The ‘custom’ around here

Reading Dindo Manhit’s commentary (“Plug the revenue leaks,” Opinion, 10/23/17) reminds me of my own experience in a post office on Airport Road, Pasay City, albeit in a “smaller scale” compared to the Bureau of Customs.

I went there to collect something because of a P.O. notice. There were others crowding by the small door of the office.

I asked one what she was there for. She replied, for her mother’s medicine from abroad, and she came all the way from Pangasinan. There were students from Manila missing their classes, and two Koreans who were also students.

What was I getting? My notice did not specify what, where from and who. I was made to wait and wait like all the rest under an awning. Fortunately, no rain—only the heat. Someone told me that

I should be given priority as senior citizen.

I waited for hours but I had a class in UP Diliman that I would not miss in exchange for what I did not know or from who and where. So I left. What did I lose? Hours. I walked to the end of Airport Road to get a bus.

BASILIO ESTEBAN S. VILLARUZ, professor emeritus, University of the Philippines Diliman