To Be A Tree

EXIT-ROW SEATING.

December 15th 2003

Ergh, flying-- not always the most pleasant thing really, not when you have 22 hours of it and not unless you have the coveted exit row seat. I love exit-row seating, sure you have to be "responsible" for helping out "in case" of an emergency. But would it even help to open an exit door midway through crashing into a mountain? I don't know. As much as I don't understand seating a person with crutches near an emergency exit door for the legroom. Why, so he can hobble out first?

Ticketboy at JFK gave me a strange look when I asked for Upper Deck, Exit Row Seating, as if i was asking him for a first class upgrade on my student-fare ticket. "Those things are booked in advance." he says. "They're a bit more expensive." I am about to argue with him, knowing full well that exit rows are supposed to go to "competent-looking, calm-in-the-midst of crisis people" (which, ok i admittedly didn't come close to looking since I had spent all night packing-- and the day before that recovering from a smashing party, but come on, didn't I charm him enough?). So i changed tactics asking if i could have an aisle seat instead, he promptly gave me a seat near the rear-- middle row aisle-seat of course. I wasn't even good enough for one nearer a window.

The 14 hours of New York- Narita was bearable. I collapsed the minute I hit the seat. 24 hours of no sleep can really take its toll, and woke up to an assortment of pretty rocking movies. I finally got to see Whale Rider (woohoo! New Zealand, here I come!) and Pirates of the Carribean, fell asleep again to Angelina Jolie kicking ass in Tomb Raider 2 (that has to be her worst movie yet.). Uptown Girlswas surprisingly entertaining, and the Lion King a blast from the past. I had "In the Jungle" running through my head the whole 5 seconds i watched it. Seems to be running theme song in Lit (yes, that awesome dive on 2nd ave. and 5th) these days.

The Narita stop-over is always a disaster. That airport seriously needs a new system. There are always millions and millions of people in line at the security checks-- hand-carry luggage through machine, jacket off, passport and ticket shown, trying to maneuver all this while jet-lagged and grumpy is seriously next to impossible. two kids flying in from Dallas to god-knows-where were behind me.

"man, it's 2 am back in Dallas now-- it's 5 pm here" insert beavis and butthead laugh here

"weird." uh huh uh huh uh huh

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Exit Seat! Woohoo! I woke up an hour after boarding my Japan-Manila flight to find us still on the runway. What the flying fuck? Delayed flights suck.

I woke up again to ask if we had finally taken off-- the guy beside me kindly informs me we that we had been in the air for at least an hour now. That was good to know.

Flight attendant nudges me awake to ask if i ever wanted to eat. Turns out my fifth dinner had been served about an hour ago and she didn't want me going hungry. how nice-- the chicken and rice wasn't too nice though.

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I am flying over the Philippines in a short Manila to Cebu flight and I luckily have an exit row seat (two out of 3 ain't bad!). The view out the window is as amazing as the legroom and for once, i'm comfortable.. Yep, the snack food is disgusting and the coffee too too sweet, but I got my headphones on listening to Supergrass "Pumping on Your Stereo" and all is good (even if it is 2:22am, PHT and I haven't had an ounce of serious sleep). the guy next to me was an annoying fuck though--- i had put my messenger bag in the overhead compartment when he comes over, takes my bag out and asks me if its alright if he sets my bag atop his. he then proceeds to try to savagely stuff my bag in the tiny space he had left for after his stupid fat bag took up all the room-- and my powerbook was in there! Ass. And then the flight attendant gives me shit for trying to put my bag under the seat in front of me.

"You're in an exit row, we can"t have that" (oh fuck)
"Why don't you try to put it up there?" the ass beside me butts in.
"I have my computer in here. and. it. wont. fit."

the nice flight attendant lets me keep it under the seat. the ass gets a loaded dagger look from me. he shrugs and goes to sleep.

ENTER BANGKOK.

December 17th 2003

I finally got home on December 17th at around 3am Philippine time after having left New York at 12 noon on the 15th, a time warp and a half ago. so I had about a good 8 hours before trucking back to the airport for another 4 hours of flying to Bangkok to meet the 'rents.

