Sunday, May 28, 2017

Rose at 5:30 AM for a 7:30 AM pick-up. One of my worst nightmares is waking up on the day of a flight and not having packed a single item. That is why I pack for a trip two weeks in advance, and off a carefully constructed checklist, except for three small items. I pack those three upon waking. The act of packing them functions makes me scan my subconscious for anything else I could have missed that was not on my checklist.

The granddaughters are still in their bedrooms on the upper floor. Aubrey is attending a friend's birthday party to be held at Enchanted Kingdom in Santa Rosa, Laguna today.

The car arrives 7:15 AM. The driver assists me with my four pieces of luggage. On the way to the airport one of my spirit guides tells me to leave all of my thoughts of Cubao behind and go into workshop mode. My flight is scheduled at 2:15 PM, meaning an 11:15 AM check-in, but I asked my sister Alice to send me the car 8:30 AM to get to the airport 10:00 AM. The driver, fearing the devils' traffic and believing my flight to be at 10:00 AM, advises me that I should be picked up 7:30 AM, and I make no objection.

Now I am in the waiting lounge of Terminal 3 three hours before my actual flight. I pay my travel tax now rather than wait until after I check in.

It is now 8:10 AM and I am sitting in a chair in the waiting lounge beside two young Hindu men who marked their foreheads with red-orange henna. They are pre-med students at Bicol University off to a one-month vacation in India. I mull over yet another nightmare, in which I am on campus and late for classes, having missed all other classes the entire semester, and having to take a final exam,. It is usually a History exam, because I have often been called upon by my psyche to review my past lifetimes and the lessons therein.

The young men are going to Mumbai via Kuala Lumpur. I converse with one, whose name is Jaydeep, about Hindu gods and goddesses. His father owns a cloth factory in Mumbai, and I am so tempted to ask him for samples in his cell phone, considering that he has shown me almost everything else in his photo albums. Much later I meet the two of them looking distraught in the lobby after a failed check-in. Their baggage is 9 kg overweight, they have no cash other than what they need to pay their exit fee, and Jaydeep's ATM card is not accepted anywhere in the airport. I help them at the counter of their airline because they actually speak very little English. As it turns out Jaydeep's card is a Mastercard extension card in Jaydeep's father's name.