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Who wants to go to Qatar?
A friend of mine is going to France, and he just sent me an SMS stating, "By the way, I heard you got a good ticket to Paris. What airline was this? Do you recommend it? Please reply."
Now while I always find something to occupy my time during long plane rides (okay, I admit, I simply get drunk and promptly fall asleep), this particular plane ride, connecting flights included, was the ultimate test of patience (and Filipino insistence and resilience).
First of all, I'm not very famous for having a lot of patience. I asphyxiate when the waiter takes a long time in making out the bill.
Well for one thing, I actually collect boarding passes because I like seeing my name next to foreign three-letter airport codes.
So my father dropped me off at the airport, repeatedly reminding me to check my wallet and passport and boarding passes (because he knows I lose everything). I saw his worry as unnecessary, and even a bit corny. When you're young, you're invincible, or at least you think you are. You believe everything will go your way, and if it doesn't, then there's always something you can do to fix it. If it still doesn't, then you can always blame your parents. It's cursed thinking.
My itinerary seemed simple: Manila to Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi to Doha, Doha to Paris. No problem, right? The 9 hours to Abu Dhabi was a breeze; it was just a matter of watching A Beautiful Mind for four and a half times on the plane.
I had two hours to kill in Abu Dhabi till my next flight. I purchased an overpriced Lonely Planet France from the bookshop until it was time to board the plane. I was still reading my book and daydreaming about the Louvre as the plane landed in Doha, Qatar. It was 12 midnight Qatar time. I sat back and waited for the plane to take off.
Two hours later, the plane still hadn't taken off. I had tried talking to the stewardess an hour ago and she had assured me it was simply a minor delay. A certain stab of fear settled at the bottom of my stomach, along with the terrible lamb sandwich I had eaten earlier. Soon enough, the verdict came. The plane wouldn't fly due to a slight malfunction. There was an essential plane part missing. Oh, oka...wait... missing? Essential?! How could we have possibly flown from Abu Dhabi to Qatar with an essential plane part missing?
So they carted 25 passengers to a hotel, saying sorry for the delay, and that the plane would leave for Paris at 9:30 the next morning. Too exhausted to argue further with the Arabs, and with no other flight leaving Qatar till the next morning, I could only follow everyone to the hotel.
We were all at the hotel lobby at 6:30 the next morning, chatting politely about how we were unable to sleep, and wouldn't we all feel better once we got going? The hotel concierge told us that our airline gave specific instructions for us not to call them, that they would send for us as soon as possible. At 8:30 AM we were getting restless. Finally, another verdict --- The plane would leave for Paris at 9:30 that evening.
The visions of me walking down Champs-Elysées suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke, replaced by smokes of anger rushing out of my ears (I told you, I'm impatient). Putting the hours of watching Survivor into good use, I tried to form an alliance with my fellow passengers, but they simply told they felt too tired to complain. They probably thought I was a panicked, inexperienced flyer who'd never dealt with such an encounter (well...they were right!). But I knew there was something to do. We were here due to circumstances not of our fault or wanting, and I wasn't going to sit in a god-forsaken hotel when I should be in Paris.
So I did the most illogical thing: I demanded to be taken to the airport. At first the hotel management refused, but I shot them my best Exorcist look. They recoiled in horror and brought me to the airport, just in time for me to see the 9:30 plane taxi off the runway and disappear into the clear blue skies heading to Paris.
You see, the plane was running perfectly. They had just forgotten the 25 passengers at the hotel, that's all.
I was close to tears at my defeat, fatigued and almost ready to crawl into a hole and maybe start to reconsider building the pieces of my life in Qatar as my new-found country, falling into a seat with my head in my hands. Then I remembered that I had left my Lonely Planet book in my hotel room. Money wasted because of inept service. So flares my famous temper. I wasn't going to be stuck in god-forsaken Qatar without trying my best to get out of there, goddamit cadet! If this didn't work, something had to. And since my parents were faultless and far away in the Philippines, I decided to pay a visit to the airline ground staff.
After calming me down and apologizing profusely for "forgetting" us, the airline Country Manager was brought in, and he barked orders to his supremely inept staff to book me, and the rest of my fellow passengers, on a flight to London, and from there, a flight to Paris, the soonest available flight out of Qatar. I refused to thank them, begrudgingly making it known that it was the least they could do for our delay. The whole airline staff tried to win me back by letting me order whatever I wanted in the first-class waiting lounge free of charge. I refuse to be wooed by your charms, I thought meanly, raising an eyebrow in scorn. But... I helped myself to the food. (I was hungry! No point in wasting that, right?)
