Disaster warning bulletin lead time: 24 hours.
Traffic authorities are raising another "carmageddon" alarm on Luzon's major expressways as the exodus from Metro Manila commences tomorrow and Saturday.
Besides the alarm, traffic authorities advise motorists and commuters to check traffic bulletins on the looming "carmageddon" through official traffic channels or social media pages before hitting the tolled roads.
If, for one reason or another, there aren't any hourly traffic updates, it is suggested to drive off with a "bahala na (come what may)" attitude firmly in mind.
Quietly shrugging with the "nothing can be done" spirit about the looming disaster descending on the benighted North Luzon Expressway, the South Luzon Expressway and the premium elevated Skyway alleviates miseries and keeps us sane, it seems.
Nonetheless, you can physically prepare for the disaster.
Previous "carmageddon" survivors strongly suggest, besides your full-tanked vehicle and enough food and drink, prepare other contingency measures to last you six or more hours crawling through the congestion.
Strongly advisable as a gridlock lifesaver is for women to wear adult diapers for bladder relief.
Women wearing diapers insist "Carmageddon" survivors are safer than those madly fidgeting and thrashing about for the next gas station to come into view and testing the driver's thin patience to defy every tight road space.
Or, if not diapers, but traveling comfortably in a van instead of a cramped car, a long billowy skirt will act as a private tent for relieving oneself in a portable "orinola."
Incontinent males, on the other hand, should stock up on empty "grande" plastic milk tea or Starbucks cups to decently relieve themselves inside a vehicle. However, this shouldn't disallow the vain and bold from confidently and shamelessly displaying their God-given gifts by doing it against the tire, a graffitied wall, or a vacant lot.
Still, despite being ready for anything, health advocates warn that getting caught in the eye of an expressway "carmageddon" may cause moderate to severe damage to one's mental health, especially since arrival at a destination, which is ever in the motorist's thoughts, will provide the only emotional and physical relief.
Minimal to no damage, meanwhile, is the lucky fate of those who will stay put at home, especially those demanding Filipino family matriarchs and patriarchs who expect to be paid a Christmas visit.
Filial pieties, Filipino cultural observers say, trump the restless desires of the car-mad younger set to drive off to other Christmas destinations.
Anyway, based on the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority's tracking, the projected "carmageddon" may exit Metro Manila's area of responsibility as early as Christmas morning.
Until then, mortified traffic authorities have no other guidance for tomorrow's "carmageddon" than to stoically, better yet masochistically, grin and bear the coming traffic horror.
Tomorrow's "carmageddon" follows six days after another on last week's payday Friday, which also had a jeepney strike, reaching its full immovable state last Saturday.
Last Friday, scores of pissed-off motorists and commuters wailed no end on social media that they endured traffic prison for as long as six or more hours, proving conclusively to themselves that the leisure of a relaxing private commute often characteristically veers nowadays into cooped-up hellholes.
However, last week's "carmageddon" eased somewhat on Sunday, 17 December.
In an early evening traffic advisory last Sunday, the MMDA's traffic center posted its tired bulletin that all of Metro Manila's major roads were "moderate to slow-moving (due to volume of vehicles)."
Still, despite Sunday's comfort that braving the usual traffic-clogged last Christmas season workweek is survivable, the looming "carmageddon" is gaining strength for its kick-ass weekend wallop of turning all of Metro Manila's roads into yet another monstrous parking lot.
And this amid the unchristian nonchalance of senior government officials comfortably helicoptering out of the metropolis.
