how much is P500?

I found myself trying to block the view to the ATM screen and tucking away the bills as soon as they came out, embarassed about having that much on my hands while the crowd around me have been camped out here since 2AM to claim the P500 Meralco refund.

For five hundred pesos, they made the trip down from their villages in the outskirts and tread the still slippery storm-ridden paths. For five hundred pesos, they spent half the night out in the cold, with nothing to sit on but wet pavement. For five hundred pesos.

The numbers I was trying to hide from their view was not much. Everyone knows a state salary doesn’t get very far. But surrounded by hundreds who will thereafter be braving hot sunshine and humidity standing in line for P500 pesos, a few thousand on my hands made me feel rich, and undeservedly so, because I work in an airconditioned office and sleep in a well-ventilated room and spend for car fuel possibly their entire living for a month.