Dizizit Pt. 2- Gate 3, Terminal 2
It was 7:15 in the morning. After smoking the last stick from my last packet and writing the last blog entry pre-Manila, I left the smoking room and headed to Boarding Gate 3.
It was relatively early for me. The airport wasn't so busy as they usually are, when I got there. But despite that, it was still exciting. Like in the opening scene of "Love Actually", everywhere I looked, there was at least one interesting character.
There was the leader of the ground staff who had the most unbelievable case of split personality. One minute, she was frantically screaming at her teamin chinese, ordering them to weigh in all additional bags that were gonna be brought to the cabin; the next minute, she was smiling as if she was an airline print ad model, saying, "Good morning, ma'am. Your carry-on is overweight, we have to check it in."
There was Jacky, one of the guys from the frantic leader's team. He was probably newly-hired, because of all of them, he was the only one who didn't make faces whenever the leader turned her back. He was also the only one that had the sense of urgency. And he was the only one who showed he felt humiliated being shouted at in front of passengers.
There was this corporate-looking middle-aged man who valued his space so much, he moved to another spot whenever somebody came within his 3 meter-radius.
There was Ms. Know-It-All, the migrant worker version of Kuya Germs of Philippine Entertainment, who thought she had the obligation of letting everybody know that she had lived in HK for 17 years. For every single problem, question and challenge, she thought she had the answer. And how could she not? She's been there, done that.
There were the Misses Hero. A whole bunch of them. They decided that in order to keep themselves from getting bored, they would play the "Enumerate-everything-that-you-sacrificed-in-order-to-earn-money-in-a-foreign-land-in-two-minutes-flat" game. The girl who would come up with the most, or who could move the other contestants to tears, whichever came first, would be crowned the Ms. Hero of Flight PR313. They all deserved to win.
There were the seafarers, who arrived in HK from another country the night before, and spent their evening at the boarding gate sleeping. Tired from being in transit too long, the only thing that could drag them up from sleep was Ms. It.
Ms. It, like Kim of Miss Saigon, was 17 when she moved to HK from a village, far, far away. She was young, sweet and naive then. But now, she's 23 and she wore a skirt just 3 inches longer than her panties (if she had any), she had nails painted in shocking yellow, which were just three inches shorter than her panties (if she had any) and an orange tube top that matched her nails in shock value. Her tube top was probably the same size as her panties. IF she had any. She was so excited to be back in Manila, she is now a self-made "it" girl. It had probably been too long since she last saw Manila. She had already forgotten that airplanes had airconditioning.
There were the classy bitches. That morning, there were two of them. At first sight, one would think they're friends--- they have the same aura, the same look, and the same kind of scent. But they're not. In fact they might be competing against each other. Both of them were flashing their LV knock-offs, jaundiced with every gold accessory that their necks could accommodate, wearing tops with the biggest designer logo embalzoned on their chests and displaying their IPhones like they were the luckiest people on earth because they were the only ones who had them. One of them started talking on the phone, telling the peron on the other line how stressful the day will be for her, with all the plane and boat transfers she will have to do to get to Boracay. But what can she do, right? That's the price she has to pay for being rich and fabulous. Right after she hung up, the other girl did her show. Dial the phone and tell her mom (supposedly) to tell their driver to be at the airport on time. And give her specific instructions: have the driver bring the Benz. The Benz, mommy, you hear? Not any of the two Hondas. She was going straigh to EDSA Shangri-la to meet up with her friends for lunch, and neither of the Hondas were presentable enough. The two girls--- both of them--- had another thing in common. They both were confused with the difference between long e & short i, p & f, and with the correct usage of in, on & at.
There was also the real classy girl, who just sat there quietly, entertained by the show that the girls were putting on. She was dressed in an immaculately clean Lacoste shirt, drawstring khakis, and navy Lacoste sneakers.
There were the tourists, whose excitement was written all over their faces. I wished that my country could measure up to their expectations.
And then there were the nosy bitches who had their earphones plugged in their ears, bobbing their heads the the rhythm of the music that was supposedly coming from those earphones. But in reality, there was nothing coming out of them. They were props and they were necessary so that none of the people around would notice that they were minding everybody else's business, and deciding whether their observations were blog-worthy. One of them has decided that they actually were, and included his entry in his Dizizit series.
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