June 12, 2006

  • Welcome back to America. It hasn't yet dawned on me that I just flew to the Philippines and back in 48 hours. I still feel pretty super. What can I say? Superman was born to fly.


    Lola is here now, and I hope I can help make her as comfortable as possible. Ever since my first failure to keep her happy in America, this is a second chance. We often don't get second chances. I plan to make the most of it.


    The trip, however, wasn't easy. Once I arrived in Manila, I just hung out in the area, doing some shopping and taking in the sites. It was weird being all alone. I didn't say a word, due to my poor Tagalog skills. Once my lola arrived in Manila, and we went to check in, I found out that she wasn't booked on the plane. The travel agent here in Sacramento said that she was booked on the plane and that I would just have to pay the $25.00 penalty. My stress levels shot up at that point. I was thinking that we were stranded in Manila. Fortunately, there were seats on the plane and we could get her on. However, I had to run over to another building at the ticketing office to get it all done and pay the penalty. Then I returned to the line to get checked in.


    Then, when we were going through the last of the three sets of x-ray machines, which are overkill, in my opinion, lola's cane ended up hitting the glass in the machine and breaking it. So we went around and around with people taking reports and trying to point the blame at the guy that was pushing my lola's wheelchair. I wrote a statement saying I think one of the individuals monitoring the machine should've seen the placement of the cane. The guy was helping lola. That's his primary goal. In any case, we finally got that all taken care of and I finally boarded the plane.


    Of course, I was scared for my lola on the plane as well. People die from blood clots developing on planes, so I stayed up the whole flight to make sure that she was responsive.


    All in all, it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle.