One of the very important lessons I learned in life is that, one should never take the first flight of the day to anywhere.
This realization snuck into my head the moment I realized that I didn't hear the alarm that was set to go off at 2:30 am. I woke up at 3:18 am and my PAL flight was scheduled to take off at 5:30 am from the far-off island of Mactan."The plane is going to leave without us!" my three inner voices screamed.
This happened because of lack of foresight on my part. On April 22, Sunday, I had taken it upon myself to have a break and recover from the three days of stress that I went through. I put on my new Havaianas slippers - a gift from a cousin - and took a jeep from Private to Sto. Rosario church to attend mass. I then inadvertently became a participant of a funeral. After the mass, I visited some friends and then sauntered off to Ayala mall, which was my living room during my law school days. to refamiliarize myself with its topography. On my way there, I allowed my limited edition slippers to have a taste of third-world dust. I got back to Queenie's house at around 9 pm, started packing at around 10:30 pm, finished at around 12:00 am and then went to bed. I tossed around for a while and at around 1:30 am, I finally fell asleep.
The thought that the plane would leave without me, caused me to go inside the dungeons in my mind to speak with the Kyubi(Nine-Tailed Fox Demon). Twelve years ago, when my inner child was born, the Kyubi invaded our village. In order to defeat it, the Fourth Hokage of the Hidden Village of Konoha, in the Country of the Fire, used his special jutsu, which required him to sacrifice his soul to the Death God. He imprisoned the demon inside my body with the use of the Four-Seasons Seal, that allows me to tap into the demon's power whenever the need arises.
Filled with red chakra, I bolted out of the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. "My God!The plane is going to leave without me!" I whispered to the large green plastic drum as I scooped water from it. I also exclaimed to my bar of soap and to my bottle of shampoo that the plane was going to leave without me. As I rinsed off the soap and the shampoo, I mumbled to the tiles on the wall that the plane was going to leave without me.
I was able to bathe, shave, brush my teeth, dress and put my things in order in a span of twenty minutes, which could be considered as one of the greatest achievements of time management. I then woke up Queenie and the two of us staggered towards the road to hail a taxi.
The taxi driver must have dreamed of joining the Formula One tournament because what usually took an hour's ride to the airport through normal Cebu traffic, took only twenty minutes. The fact that the streets were almost empty helped. For the first time, I beheld the ASEAN lamp posts in all their glory and wondered what was so special about them that they supposedly cost over 300,000 pesos each. I couldn't understand why they had to install low-wattage lights when the sodium lights along the road already served the purpose. Aesthetic reaons, perhaps? At most, they're tacky. Maybe they were meant to prevent the ASEAN contingent from going off the road.
The taxi dropped me off at the domestic flight entrance and I was dismayed to see a line of people snaking from the pre-departure area to the sidewalk. I found out that only one x-ray machine was working and that the security checks were strict. More cabs arrived and I entertained myself by looking at the shocked expressions of people upon seeing the very long line as they got out of their taxis.
After what seemed like forever, I was finally thoroughly groped by the guards, my shoes were examined and my pockets were emptied. I looked at the time and I was amazed that I was already lining up at the check-in counter exactly an hour after I woke up. If it were any other day, I would still be putting on my socks.
I met some of my fellow lawyers(note the conceit) there and we chattered away like high school students on a field trip. Leah and Aimee, cut into the line with me because they forgot to check-in some of their things. The airport personnel were already in a frenzy to accommodate all the passengers for Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific bound for Manila and Davao. The security people still managed to be polite eventhough they were already gritting their teeth from the stress. The melee worsened when it was announced that the PAL and Cebu Pacific flights bound for Manila were already boarding. People began to elbow their way through the metal detectors.
After I got my terminal pass, I ran after Leah, who kept waving at me, and her mother. "Almost everybody's on the plane!" Leah exclaimed when we saw the empty seats at the pre-departure area. There were ten people who were lining up to get into the tube that led to the plane.
"This is for Cebu Pacific passengers only!" the woman inspecting the tickets raised her voice at us upon seeing our PAL tickets. She looked like she was about to snap. "Oh, we're so sorry. It was an honest mistake" Leah's mom cooed.Instead of retracing our steps and taking the circuitous and chaotic route to the PAL gate, we ran down the corridor meant for disembarking passengers. We tried to catch our breaths while Leah's mom sweetly explained to the PAL employee that it was all an honest mistake. We ended up getting into the plane ahead of everybody.
My colleagues were very surprised to see me smiling broadly at them from the center aisle of the plane."We were worried about you. We thought you were still at the check-in counter" they declared. I kept on grinning at them like a fool because I haven't seen them for over eight months. When the plane started to taxi on the runway, I fastened my seatbelt and eagerly looked forward to heavy turbulence up in the air.
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