I don't want to be in an airport terminal. Except when I’m the one who’s flying, I never really liked the airport scene. The atmosphere is usually… well… frantic.
You could tell the Filipino travelers apart from the rest of the pack of thousands. They always have their balikbayan boxes for a luggage.
Inside their “luggage” you can find not just goodies but hopes and dreams that will eventually be shared to love ones anxiously waiting on the other side of the world.
It is not unusual to find a group of Japanese students being led by what would look like their tour leader unto a waiting bus just by the curb. Some other tourists you could easily spot by their strange bedazzled confused looks, city maps stretched out in front of their faces wandering the airport grounds.
The long lines of people scurrying on every security corner will always be there, whatever day and time. Their luggage scanned by a huge machine similar to that of medical equipment you could find in any hospital.
On the food court upstairs, I could see people standing with trays in hand and luggage cart in tow looking for an empty seat. Everybody tries to get their fill before they had a chance to consume those bland-flavored airline meals. Duty-free shop operators and employees outnumber the shoppers on first level. Most travelers these days knew that prices at these stores are actually higher that what you could easily find on the streets.
I could still hear the same female voice over the public address system. That same monotonous voice that seemed devoid of any human emotion. The crowd was competing with the noise, their whispers and murmurs echoing like a single chorus in a never-ending cacophony.
It was organized chaos in live animation.
Every time I go to the airport sending somebody off, I feel unnecessarily depressed. I have that same feeling since the first time I left for LA. That same eerie sensation I feel when someone is being left behind. It doesn’t matter if that someone would be me or somebody else. It causes the same reaction.
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