Student "edition" found at {thoughts dot com slash typed no space out no space loud slash blog}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

For once, I'm going to write about the evening shuttle insight of the day here.

In our place, a tricycle ride costs eight pesos. If it's a special trip, it's three times that.

Usually, if there's someone else who rides, it's deducted from the fare of the one who asked for a special trip.

But not in our case: it's only when there are two or more additional passengers that it gets deducted to the fare of the passenger willing to shell out more.

The problem with this is that it makes a culture of leeches that wait around the tricycle terminal for someone willing to pay for a special trip, and they get on without any question or permission. It's well and good for them because they don't pay more for the trip, and for the driver who gets additional fare.

But for the guy paying for the special trip, it's the same either way. So for me, I'd rather not have any leeches when I pay for a trip. So if there are passengers hanging around the terminal, I wait behind them. Let them leech off someone else.

Last night though was different. I was able to wait behind the leeches, but then someone arrived who was willing to take a special trip to the same residential area as me.

Well, there were two of them, so it wasn't really paying three times more than a regular trip.

But since the driver beforehand asked us all where we were going, he was waiting for me before he drove off.

And I had no course but to be a leech. In fairness though, there were two of us, so that meant that the original passengers actually didn't pay more than they would have if the tricycle was full (which it was at the start), so everybody wins.

But having had those feelings and prejudices for a long time, for most of the trip I was thinking to myself (actually muttering under my breath like some irony for the hidden TV camera recording my life) "I'm a leech! I'm the thing that I most despise!"

Such are the cycles that we go through in our lives, that we have to take with a grain of salt or with a chuckle otherwise we'd die too early from worry.

Session 2633 knows that "thing I most despise" is also an exaggeration. Class dismissed.