My grumpy brother had picked me up from the airport, tossed my backpack into the car and handed me my airline tickets for 8 hours later. it was very Alias-esque, only instead of a hunky agent Vaughn, i had my pesky younger brother doing the drop-off.

I got home-- checked email, showered and then stayed awake the rest of the 8 hours scanning cable tv channels (see what having no cable can do to you?).

My flight to Bangkok was via Hong Kong so I had 2 hours to kill there before boarding. My Cebu - Hong Kong flight was predictably delayed, or maybe it was just my being up for how many days straight that warped my time table for me. The two Hong Kong airport hours were spent scanning bookshelves at Watson's. I ended up getting into a conversation with a German backpacker on his way to Bangkok too. It seems Bangkok is to Germans as Rio is to French (beat that analogy, SATs! ) He was on his way south of Thailand to visit a friend and was worried about how he would make it to the train station after getting to Bangkok at 10 pm. He seemed overwhelmed, poor boy, and kept commenting on how calm I was considering I was alone. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was more a sleep-deprived haze then anything.

I saw him again at the custom's line in Bangkok. I had slept through the entire flight and had missed out on those damn ticket thingies (the cards you hand over to immigration) causing me to double back-- line up and ask for it feigning stupidity and then line up again to hand it over, filled. Backpacker boy caught up with me on my doubling back, all excited saying he had found someone to share a cab with to the train station . I wished him luck and was off to haggle with a taxi myself to bring me to Forum Park Hotel, where the 'rents were.

ENTER THE PARENTS.

December 18th- 21st 2003

I hadn't seen the 'rents for a whole year now, and immediately as I enter their hotel room, I'm 14 again. Ah, It's good to be 14. I get to be a baby for a bit-- no responsibility, decisions to make or money to spend. Why was it I moved out again?

My mother and father were basically in Thailand for work, I had just swung by to be a pest and take advantage of a free hotel room. Most of the day I had to myself, so i took advantage of the Thai train system and took the Mochit line as far as it would go. It ended with the huge huge Mochit market where everything from chickens to lamps were being sold. There was a shoe repair stall that bought and redesigned old shoes and I fell in love with a few second hand pairs, but as luck would have it , it seems the largest thai size for shoes is normally a 39 (an 8) and I was unfortunately a bit over (being a 40-42). I felt like Cinderella's step-sister. damn. I ended up buying my token christmas presents in the market, bulk buys of course-- always cheaper and makes haggling easier.

On my third day there, the 'rents decided we should all go out on a day trip together, so Papa and I went through the list of travel agents to get us the cheapest trip out to Ayuthaya (the ruins of an old Thai capital sacked by the Burmese). It was one of those bus tours with an english-speaking guide and you can't really expect too much from one of those.

We were the second hotel pick-up, inside the van was already a sleepy-looking italian boy. The van did the hotel rounds, at one point stopping by the ritzy Oriental Hotel. A Ben Kingsley-looking gentleman was standing in front with a young girl I assume was his daughter. As the van pulled in, he kisses her on the cheek and leads her towards the van. My father in the middle of all this and just as the girl gets in the van elbows me in the rib, "Hala, Bombay!" he says loudly ( which roughly translates into, "hey, she's indian!"). I cringe.

My father tends to point out the obvious in the most malicious way sometimes, oblivious to how offending he sometimes sounds. My mom noticing my obvious discomfort, burst out laughing. "Looks like you've offended your New Yorker" she says to him in Cebuano and they laugh some more. God, parents-- how can you be so like them and yet so unlike them?

THE HOMELAND.

It's wonderful to be back in the Philippines again. Hot hot hot as ever, I loves it.

Don't you find it funny walking into a room that you left years ago? I had gone away for college so was never really home except for long vacations and holidays and the sort ( so i guess at regular 6 month intervals) and I remember always fixing my room a certain way before i left and then coming home 6 months later only to redo it again. It was a little obsessive-compulsive twitch i never really got over-- it's the Martha Stewart in me.

