MEDIUM RARE

Ninety-seven percent of the time I don’t envy the President for his perks, privileges, and power. The remaining three percent is reserved for how I wish I could, like him, zip into and out of our airport and into an airplane, skipping the hundred-and-one steps that we mortals are heir to.
For us ordinary people a “happy trip” starts with leaving the house and boarding a four-wheel vehicle, fingers crossed, hoping that traffic on the road to the airport won’t be bad enough to delay the journey. The uncertainty is what accounts for the stress factor, part one, even as we’ve grown accustomed to Manila’s legendary pace of life.
Unlike the rest of us crawlers, the President moves with lightning speed, with an advance party clearing the way and escorted by police and security, which means he doesn’t have to sweat it out for three hours – ground time, they call it – to be spent in the terminal, waiting for the flight to be called. Part two of the stress factor, this is where a lot of things can go wrong. This is the part where passengers wish they could be in another airport or on another planet, where Murphy’s Law does not apply (“If anything can go wrong, it will.”)
What could go wrong? As experience shows, power outages like what we saw on TV recently and all too often – people sweating, fanning themselves like a chorus singing an aria from Madama Butterfly; passengers complaining, no water to drink and no water in the toilets (in this airport, the ladies’ room is less comfortable than the gents’); one agent in uniform asking for your yearbook to prove you’re educated, another one patting you like a groper ready for foreplay because you’re a yummy-looking celebrity, another stripping you of your watch or wallet to “assist” you during the screening process.
Thank our lucky stars these unworthy agents happen along very rarely, such as when the planets are not in harmony and you forgot to say your morning prayers. Most of the time they’re good, nice people who’re just overwhelmed by the size of the crowd and the length of the queue. Ever wondered why there’s a “priority lane for seniors” who are not?