People-watching in ECQ

A few weeks into the community quarantine, I moved my bed by my bedroom window so that I could “people-watch.” People-watching is a thing I do where I surmise the lives of people — people I do not know. I frequently do it when I eat alone before going to work. When I am in line at the UV express or jeepney bay to get home. Or when I’m rummaging through the department store or bookstore in search of something I don’t need.

I went home to my mom’s house in the province from Makati before the quarantine was announced. Luckily, I did not catch the virus before going home. I was worried because most of the time that I was in Makati, I spent it outside of my dorm. I never liked being idle. I feel like time is better spent on the move. My daily routine would consist of waking up — the earlier, the better. Take a shower. Go out. Eat breakfast somewhere. Go to work.

My shift is from early afternoons to evenings, so after work, I’d just go home and get some sleep. Maybe grab some food on my way. No special after-work antics, especially on a work night — unless I want to. On rest days, I mostly go home to the province or spend time in a café working on my writing.

In between those moments, I seldom bring out my phone or a book to keep me company. My phone is only good for listening to music while I people-watch, looking at people and wondering what they’re about. Not talking to them, just speculating about who they are, what they are doing, and where they are going. Because we’re all just trying to get somewhere, right? I enjoy the solitude of doing things on my own, but it’s nice to know there are other people around me doing whatever they can to survive. It’s like I’m alone with other people.

I don’t usually people-watch when I’m in my dorm or at home, but I have been left with no choice. Given that everyone is strictly advised to remain within their homes or neighborhood, I had to make do with what I was left with. The first time I people-watched through my bedroom window, I was just casually looking at them passing by our house. They were familiar faces, but I didn’t know them.

As a homebody, I never really enjoy talking to neighbors. However, the same faces pass by every time. Certainly, watching these people pass by our house is not the same as watching people in more public spaces. There is more obscurity in the random faces I see in different places.

Perhaps, that is what I love most about being outside. It’s not the freedom or the places I get to be in, but the feeling of being with hundreds of people in one area without even knowing who they are. I feel a tinge of comfort in that thought. I don’t have to know the guy holding a cake box to know he’s probably on his way to a celebration. I don’t have to know this family on their way up to the cinema to know they are having a family day. I don’t have to know the three women laughing and taking selfies to know it’s probably their first time seeing each other in months after working too hard.

I realize that what I miss most about being outside is the people. My heart aches at the thought that more than three months of our lives have now been taken away from us. How I wish this pandemic would end and we are set free again. How I wish I can rejoin other people in the streets, in malls, in parks, and in cafés without any worry that I might catch the virus. For now, I stare outside my window and do my best to imagine a greater world for them and for me, in hopes it would someday manifest into reality.

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Syd Pascua, 22, is as a freelance writer.