Last Saturday, Jess Sugay, Tricia Monsod, Rina Jimenez and I flew to Naga to conduct a workshop in Ateneo de Naga. We were due to fly back the following day, Sunday, to make it back to the Director's List reception.
The schedule was optimistic in that it assumed that the planes would fly on time. I say this is optimistic because I've heard many, many stories about domestic flights being cancelled or delayed. In my head, I imagined a nightmare scenario in which we would have to travel back to Manila from Naga by land, fighting our way through provincial town traffic, potentially getting stuck for hours...
As bad luck would have it, the flight back was indeed cancelled and we were booked for the following day. Unacceptable. Rina had to be back to sing for the Director's List mass. Jess and I were expected at the reception. We had also invited our current CS students to come talk to the prospective students. We had promised the current students pizza for their trouble. If we didn't show up, they would STARVE! We were able to find a car and driver for hire to take us back to Manila and I braced myself for the worst.
But the worst never happened. We did have to work through a couple of funerals and the beginnings of one fiesta. There were some rough patches and road construction. We have to overtake some slow moving trucks and crawl in front of provincial markets. For the most part, though, we were cruising at a safe yet speedy pace.
We made it back to ADMU by 3:30. Rina missed the mass, but Jess and I made it to the reception. And the children were fed.
When I was in first year college, my English teacher: Make time for time. Don't cut things too close. Build allowances and contingencies in your schedule. She was right, of course, and I honestly didn't plan things to be so harried. Schedules just collided, as they have a tendency to do. And even when things do go wrong, they're seldom ever as bad as you fear. Things work out.