So here i was walking into a room i had left 3 1/2 years ago, to live in it once more. Visits don't count-- you don't inhabit a room when visit, you just use it. Habitation requires a lot more of you left as traces in corners, in bookshelves and desktops. I had come home to inhabit once more and was left with a room that was a shell of me. It was trippy to go through drawers and shelves and see what I had chosen to leave behind or discard, what I had judged not part of a New York me. And to see the scanty possessions I had brought with me (what i could stuff into a backpack and had passed the "is it really necessary?" test) next to my old stuff was just too funny, the contrast so obvious it's a fictionist's (where subtlety is often preferred) nightmare. Yes I've grown up, but grown up so predictably, my 20 year old self may have been clairvoyant.

HOMELAND HOLIDAYS.

Ay, the Yultide Season. It mostly means last-minute shopping for everyone (and i mean everyone) in the household. My mother wouldn't be in for Christmas, she got called off to do last minute paperwork in the good US of A (we managed to do a little switcha-roo), so the shopping fell on me and baby brother Bill. I have to say we got it down. We were the most efficient shopping machine you had ever seen, budgeting, navigating cashier lines and of course picking out the gifts. I'd rate us a 10 out of 10.

New Years was spent with my little cousins at my uncle's place up in the hills (so a bit more gun-powder free than anticipated) watching the little daredevils, aged 12-2, run around with flares and lighting firworks (the kind that fly, like flares, so no triangles or anything close to bomb-like, though almost as loud). It was a good vantage point for the firecracker extravaganza the whole city breaks into at the drop of midnight.

It was fun. I felt old. I got sick. I now have the flu. Some new year's. Good food of course, though i could barely taste above the dust-induced cold I had started to develop.

POST HOLIDAY BLUES.

I must have lost approximately 5 pounds from sniffling. I have the fucking FLU. goddamit. It's a day after New Year's and I'm in bed, sniffling. Happy New Years to me-- and to think I took a flu shot just before I left New York. Could it be the Philippine flu is a lot more resilient?

The SARS warning in the back of my head is flashing bright red. I could very well have SARS-- didn't i just come from Bangkok via HONGKONG (tingningninginging <-- sound of bell ringing in head) a few weeks ago?

fucking flu, making me delirious.

FERRY RIDE.

It seems almost strange when you end up friends with strangers you meet in the most uncommon circumstances. I was stuck taking the ferry, Monday night instead of Sunday as planned, prepped and ready for 24 hours of speaking to no one and amusing myself with music and a book, not too bad, kind of anti-social and lonely, but what the hell.

So I start off the long ride by going up to the deck and taking shots of the port-- forklifts, cargo containers, huge baskets of fruit and the like-- so exciting. I've manage to get past the gate that closes of the life rafts from the main deck when out from behind a life raft pops a blonde head. The blonde head's name is Daniel, a Canadian teaching english in Taiwan off for a short 15 day Philippine holiday and the gangly 19-year-old with him is Rob, another ESL teacher both were from Vancouver.

Dan kept me amused with stories of his kids, there was Jason whom he had the honor of renaming "Sebastian", and little Michael Ho with the overbearing mother who tied his shoelaces for him. Rob, straight out of high school was teaching a class barely younger than he was and apparently getting it on with a 32 year old with and 8 year old boy. Such characters, these two. Dan was the more deliberate one, the planner and control freak (probably by default) and Rob all hyper and all over the place.

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Break of Dawn is now. It's 5:45 am, and I'm still on TransAsia Malaysia bound for Cebu. By God I'm awake! I'm dying without my coffee, but i'm awake. It's getting brighter but still no sunrise. Where the fuck is my sunrise? Come on, how rare is it that i'm actually up before the break of dawn (willingly)? I should get props! Where the hell is my fucking reward?

There's a pictorial session going on behind me. A group of giggly high school girls are snapping pictures on the deck. They could be part of the whole big field trip taking place from Aklan to Cebu; 100 Hotel and Restaurant Management students with 2 teachers. I would hate to be the teachers.

