For my Labor Trials, I was tasked to pick garbage in the streets of Marikina. Yes, using my hot pink tong (it ain't no panties dearies), I hauled my ass all the way to the Waste Management Office every Saturday afternoon to report for duty.
The first Saturday was all about getting to know my groupmates. There was barely any litter in the streets since 1. It's in the afternoon ( so any major litter would've been picked by the morning batch 2. There was a WMO personnel stationed to sweep in my assigned street 3. Marikina is just simply clean (kudos to Mayor Bayani and her family's obsessioin with pink!). So after less than an hour, we headed towards ChowKing to relax and cool off. I love their Milk Tea but their boochi kinda sucks. I later learned that one of my groupmates was actually from my highschool, just one batch higher. Small world huh? And I don't even recognize her!
The second Saturday, we were assigned at an even cleaner street---semi-residential with banks and clinics. The down side is there's no famous establishment for us to eat so we settled on a carinderia. I had a large bowl of halo-halo for the cheap price of P25...cool! At the end of the street, we spotted a 7-Eleven so we indulged in even more goodies! This was the day that I mastered the art of picking cigarette butts thanks to my handy dandy pink tong.
The last Saturday we were assigned for administrative work. Lucky for us coz it was so fuckin hot that afternoon so at least we were inside the air-conditioned office. During our 15 minute break, we headed off to Blue Wave and bought goodies at Watsons. Then we stopped by Jollibee to grab a bite which made our break turn into an hour. But none of the peeps at WMO got mad. In fact they didn't even care. After our office duty we headed back to Blue Wave to play at Timezone. The tickets we got from playing was traded in for Spongebob pencils---remembrance gifts for our three-Saturdays stint at Marikina.
So what did I get from my Labor Trials? Well aside from a Spongebob pencil, newfound friends and the additional weight I gained from all that pigging out...nothing. I guess picking trash did get addictive but it wasn't an immersion for me, but became more of a hanging-out-with-friends-on-a- Saturday-afternoon-thing.
