01960: It's All About Timing


So I'm generally liking this whole "sleep earlier" routine for my work life. I feel a lot more energized at the office and I rarely find myself dozing off during idle moments, which is a great thing. And now that our food stores have been replenished, I've also been able to prepare a hearty dinner while Tobie is making his way home. We're still trying to figure out the optimal timing for things so that we make the most of the time we have together, but on the whole it feels good.

On the flip side, my main challenge now is getting home in the morning. Leaving the office after 08:00am is pretty crazy and my chances of getting a decently-priced Uber are pretty small. In my old schedule, I'd leave the office around 10:00am and would typically be able to catch an Uber outside of surge rates easily. Around 08:00am, I'm learning that I should consider myself lucky to catch on even at 1.5x Surge Rates since it peaks at around 3.4x sometimes - assuming a car is even available. And then there's the horrors of navigating out of Makati City traffic and getting onto EDSA, for which I've been experimenting with Waze recommendations to see what comes up. My typical route isn't necessarily the one favored by Waze and I may actually try it's suggestions just to see how things turn out. Some of its routes seem counter-intuitive, but they do indeed avoid certain traffic hot spots, so that has to count for something, right?

The MRT is hardly an option at that time either. I've tried entering Buendia Station a few times while Uber Surge Rates were being crazy, only to exit the station some 20-30 minutes later. The trains at that hour and jam-packed full of people, which brings back trauma related to losing a few wallets in that sea of people. Despite the fare hike this week, it looks like there's been no real change in terms of the volume of people riding.

So my shift to an earlier sleep cycle is turning out to be a little more expensive in terms of transportation, but perhaps I'll be able to balance things out by making other adjustments. I'm back to trying to make more of an effort to bring food to work as opposed to buying food at the office. Night time eating options are pretty limited and rarely healthy so any move to prepare my own meals has to be a good thing. Plus it should help minimize my odd snack runs when I give into cravings and hit up 7-Eleven for this and that.

2015 is starting out pretty busy on multiple fronts. More and more it feels that the only true solution to Metro Manila traffic is avoiding it entirely by staying home. Sheesh.

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