TOPAZ HORIZON

OMG. I saw this video in The BagHag and I just laughed my head off silly. Because I know exactly how this poor woman feels!


On our honeymoon in London last year, Vince and I decided to go to the National Gallery after checking out of our hotel at noon. Our flight was at 6 PM. Surely, 2 hours in a museum can't hurt. Oh, boy, did it hurt! First of all, 2 hours are not enough in a museum as breathtaking as the National Gallery. So of course, we lingered. Still, Heathrow was just a 30-minute train ride away. Unfortunately, the tube had so many problems on that particular day and we were stuck underground between stations for quite a while. So basically it took us some frikkin' 2 hours and 50 minutes to get from Kings Cross to Heathrow.

We ran and ran and ran with our luggage and shopping. We got to the gate 5 minutes after it closed. I begged, "Please let us through. It's just 5 minutes. Please. We want to go home." I did not cry. In fact, I was so upset I was whispering because I felt if I raised my voice just a bit, it would escalate to screaming fury (like the woman in the video).


Of course Cathay Pacific refused, politely but firmly. We stayed at the check-in counter for the rest of the evening, waiting to be chance passengers but all flights to Manila were fully booked. There was another girl who also missed her flight, and she was sobbing so much I wanted to hug her. Anyway, we then decided to fly to Hong Kong, stay there for a night then try to get a flight from there to Manila. No luck.

I tell you, dear readers, getting left behind by your plane is one of the worst things that can happen to you! Vince and I spent the night at Heathrow hoping airports offered free hotel rooms for unfortunate people like us (tip: stay at the arrivals section--it's warm there and the convenience shops are open all night). Good thing we had the Sony PSP to keep us sane. We watched episodes of Lost (and we commiserated with the characters!), listened to music, played games and read comic books all on the PSP. I also finished reading The Kite Runner, which made me sadder.

We were finally able to book a flight first thing in the morning and as we were having lunch, Vince tried to cheer me up: "As soon as we get home, we'll eat tinolang manok and sinigang and adobo with fried garlic rice..." He trailed off because by then I had started bawling. I wailed, "I want to go home! I want to go home!"

Haha, we joke about it now but I swear upon the Gucci bag I just won that I will forever check in early! No more missed flights ever!


*to my non-Filipino readers, tinolang manok is chicken stewed with chili leaves, sayote/green papaya and ginger; sinigang is a sour soup of pork/fish/prawn and vegetables; adobo is pork/chicken simmered to fall-apart tenderness in garlic, vinegar and soy sauce. Oh my, I got hungry...