And technically, despite being an ally, the Philippines never had any beef with Iran. Our only contributions to the US partnership is to serve as a logistics hub for their troops and MRCs, mostly as a deterrent against China.

Iran asked to designate PH ‘non‑hostile’ for safe Hormuz passage

I’m surprisingly not against this, even before the fuel crisis.

China’s not backing down from their claim and we’re not too, and it’s going to be a stalemate because no third party who intervenes would actually be able to force the other to stand down — so might as well compromise and begrudgingly share the resource.

I’d say it’s not a fair representation of what’s happening. Traffic is still bad during rush hours and certain parts of the day. It’s probably less congested on off-peak hours but who knows if that’s just an anomaly or really from petrol prices.

It’s certainly not like during the lockdown/pandemic. That was surreal, almost a throwback to how the streets looked like in the 90s.