Driving around in Manila (Coding)
If I recall correctly there is a coding system in Manila. It's basically ODDS and EVENS of the cars license plate. If your license plate ends in an ODD number, you get to drive your car MWF and vise-versa on EVENs. So it does not get too congested in the city and probably minimizes in the pollution. Just something to think / ask about before renting a car in Manila.
If you are renting a car, you better know where you are going. Otherwise, I would just hire a driver or get a taxi.
Driving in Manila and colour coding
driving in manila is not for the nervous or timid but it is doable. i’ve driven in far worse places i.e indonesia and india. i’ve driven in manila for 5 years and in that time had only two minor scrapes. the traffic is usually moving far too slowly to be a viable danger to each other but the things to look out for are the kamikaze motorcyclists weaving in and out of traffic and slow moving vehicles such as pedicabs and tricies. and watch out when driving behind jeepneys or buses as they tend to make sudden rapid diversions as they spot potential passengers.
as far as i am aware, the colour coding system is supposed to keep you off the road for one day a week but i have often ignored it (becoming a scofflaw like the average filipino:d) and only once been caught which a 200 pesos bribe soon put to rights.
"Fall in Line": As effective as the public no-pissing signs
[QUOTE=Gamahucher] Would be interested to know what percentage of their lives, an average Filipino wastes in queues?[/QUOTE]
I would argue that Filipinos waste a lot of time at various (slow) service counters, but few of these settings actually resemble a queue. I get a kick out of the signs that invariably read "fall in line." Obviously the English is a little contorted. "Form a line" or "line up" would seem like better word usage options. I have asked a few older Filipinos if they can recall where the expression came from. Mostly they remember it from their childhoods, but can't pin down how the expression started. I have suggested to them that it may have been used by American military after WWII in giving instructions to Filipinos for various sorts of handouts. "Fall in" is a common military command for getting into formation, so it seems plausible that this may be its Philippine origin. Having suggested it to several locals, I have not yet had one discount this explanation.
But the major point about the "fall in line" signs is that most Filipinos don't follow them. They'll try various different maneuvers/manipulations to try to buck the line. One place where I've experienced it regularly is at Mercury drug stores. Typically there will be three or four clerks waiting on customers at the prescription counter. So, "falling in line" should be a fairly straight-forward deal: just line up on one of the clerks. But what invariably happens is that some new customer, often as not a woman (not because they're less courteous than men, but because they do the family shopping), will belly up to the counter in between two of the clerks. The new customer waits for either of the clerks to return to the counter after retrieving the previous customer's medications or receipt and change. Then she leans across the counter and starts babbling in the local dialect to the clerk, presumably with some excuse about why she can't stand in line. The clerks are as bad as the line-cutters, because they typically go ahead and wait on the line-cutter, ignoring me or whoever was otherwise next in line. In a country that's so comfortable with bribes, it should not be a surprise that customers and clerks become acclimatized to line-bucking behavior.
So the sign is really a laughable thing, precisely because nobody follows or enforces the sign.
