I was dreaming of walking a crowded street feeling as though somebody was watching me with eyes so unnerving. This is not the start of a suspense novel but rather my first day on embarking on a new life-altering adventure. Was it an omen that I started this particular adventure with a nightmare? God, I really hope not.
I then woke up to the tune of “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”. I then realized that it was my ring tone. I woke up 45 minutes late missing 4 separate alarm cues, 3 missed calls and 5 text messages. I was thinking, the nightmare has began. I got myself ready to leave for the airport when I realized, I haven’t printed my ticket! I had to go out and look for an internet shop, then wait 20 more minutes for the newly opened shop to boot up their sytem. Well when it was over I left for the airport.
The taxi ride was uneventful. Later on I would realize that this would be one of the highlights of my day.
Checking in was a blast. If you call waiting 45 minutes because the counter boy was so determined to be slow, only to be later revealed that apparently it was his first day on the job. And for the icing on the cake, my luggage was 17 kilos excess (for those who don’t know, the limit on my flight is only 15 kilos; my excess was even larger than the limit!). I had to pay for it which took another 30 minutes of lining up for the cashier who counted your change by brandishing it in the air before putting each bill on your hand.
The flight was literally the worst of my life. The auxillary power failed (causing total power outage inside the plane for 12 minutes) 2 minutes into the taxi sequence. When the ground crew powered us up, several flights were already ahead of us and we ended up being delayed by 42 minutes. Then there’s the turbulence, which we hit 19 minutes into the flight. By the 30th minute, all we can see outside the windows are clouds all around us (talk about a view!). And the cherry – the pilot missed his approach at landing twice before he landed us with all but 2 meters of runway to spare.
The land trip started out real nice especially with the nice scenic San Juanico Bridge passage. But as soon as we hit Samar, bam – rain pelted us. The trip took 4 hours over roads which could give the moon rover some difficult mechanical problems. There weren’t potholes, they were merely a series of shallow wading pools (sarcasm alert!) filled with muddy water.
We then arrived at my final destination, Borongan Doctors Hospital in Eastern Samar. This is where my supposedly year-long adventure would commence. Over-all it was a nice place with a touch of rural commercialness and chic to picque my interest and my curiosity. Just hoping this curiosity wouldnot kill my cat.
Then I heard the dreaded series of nothings: NO coffeehouse,NO bookstore, NO spa, NO Sun broadband signal, NO videoke, NO disco, NO 24-hour convenience store and NO ammonia-free parlor. I would have acknowledged the nightmare becoming real. But, I don’t know whether it is the tiredness or the underwhelming sense of interest that convinced me otherwise. I just realized that true happiness is not the absence of conflict or the presence of luxury, but the ability to cope with the situation at hand. So I decided that the only way to be happy is to cope with what I am given.
So the comedy is, I ended the day happy despite being full of errors left and right. This might not be the nightmare, I was afraid of afterall.
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