Time flies when you're having fun. Or so it seemed. It's been five months since I flew out to California in pursuit of a life that seemed to be beyond my reach when I was in the motherland. I left the Philippines without a clear idea of how long I was going to stay, or what I was going to do, or what future lies in store. All I knew was that this was going to be my first vacation of some sorts, after a few years. I jumped on the plane to Los Angeles, via Taipei, where I was blessed to have been seated next to an elderly lady who was also bound for Los Angeles. I had mixed emotions, this being the first intercontinental trip I was taking, as well as the first out-of-country travel. The moment the plane took off at around 1:30 pm, Phil. standard time, I was misty-eyed, as I thought of the family and friends that I was leaving behind. What got me to leave was a very complex issue, although, looking back now, I think as though it were all part of some grand master plan for my life, since almost everything just fell into place, as perfectly as it would a jigsaw puzzle.
I should say, my life is quite comparable to a jigsaw puzzle. In search of those pieces, I decided to leave the country and put a stake at a life I never dreamed would be possible. I used to scoff at people who leave the country for dreams of a better life abroad---in my mind, I thought they were cowards who do not have the face to help uplift the country from the squalor it was in. I had a good life in Manila. I may have been a government employee over there, but I was considerably earning a salary quite enough to make me comfortable, with room here and there to make a few splurges, plus the opportunity of traveling to the countryside for work--for free. People might say I was having a blast. Indeed I was. When the opportunity opened itself that I was able to secure a visa to the US, I had no intention of leaving right away. I pondered the idea really hard before I decided in May that I should go and try it out, anyway, there's absolutely nothing to lose--I have roughly a year to go on leave, and if things don't turn out well, I could always go back if I wanted to.
Moving on, I arrived in California the tenth of July. My aunt and cousin picked me up at the Tom Bradley International Airport at past 5 in the afternoon. The first thing I found peculiar about the sky in California is that the sun sets in the side opposite to how it sets in the Philippines. Hmm.. Maybe that has something to do with the positioning--I realized that I was on the occidental side of the globe, thus, the rising and setting of the sun were in a totally different orientation compared to the other side of the globe. For three weeks I was in a daze. I thought I was dreaming of being in America. I enjoyed looking at the houses, a far cry from the houses that I would see on the roadside every day of my life when I was in the Philippines. Nice picket fences, plastered walls, well-manicured lawns, cars on the garage, your typical American idyll. I was fascinated. I was taken.
The next couple of days saw a growing anxiety in me, the honeymoon phase of my trip was over. It was time to go to work. (to be continued.)