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8:00am. Touchdown, the boat has docked. I extended Cebu hospitality to the boys GlobalFreeloader-style. Now they're at my house chowing down on corned-beef and unbelievably grateful for the use of a decent bathroom. Haha, it's sweet how happy they are to be clean. Rob had the biggest grin-- "I can run my fingers through my hair!". Nice, and he wondered why he wasn't scoring.

MALAPASCUA BREAKDOWN

Donna and I road trip it to Malapascua (our cheap beach getaway) and, of course being two girls on a road trip, have a flat tire as we reach the tip of Cebu (Bogo). We of course attempt to change the tire ourselves, making a spectacle in the middle of no-where town. One of Donna's tire knobs turned out to have been smoothed to the quick, leaving the jack with nothing to latch onto and her spare tire needed air (and had a small nail lodged into it). Wonderful. Luckily, I had an uncle who lived nearby and after a frantic/apologetic/grateful call, he came over to save our asses.

Changing the tire took 7 hours and 18 minutes. Not only did the spare have to patched up, the knob in question had to be manually hacked of the screw and changed completely. We ended up spending the night in Maya, the port-town we would have taken the ferry from to Malapascua and catching the 8:30 am boat to the island.

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We've been sitting in the ferry for about 30 minutes waiting for the damn thing to leave, it's already half-full and still we wait. This strange group of kids all decked out in sunglasses , scarves and funky hats (one in a LEATHER jacket) have joined us. Donna and I exchange looks-- it's 40 fucking degrees, we're right above the equator in sweltering tropical heat-- WTF are you doing in a jacket, on a boat, going to an island? Turns out they were a show band heading to Malapascua to play on the islands only bar for the weekend. Oh shit. There was no escaping the Intenstiy 8 band! They were on 2 nights in a row at the only place that served alcohol after 8pm, parading in the tackiest show costumes (read a bikini with thigh-high boots, a net dress with a huge flower/plant choker that looked like it was growing out of her neck-- more like a second head). We had the rare luck of riding the ferry back to the mainland with them too. Yeehaa!

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diving diving diving! woohoo! Met more Canadian kids who teach English in Taiwan, and go diving with them. They recently got licensed in Moalboal (where i did too!) and now Werner (german dive instructor extraordinaire) was taking us all to see thresher sharks. How exciting! Only, true to almost all Philippine dive shops where the gear you rent is old and dodgy, one of the Canadian's tank ran out of air while his gauge still read 30 bar. A calm Werner gave him his octopus (spare breathing regulator) and carried on. I had to do the same (share my air) with the other girl and so my first real underwater "emergency procedure" took place. I deserve a fucking medal.

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Donna and I are mango shake addicts. We have it during every meal and every time in between. One of our Mango shake breaks had us taking to Hans, a Dutch guy from Holland with a Filipino wife and the cutest, most adorable little girl, Michaela who was two and already a heartbreaker. He told us about how he met his wife in Palawan, backpacking through and staying at the lodge where she worked. And how a year of persistent postcards from her and a lot of running away from him, finally convinced him that she was the one. It was a hilarious story, the way he told it. His mother was convinced he was about to marry an "evil" Asian like his friend who had married one he met on the internet, but all worked out well and now they have Michaela who dances the otso-otso to a tee.

SKIPPING THE TIMELINE.

Sydney, New South Wales Australia
February 5, 2004

I was a nervous wreck lying to OzieLand. I've never been to a place without a clear itinerary before. All I knew was that I was heading over there, visiting a few friends, good friends, and then what? I didn't know, i really didn't. But here was the ticket in my hand, return flight was April 5th 2004 and that was that-- two whole fucking months.

Sydney was the first stop to see Leyda and Rob, my favoritest couple ever. These two rocked the hizzouze--- they were transplants, like myself and had only moved here a year before. Leyda vowed I would fall in love with Sydney (fall in love in Sydney is more her modus operandi, but hey, who was I to tell her otherwise). Leyda I have known for years-- since first grade when we were still picking our noses and crying over homework. Oh my how we've grown.

