A Northerner in the South

By Emmanuelle

Our domestic airport security was not meticulous enough. This writer had unintentionally neglected to tuck a pair of sharp, stainless surgical scissors into her sole baggage, a backpack, that had already been previously checked in. The scissors escaped notice of the x-ray eye and the inspector’s expert fingers.  It was innocently lying at the bottom of a katsa shoulder bag, without zippers, together with passport, wallet, ticket, etc. Though, if the contents of the bag were poured out unto a tray, the scissors would have been exposed, blades winking naughtily.

If she were a terrorist, which she were not, this writer would have used the scissors to threaten a stewardess’ neck to obey her every whim and wish. Like serve the passengers honest-to-goodness fruit shakes, not those tepid, plastic-bottled juices. Like open the pilots’ cabin and be properly introduced to the pilots’ names and faces, not only to their family names as announced on the plane speakers. So many lives on their hands, and they remain faceless and first nameless from flight beginning to end? Shamelessly bad manners.
        

And the lengthy delays! Hours! The usual excuse – the plane had been inexplicably delayed. Hey, you mean one gets to take a TIRED plane? How many times had it flown here to there to here to there TODAY? Haven’t they heard about mental and metal fatigues?

After paying a hefty terminal fee for services undefined, one plods shoeless, watchless, beltless, CP-less down a partially-carpeted path through an electronic arch. Do not make any bomb joke, or you get arrested. Not a sound from the arch? Hurray! You are harmless, you are safe.

You are thirsty, you swallow that saliva. A ten-peso bottled water becomes forty-five, a twenty-peso sugar-free soda becomes forty-five. Just because one went through that arch?  Talk about a real, live captive market. 

You do not trust the domestic flights? Take the boat to Mindanao, a more-than-forty-eight-hours ordeal, including various harbor stop-over as you journey from north to south. Unless you were one of those poetic fellows who see significant meanings in every rise-and-fall of huge, blue waves. And sharks prancing in schools.

Anyway, this writer landed in Cagayan de Oro just a few days short of the Unity Party, thank heaven. The airport was conveniently situated just at the flattened top of a broad hill. Try landing on one as you blindly come out of thick clouds clustered like huge, fat families of teddy bears. Your heart drops down to your feet; you pick it up and pump it anew as soon as the plane lands thud on the ground.

You cruise down a wide highway from the airport to the city. It brings to mind Baguio, Tagaytay, or Antipolo. Cool and foggy. Though here, trees and grass are thicker, greener.

All throughout this writer’s stay, one observation remains dear to mind. Everything seems to appear clear and clean. This impression stayed up to the time of writing. Not only was the air cleaner. There was order. The old setting seemed to have blended in with the new, or the former have given way to the latter in patiently paternal air.

One drives through spacious commercial lanes reminiscent of Alabang or Ayala to come out in the more congested areas of Makati or Cubao, then turns a corner to the nightlife of Fort Boni. And there is Baywalk too, and the closed Session-in-Bloom.    

Dating gawi, the writer looks down to avoid stepping on globs of spit or phlegm indiscriminately spewed on the sidewalks. There are none! The cement paths are uniformly light gray, swept clean. And garbage does not exist here!

The accent one hears is malambing, not harsh to the ears. Faces are friendly, but these faces do not come with bodies crowding around strangers.

They let you be. You let them be.  

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/)

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