An Arab woman on her way to Disney World Paris with her two children smiled at me while we reclined comfortably in our First Class seats, finally on our way to Paris 12 hours behind our scheduled arrival, commending me for pulling a stunt like that to get us all out of Doha in style. I told her respectfully, "Ma'am, sometimes you just can't take "No" for an answer."
If life astonishes you
Last night that's what I was thinking, gripping the neck of a bottle in my hand. Around me skaters were flying over my head, everyone seemed to be shouting in my ear, boy you've got to carry that weight the Beatles repeatedly chanted. Then suddenly everything exploded pink in a mass destruction hailstorm perfectly disguised as coloured confetti, and lightning flashed literally, thunder shook literally, and now, everything seems like a metaphor.
I used to press my index and middle fingers over my cigarettes so tightly that it would have a permanent depression along the filter. That would be literally. Metaphorically, I could grip at my heart's control over breathing so tightly that I'd be lightheaded. Or woozy. I wouldn't know. You can't speak when there's a stronghold over your lifeline, you see.
You can't speak, but you have the thought.
Must I prove things? Whose biography is it I'm writing, whose hand moves mine? Why do people say there's more to this; I can't see what they see, at all?
I was raised to it's up up to you's rather than your typical guiding light. I acknowledge its advantages and disadvantages. Thank you very much for everything. Now... I'm quite used to taking care of myself and having people not telling me what to do. It's up to you, they told me, so I stumbled around and here I am. Such is excess, hit-and-miss. There are always two sides of the coin, however. And you always wonder what's on the other side. But no matter how you were raised, no ones makes you yourself but yourself. It's never an excuse.
What if 'within' were external and everyone was on the outside after all. What if the soul were two kinds the host and the hunted. What if accidents were choices and not chances. What if no matter how hard you tried you couldn't remember what the words were. What if there were no such thing as difference
My what if's and my how come's are what I have right now. Mine and yours, whoever you are. Doesn't everyone own a handful of those? And if you feel that you don't, I'm extremely sorry for you. Why must you even come, don't come near me... why me, when I hurt everything I touch
It's all so beautiful from up here
Updates on photography section of my poorly updated webpage . More pics here soon, though.
It's Sunday and a million people are reading the paper.
Long Overdue
Some pictures of France, 3 months after! (Part 1)
How to survive returning to an empty room after seeing someone off at the airport departure area
I should be used to this by now. After all it's been two years. And yet saying goodbye at the airport is still as fresh as a new wound. Last night, amidst aimless chatter and throbbing music, the hands on my watch hit 11 and then there was a curious rush in my stomach, as if feuled by something powerful. Is it possible that I took off at the same time his plane left the runway? Extremely.
There are disconnections and reconnections all around me, my nerves are loosely knotted, eyes and stomach bright as if I swallowed too much sun. Engine. And fire. I feel exposed, even with too much space to hide.
So now what do I do; there's a broken record playing in my head and I can't keep still because eventually, as always, I'll be able to sober up from this drink I'm nursing, this Pale Pink Melancholy Lemonade with a hint of gin and spirits of October lightning over the beach, all my sentiments in a chilled glass of damp tropicalia, but goddamit, it's nice to spend time with someone you love, isn't it?
So now I wrestle with my Unreasonables. People say being a superwoman is being able to stand squarely on two feet, to be whole without another, to be strong without question. Do I fit the description? I'm not sure, because I can understand how the idea of holding hands while crossing streets can be as important as a pilgrimage to Mecca. It's my fault.
More later, when my downy clowny feeling subsides. As for the lengthy title, it's a question and questions generate (or rather, are supposed to generate) answers. I wanted to answer the question, honestly I did. But... I must confess that I don't know how.
Brilliance
The prayer should sit next to the wall, raising his right arm and folding his left leg, according to drawing A.
Without bias, strictly business, disregarding our relations, the author of this poem is in my Best Writers list of all time. Well, Julien wrote this way back last year, and each time I reread it I find a different meaning and conclusion. When what you read can do this to you, you had better start paying attention. I read this and go, "Fuck, what do I do now?" And that, I suppose, is the brilliance of poetry.
The future on my plate.
