Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "What Commuting in Philippines' Capital (Manila) is Like" video.

  1. Brazil here. Big cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are half way between Manilla and a city like New York, but closer to Manilla. Major reason why I don't personally wanna live in those cities. My city has it's problems and traffic jams, but as it's population is like 6x smaller and the public transportation is still bad but fairly good in comparison to those cities, it's way more livable. But it really depends on how much income you have... like, neither Sao Paulo nor Rio has such chaotic transit, but between bikes, throngs of people, aging cars and buses, poor infrastructure, bunch of trucks and dangerous streets altogether, it is not all that far for lots of people the routine Emiko (?) has. I've watched the routine people living in suburban neighborhoods and even routines of people living in slums (favelas) in Rio and Sao Paulo... it's kinda similar. Wake up at 4 in the morning, go through several different types of transportation, and take a couple of hours or more with tons of stress points to get to work. Then, going back is just as bad. The chaos in the streets themselves are not as bad, but choke points with long lines can be just as bad. I have personally never had to face something like that as I was born in a middle class family, in a way smaller city. When I moved to my current city, I spent a year going to university via public transportation, and then I brought my car from my hometown and started using it. Back in my hometown while I was in school, during sometime it was car pooling between parents, at some point my school had school buses for kids in my residential neighborhood, and then when I started university I already had a junker car to drive to it. Oh, I did live a year... not exactly in Sao Paulo, but a neighboring city that is part of the major Sao Paulo Metropolitan area called Sao Bernardo dos Campos. Final school year before university actually. But as the school as relatively close (like some 5kms away in a straight line) to where I lived with my aunt, it wasn't so bad. I mostly used a direct public bus that stopped right in front of the apartment complex my aunt lives, some 20 minutes until the closest bus stop to the school, which was only some 3 blocks away. In good days I just walked back. Still, I must've shaved off some 10Kgs that year just because of how much more I had to walk. It had less to do with commute per se, but there I used to only sleep some 5 hours on weekdays too, so I can understand why Emiko mostly sleeps on weekends... it's pretty bad, you have no energy or disposition to do much else. I used buses a lot back in my hometown for english classes and other types of classes downtown, but it wasn't too hard... my hometown is only around 300 thousand people, so it's smaller than my current one, and waaaay smaller than big capital cities like Sao Paulo and Rio. Like, Sao Paulo has 12 million people, my current city has 2 million, hometown, 300 thousand. But yeah... I don't think I've been anywhere that quite beats Tokyo in terms of urban public transportation for a city that size. I've been to several countries in South America, US twice, several european countries, and Japan twice. There might be better public transportation systems in some european coutries I have not been, but not quite sure the comparison is appropriate because of population size. Tokyo has a population more or less the size of Sao Paulo (some 13 to 14 million people), in a similarly sized area (1 to 2 thousand square meters municipality, 10 to 12 thousand square meters urban/metro area). Sao Paulo also has a metro system, but it pales in comparison to Tokyo. Heck, it pales in comparison to New York. But, those living close to stations do have a better commute... avoiding cars, buses and those minivans, being able to get around with metro alone makes things waaay easier. Of course, real estate is way more expensive closer to metro, so most people just cannot afford living close to train stations, and most people can't afford having business close to it too. But anyways, thanks for yet another awesomely interesting video Greg... it's quite eye opening. Don't think I'd be able to stand a routine like that without going crazy. Kudos to Emiko too, may she find better conditions for herself and her work in the future.
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