After landing in Sydney International, I made my way to the information counter and pointed to the address they had given me:

"How do I get here?" I ask the lady behind the desk
"Take the train to Circular Quay and then take the Ferry from the fourth platform and then a bus." came the longwinded answer. She got a blank stare in return.
"Uh, can you tell me how to pronounce the address so I can take a cab?" (108/2 Cremorne)
"Sure" she says "it's cree-moyne".
"What?"
"CREE-MOYNE! ", Why do I get the distinct feeling I've landed in Brooklyn?

So off I go to the taxi stand and doing what all tourists are bound to do, hand the driver the written address to Leyda's. He nods in understanding and off we go.

Leyda is the bestest tourguide evar! The minute I got in, she wasted no time in whisking me away to tour the city. Sydney Opera House to your right, Harbour Bridge to your left, Circular Quay is where we're at and this is the QVB (Queen Victoria Building), off to Bondi Beach we go. wooohoo! I got all my touristy stuff done in a day!

The rest of the week was a slower introduction to the City's way of life. Riding buses and ferries and trains from one port enclave to another, everywhere I went was beautiful. Sydney felt like a city that had figured itself out, where there was a place for everything and everything had it's place. No unnecessary spillage anywhere, no sweeping under rugs, there it was , all clean and tidy in an uber-sparkling wrapper. I can see why it fascinates, why it feels proper. But then again I am a haphazard visitor used to gritty streets and things that don't fit quite right--- where there is at least a a few a layers of wallpaper to everything and plumbing doesn't flush the way it's supposed to. I think it's the mis-fitting that leaves room for ingenuity and the quirks all start to emerge.

TV FANS UNITE!

Melbourne, Victoria Australia
February 11, 2004

I'm flying into Melbourne in an hour, but right now watching a reality TV show called the HotHouse on channel 10 (one of Australia's 4 channels) in the pre-departure lounge. It involves a set of 14 couples building a 2 million dollar house in Queensland somewhere only to have one couple win it in the end. It's a bit mean, and if I were one of the contestants, i'd booby trap the place for the future winners (just in case it wasn't me). It seems a fad Down Undah, all these reality shows that involve building something, The HotHouse, My Restaurant Rules (which has couples from every state trying to build a restaurant and launching it on a measly budget to be judged in the end, winner keeps restaurant), The Resort (a cross of Paris Hilton's "Simple Life" oblivion coupled with a "Survivor" setting. It's basically people thrown on an island thinking it was the vacation getaway of a lifetime, only to find out that they need to build the resort in a month. tragic, huh?). I find this, as compared to the American obsession for finding love on TV (i.e. The Bachelor/ette, Average Joe, Joe Millionaire and whatever else Fox [wait, isn't Rupert Murdoch Australian?] has under it's sleeve for poor loveless America), quite fascinating. Talk about an insight into Culture. Alright, maybe I generalize, but there is something there-- admit it! I on the other hand am getting hooked on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy which airs on local channels here. Woohoo, three snaps for Aussie TV!

I'm finding I quite like Melbourne. It's big, yes, a bit unmanageable for the poor unacquainted tourist, but I like it's funky little feel. It's a lot more street than Sydney, I'm finding. I was told by my friends of good conscience (who I'm staying with in North Coburg) that the best way to get from their place to the city City is to take the tram and feign stupidity when asked by a your-chances-of -one- getting-on-board-are-close-to-nil inspector for a ticket. "Oh we shouldn't have told you you need a ticket then, it would have been more believable..." , the fuckers.

So the tram is the way to go. It take about 40 minutes from their neighborhood into the city City and I see the street go from quaint italian bakeries and Falafel shops to tall buildings and busy sidewalks, Melbourne University is along the way and a ton of Asian students (from all over it seems-- Japanese, Korean, Singaporean, Chinese) always get on and then off again. I haven't lost so far which is a good thing. Streets are laid out in a grid and named after monarchy, well most of the time, Queen St. next to Elizabeth St. then, King St., William St., Bourke St., Little Bourke St., it's hard to get lost when you know what street comes next-- makes sense so far.