These days, I look around and everywhere I see people who are accomplished, driven, (almost) famous. It used to be a formula: Choose, then do. The choosing part's easy, but the follow-through isn't quite as smooth. Or am I the only one having trouble? Suddenly, everyone is either in an ad agency, designing webpages, or spending a lot of cash. Phrases such as "cost cutting" and "job order" are part of their vocabulary. They're in their cars during rush hour and they unwind on Friday evenings. They're marching down the path to success, while I'm smelling the flowers by the side of the road. They're riding cars, I'm pushing my bike. They're chewing and swallowing, I'm taste-testing a hundred different dishes at the Universal Buffet Table. While I admit loving the sweet, sour, bitter, rich and bland sensations on my tongue, at the same time, I'm wondering whether I'll recognise when and if the time will come to order a meal and finish it.
Forgetful Jones
While I don't really consider myself the World's Most Irresponsible Person, I've misplaced things that make me look like the World's Most Irresponsible Person.
I'm not talking about staggering amounts of money, or precious five-figure camera equipment. I'm talking about misplacing the little things you shouldn't normally lose.
An example is my forgetting to pick up my change in restaurants or shops. I was perpetually doing this throughout college, while eating somewhere in Katipunan or Greenhouse between classes. My friend, obviously baffled at my repeated blunder, exasperatedly snorted that maybe I was trying to mimic Holden Caulfield, my numero uno fictional hero, since I was indeed going through my Catcher in the Rye phase then, which involved quoting paragraphs and conversations from the book in verbatim.
But I honestly wasn't imitating Holden; I just forget to take my change after a meal that's all, and eventually Ben said I should start bringing my own lunch to school or stop eating out with him altogether, because he couldn't take my "money wasting habits" in light of the society's struggling economic condition (since he was capable of blowing things out of proportion), so I took special attention to this detail.
It was good training though, and I proudly announce that the habit has stuck, but another thing I keep losing are birthdays and phone numbers. I have a habit of writing a person's phone number on a loose sheet of paper, which I tuck into a book or newspaper, promising myself to rewrite it down on my phonebook later on. I never do. When I have my phone book, the paper is lost, and when I finally find the number, my goddam phone book is nowhere to be found. Birthdays, too, because I was never used to keeping track of dates much too often, yet similarly I've curbed this habit - but only after the embarrassing experience of forcing a friend to attend someone else's birthday party wtih me... when it was her birthday, too!
For this, it should be in the Constitution that birthday celebrants wear a party hat on their heads to remind people.
But worse, I've misplaced things that make me cringe each time I remember it, like forgetting to buy a friend's asthma medicine during my errand day (returning to find her unable to breathe, chokingly asking for her prescription, to my utter horror), or losing a roll of film of our China trip (all those memories, never to revived in its majestic glossy Kodak paper glory), or one whole bag of Christmas presents during whirlwind last-minute holiday hoopla panic shopping (in defense, how can you keep track of ten individual plastic bags in a Sea-of-People-Mall? You can't!). Or what about the book I owned for a record-breaking 11 hours, purchased at an Abu Dhabi bookstore and left behind in godforsaken Qatar, lost even before reaching my destination?
Je suis impossible.
Okay, you can accuse me of inattentiveness and carelessness, and maybe you're right to an extent, I won't deny it. But there are things which I personally feel are much more important than a date on the calendar or loose change, things I could never overlook or forget. I once gave a handful of grass to someone, because I remembered her saying that she missed walking outdoors barefoot ever since her amputation. One time, I gave my friend a parrot because it reminded me of his pet which he had recently lost (incidentally, he forgot to close window). Or I remember where I was exactly when I was extremely happy. And I can never forget the part of a song where a single note suddenly changes the whole mood of the evening.
You can make huge mistakes in little things, but don't you agree it's more meaningful to remember the little things that make a huge difference...
(But if your change is more than fifty pesos, you really shouldn't overlook this. In this day and age, fifty pesos is still fifty pesos)
Los Paranoias (comeon, enjoy us)
So the verdict: My dearest Astroboy (at least, the rare French Astroboy version) shall once more transform his feet into rockets, cross-continenting it to my rainy overcast October sky.
Being in the same time zone is of major significance, you people who take time zones for granted.
Suddenly, the minutes, seconds and hours on the clock play evil tricks. The seconds add an additional 50 seconds to their supposed-one minute, just to spite me.
And the hours are worse because they decide that one hour is equivalent to 179 minutes.
But the days... the days are plain cruel because they make a day feel like two.
What's 'paranoid'? I am not.
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