Up,up and away

K's Sing Log Day 1- Getting There

I booked Tiger Airways going to Singapore and it was my first time to board via DMIA airport in Clark. The drive to the airport was a short one. We left the house around 12 noon and we were there before 1pm. It’s a good thing the directions to the airport were quite clear and manageable. When I arrived, so many people were already there in queue waiting for the 2pm check-in time.

Vince was overly excited going to the airport. As you may know, he’s already dreaming of becoming a pilot, and naturally he just loves seeing airplanes. He brought binoculars with him, and we went strolling around taking pictures. As a truly sociable kid, it took him minutes to befriend a toddler eyeing his binoculars and later I saw him smiling for the camera with his new friend, just enjoying the view. He hasn’t realized yet that I was leaving, although he knew we were going to the airport. It’s been a month and a half since I stayed at home for good and we have bonded quite fully over the days. At first, he couldn’t believe I was home. He would wake up in the morning and knock on my room just to check that I was there. I rarely went home to Pampanga and mostly he would go to Subic to visit me so it was entirely rewarding to see me daily and do our basic routine.
 

Our basic routine was to wake up, have breakfast and talk. We spend 1 hour on breakfast daily and I listened to all his stories. On certain good mornings, I taught him how to make pancakes. I was his hero after a time because I made the pancakes symmetrically round and flat and just the right shade of brown. I always got his most elusive two-thumbs up. We allocated an hour for him to practice his handwriting. Apparently he inherited the poor penmanship from our family and was not trying to improve on it. The other one hour is for reading. I’d get him to pick one book and I would let him read it to me aloud. I’d explain the bits and pieces to him and I’d help me read the big words he can’t pronounce yet. That was our daily routine. I had to post a schedule on the ref just to remind him that time was important and that we would accomplish certain tasks daily. I think he’ll always remember me for that.

I am not a person who cries easily. And given that airport scenes are generally sad and disheartening, I worked my way not to turn it into the melodrama my mom always had pre-conceived.  I just gave my mom and brother each a hug goodbye and smiled. But when it was Vince’s turn, he was a lot hesitant. I saw a look of betrayal on his face and he was saying to my mom, “how could you not have brought my passport so now I can’t join Tita?”. He wanted to go home soon, bring his passport. He hasn’t realized yet that I’ll be gone for awhile. Maybe he’ll understand the days after. He is beginning to hate airports because of us leaving. First his mom, and then the other Tita. But I guess he’s going to figure out that airports either mean one of two things. Saying goodbye or welcoming someone back. He hasn’t welcomed anyone back yet, so I wish for the day he’ll know that there is the brighter side of going to airports. I will surely miss him.

 Among other things I will surely miss are my bed, my newly-painted yellow bedroom and Porty. It felt a bit lonely saying goodbye to those things for awhile. But I was overly anxious and raring to go anyway.

And true to form, I got into a bit more of my self-introspection having learned after I checked-in that the flight was delayed for 2 hours. WTF?? I said, my first flight out and it’s delayed? Apparently the plane got stranded in Macau due to unexpected weather and that was the same plane bringing us to Singapore. 2 hours later, whiling away the time on my laptop, I was glad they had wifi and food. There were nearly 200 passengers on that flight and every minute, everyone grew more impatient.

The funny thing was when the plane came in, the transition was overly fast. You got grounds crew getting the luggage from the hold, loading and unloading simultaneously. People exiting a plane, and people entering the plane without a minute lost. And in about 20 minutes, the plane was ready to get off again. I could see the harassed and tired faces of the flight crew and I wished and prayed that they were going to do a good job in spite of a hurried transition.
I was surprised it was an Airbus A320 as I was expecting a smaller aircraft. The flight was full, which is odd because it was Friday the 13th, and I guess people would have been more superstitious.

As my luck would have it, I shared my row with 2 foreigners, 2 Aussies who chatted all throughout the three and a half hour flight. I couldn’t sleep with having to overhear their chitchat, which at one point was funny and interesting, until the point they turned into literally scum bags ho were desperately after the FA’s. One Aussie guy was desperately attracted to a Pinay flight attendant, tall with big eyes which he calls “tiger eyes” and as soon as he saw her, he kept doing everything to get her attention He’d order drinks and ice and magazines and what-have-you’s all the time so she kept coming to our seat. I was sorry for her having to go through with that. Midway on the flight he went up to the back of the plane to were they were and chatted them up. The other F.A. was a skinny not-so-tall Singaporean who got the eye of the other Aussie. I can say that after that experience, my disgust in neanderthal habits of men in lust was re-affirmed. I was proud to never have to deal with that kind of emotional retardation. Who would in fact get drunk on a plane and hit on flight attendants? And just like that, I re-affirmed my moron magnet status, where I believe I always sit next to the most obnoxious people in public places. I wanted to give them a piece of my mind, having heard them in graphic detail, talk about certain physical assets of the FAs. I wanted to talk to the FAs just to give them a heads-up because I always thought that women ought to be treated with respect. But I didn’t do it after much contemplation, as I didn’t want to be involved, and wouldn’t want to be my first flight to Singapore be about me fighting with morons. So I just put my head back and got a little sleep when they left to chat with the FAs, who btw, were not that good-looking.

 
I got down the plane and noticed that the climate was not unlike Manila. Damp, humid and hot just like when we left. The difference I suppose is the clear skyline, and the smog-free air. My friend was waiting for me at the terminal. Odd thing was that the Immigration booth took seconds, I just smiled and the Officer didn’t ask me anything and instantly stamped a 30-day tourist pass on my passport. I saw that there was hardly any security at the airport. They didn’t even inspect the luggage, and there was just one glass exit door separating the passengers from the people who went to get them. I remembered the nasty security BS we have to go through back at home; I didn’t realize it would be that less difficult elsewhere. It’s definitely a thing I’m going to appreciate.

We arrived at 10 pm and the airport was like a mall in itself. Got my first dinner at Burger King and then we rode the free shuttle to the other terminal that was connected to the MRT. The MRT looked very efficient and convenient. My friend toured me around a bit and showed me how note to get lost in stations. We skipped to 2 MRT trains and 1 LRT train, which were all gracefully connected and timed and we walked further about 2 blocks home. Our room was in a 5^th floor of an HDB (high-rise condo-type building), which literally make up a whole bulk of Singapore. It felt like everyone lived in a box in a sort of neat beehive. I thought to myself that it was interesting enough, and I was surely going to like the place.