The Flight of the Rocketman

The Flight of the Rocketman has been delayed until Christmas Season traffic has dispersed...

Goodness! I spent over an hour and a half in a cab getting from Greenbelt in Makati to my home which is somewhere near Greenhills. I tried to keep up an energetic front, but I fell asleep and I could have been in grave danger. I mean, honestly, these are desperate times that we are in and desperate times makes desperate people.

But the cab driver wasn't a desperate man. He was a little chatty but I didn't mind. I was just kind of surprised that he didn't know who Pia Guanio was. A bus had passed by with a huge, larger-than-life ad of smint and there was Pia Guanio, lying on her side, looking like she was flying recklessly down EDSA looking straight at my cab driver and he just gawks and stares and asks, "Who is that?" I say, "Pia Guanio." "Who's she?" "Uhm... you don't know Pia Guanio? She's a host in Studio 23."

Of course, at that point, even I wasn't sure who she was anymore. All of a sudden, I was thinking was she Angel Aquino? or is Pia Guanio an actress now? and I got so flustrered by the everyday, ordinary question and found myself wondering why such a banal thing would jar me so much.

If he didn't change his topic to Manny Pacquiao (I know I got the spelling wrong) and the fact that boxers are probably dangerous and scary folk, I would have still been wondering if I ever really know who Pia Guanio is. Not that I have met her or anything. I just wondered how well do I really know anybody?

Sleep was a happy refuge and I may have lost time but I did not lose suffering the horrendous traffic of the Christmas Season. I woke up on the street where I lived. And, realising all my things were in order, I gave the cab driver a huge excess amount from the pay. I'm not a rich man at all... but I know how to be grateful. If not to people, to the universe.

Now I am home and Sheryl Crow is blasting from my room. Track 4 of her fantastic (but critically blasted) album C'mon C'mon and my body is just so worn out. Imagine if I had decided to drive today. I wouldn't have even made it here to the net.

When you think of all the things you can do and all the things you want to do, and the amount of time you have to do it, in relation to the things that you have to do and are expected to do, you realise that some people have been able to acquire and achieve so much and still be happy people. We may not have the musculature of predators like tigers or wolves. We may not have the toughness of herd animals like the carabao, horses or even donkeys; but we humans really are amazingly resilient creatures.

But I hope that if there is an afterlife, can I come back as a fish? A really fast kind of fish, like the sailfish or what not? Can you imagine that I have yet to see Finding Nemo? I heard that it is supposed to be fabolous and really funny. There is just something so wrong with me right now.