MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza This is the pause before the crunch. If I were you, I’d do my last-minute Christmas rush before December sets in. This is a good time to go malling, before the hoi polloi and elite decide they cannot postpone window-shopping, price-canvassing, shopping and gift-wrapping their purchases. It’s 44 days to Christmas Eve – don’t say you were not warned. The days and hours creep up, Tuesday is no different from Monday or Wednesday. Government economists prod us to spend, save the economy. Bankers say before you spend, make sure you’ve enough saved, because without money coming in, where’s the money to replace what you’ve spent? A USD trillionaire’s tip: Save cash. Notice how our banks are hardly paying interest on savings? Long ago during the last century, Coca-Cola identified itself as “the pause that refreshes.” In the time of coronavirus, it’s redundant to pause after an eight-month-long pose marked by the quarantine syndrome – boredom, isolation, depression, fear, and anxiety, the “new normal” turning old but still abnormal. But as soon as you’re in Quiapo, on EDSA, Roxas Blvd., you know  one thing hasn’t changed – traffic! (Our street is back to parking on both sides, damn the “no parking” signs installed with fervor by MMDA way before the pandemic.) Professionals and amateurs, entrepreneurs and the self-employed working from home. Students out of school. Where have all the people gone? Not to the malls. Yet vehicular traffic has not lightened, the roads are not any freer. Will Santa Claus be late? Will RFID speed up his traveling time? We could all wish for another pause before the Christmas bonus is distributed: that DOTr,  LTFRB, and MMDA stop their maddening experiments on EDSA. Let them step back from their obsession to “improve” traffic flow with their weird and wild three-headed schemes, beginning with the no-U-turn rule that has not produced discipline on the part of drivers nor the harassed, exhausted enforcers. There are nine more U-turns to close (out of 13) – imagine what havoc is sure to emerge with the expected Christmas traffic jams! If the rush to buy RFID stickers was any indication, the law of the unlucky 13 will be government’s undoing. Please, one and all, take a pause and stop doing/undoing what cannot be done/undone.