutes later, my car had already transformed from a silver corona to a grey civic. i probably wouldn't have minded if an aston martin or a jaguar was waiting in lieu of my thirteen year old sedan. who knows. my keys would have fit in perfectly.

6:48pm was the time written on my violation ticket. and i argued (halfheartedly) that i had parked at 7:00. at the back of my mind i already knew that any attempts of talking my thousand bucks out of their cash box was futile. after handing over two newly-withdrawn, crunchy yellow bills to those sons-of-bitches, they followed through with an instruction that i had to redeem my license from the makati city hall the following day (plus an additional P500 fine!). by some stroke of luck (for the corrupted scum of the earth), i was in a pretty numb mood, and not in my usual debate-me-to-death pose. in fact, i wasn't feeling an ounce of grumpiness. no. on the other hand, i was even in a jolly good mood. and i managed my way out of that deliberate inconvenience with a hundred fifty peso corruption tip and a couple of jokes! who the hell pays his oppressors a huge amount of cash and throws in a couple of jokes for free?!

well, i did. tonight. and while those fools chuckle the night away, my pocket frowns on its shameful loss. all because of those twelve (crucial) minutes.