New Year, Novel Start

Wow!
Now that I work close to home (less than an hour's drive before the roads along Baliwagan, Marayo and Pahanocoy were subjected to rehab - yeah, DPWH and Congress have their hands full right now with the local elections looming just around the corner), I expected to spend a longer holidays with the folks at home like I did on Christmas day. I was able to avail of the authorized Leave of Absence, albeit unpaid. I should have known better than putting it all together in one week.
So, on New Year's eve, I reported for work...late. At the end of shift I tried my luck at waiting to be picked up from the bus stop just across the office. The sight of overcrowded PUJ (with about 20-30 passengers on the roof, No Kidding!!!) alarmed me that a trip to the terminal seemed necessary. When I got there, the crowd expecting to go home before 2008 ends was overwhelming but the terminal looked abandoned. Taxi drivers started to get abusive and offer to shuttle passengers to Bago at php 150 per head. I actually told him Php 150?!?! At that, he said, you will not be getting a ride from here. But I did not stay long there to know whether he's right or not. By that time my stomach already started to protest. It didn't do me well even more that firecrackers started to "crack" here and there. It's one of my all-time pet peeves :( So I took a PUJ and went back to the office. On the way, the national road visibility is already nearly nil from smoke.
After depositing my stuff at the baggage counter, i had a hearty dinner of cantonese, rice and ripe mango smoothie which had me feel lethargic all the time that I was watching the Pirates of the Carribean installment in the break room. Shortly after the opening credits of "At the World's End", I went my way to the Quiet Room, selected the remotest bunk, updated my journal and slept through the New Year.