Last January 14, 2011 was our 64th month as boyfriend and girlfriend. We usually celebrate only the first month and the exact anniversary. For this year we are bound to travel to Batanes, our dream destination.
We are going to Batanes via Seair. Our flight in Manila to Basco was 8:20 AM to 10:05 AM. Melvin and I are already in Manila Domestic Airport around 6:45 AM. We checked-in our things immediately so we can still grab some nap while waiting for our flight. There aren't many passengers that time. Inside the airport, we met some locals from Batanes who will be going home from Christmas vacation here in Manila. They were talking about Batanes, the people, food, nature, and most specially the weather and the never ending cancellation and delays of their flights. One lady said it's her third time to have her flight canceled because of the bad weather the town was experiencing. Since December, after Christmas, she was already trying her luck to be able to go home in her hometown but she has no luck up to that Friday morning.
We were all seating on the bleachers when the passengers bound to Cebu was called. Around 7:55 AM, a few minutes before our gate will open at 8:05 AM, the lady's nephew came to us and telling us that all flights to Basco, Batanes for that day was canceled. Melvin and I are both kinda expecting this to happen. Because I read a few messages from some forums that the weather in Batanes these days isn't good and that there are several people/tourist who were stranded on the island for 3-5 days at most. The weird thing we've noticed was that these locals didn't even get mad. Instead they just go to the Seair Ticketing Office outside Manila Domestic Airport. It seems they're already used with this situation. All the familiar faces inside the airport's waiting area are inside the ticketing office already when we came in. They had their flights re-booked immediately and then they left --- no more arguments, no more angry faces.
What can we do in this situation now? We can't even get mad since almost all the passengers are not mad, except for the 2 other groups who look like tourists on the island. I never raised my voice to the Seair officer, I felt calmness even on a very frustrating situation. It's the first time actually that I didn't got mad at all. It felt like I was unloaded with a big Balikbayan box that I was carrying on my back. Since we've already expected this to happen, I decided to just have our ticket payment be refunded. I just tried to ask this even when the ticket I availed is non-refundable. Even though our flight was canceled by Seair, I still praise them for settling the issues fairly with us.They agreed to credit back the money to my credit card as if nothing happened.
Because of my frustration and the urge to travel on that day, I thought of going to Boracay. But our ticket cannot be re-routed. So I scrapped that already! Another came in my mind, it could be Baguio or Tagaytay. But Melvin said, "Can you handle the below 10 degrees in Baguio?" Thinking about that, I told myself, "Uhm, yeah I can't!" But I still texted some of my officemates who knows about Baguio and Tagaytay just to have a comparison. Before we can even decide on where to go, we got hungry. We grab a cab and went straight to Mall Of Asia. The mall isn't opened yet, so we waited while I was texting my officemates. As soon as the mall opened, something came to my mind. Instead of going anywhere unplanned that might still not work, I thought of checking the gadget I like the most and maybe I can buy it with the budget we allotted for our Batanes trip. Of course, Melvin should agree with this idea too! But he's the type who usually agrees with me. So we headed to the gadget stores instead of eating breakfast! We became even more excited in buying this gadget compared to going to Batanes. Seems like our frustration shifted to excitement! After jotting down the stores, prices and terms, we had our lunch and went home to make a comparison on the details before we buy it.
