Cebu Diaries: Out of Manila, May 3

We were one of the luckier passengers of Cebu Pacific today who got onto our flight on time. Most of the other flights were delayed--why am I not surprised?--especially those bound for Caticlan, Davao and General Santos. No wonder we hardly found seats when we entered the boarding area at quarter before 12:00 noon. The boarding room was jampacked (with stranded passengers of the GenSan flight, which was scheduled to leave at 11:00 but had to be postponed until 12:45pm).

This was too much for my uncle, Tito Arne, a Swedish national who married my aunt, Tita Yorn (my mother's sister). Let me say a few things about him. He's used to schedules and doing things on time; a little delay isn't little at all for him. As soon as we seated ourselves, he started walking around looking for lunch and checking the flight information screen every 15 minutes, which didn't really change much. After a series of walking-sitting-fidgeting, the screen rewarded Tito Arne with a "Now Boarding" message right beside our flight number. And guess who was the first in line? Hehehehehe.

We boarded our flight at 1:15 and arrived almost 3:00 in Mactan Airport. Marthe was wide awake and active throughout the flight, probably because of the Meclizine tablet (generic of Bonamine) we gave her one hour before the flight. She felt very grown-up, strapped in her own seat. She enjoyed half a breaded chicken sandwich (which cost P100, and they don't even have enough to offer. I hated the pastries I had to buy in place of the sandwich.) and plenty of flavored Mentos.

It was also Lyn's (Marthe's nanny) first plane trip and I half-expected her to get dizzy. But she's not the dizzying type and she survived it. In fact, she was looking eagerly out the window from three seats away as the plane made its ascent. Unfortunately, we were given seats by the plane's wings and there was totally nothing to see, until the plane dipped slightly as it made its final turn towards the Cebu International Airport.