Just another panic Monday

I've been trying to schedule a trip to HKG, but thanks to the cool weather in Manila (and the sales), I was reluctant to leave. But yesterday morning, upon waking up, I thought: "I'm going to HKG today."

Called PAL and the reservations agent proudly declared: "The 2:50pm flight is still wide open." So, at 8:30am, I got a seat and decided to fly off on a Monday.

Since it was an early afternoon flight, I had enough time to do some errands in the morning. Come 11:30am, I was packed and ready to go to the airport. The usual Monday traffic was nowhere to be seen, and by 12 noon, I was in NAIA 2. That gave me 2 hours and 50 minutes to laze around and surf the net.

Or so I thought.

As I checked in, I realized that I forgot my HKID at home. Although this wasn't a big deal since I could always use my passport, carrying it around would still be a better thing to do. For 10 minutes, I was panicking and trying to figure out what to do. It was either: just go without my ID, or go back home and get it. After all, the flight was more than 2 hours away.

I took the risky route and decided to go back home. Thankfully, there were a lot of metered airport cabs and they were more than willing to do the impossible. We had a maximum of 1 hour and 15 minutes to go from NAIA to Cubao then back. The driver knew my predicament, so he went on "super driver mode" and took on the challenge.

Throughout the journey, my heart was pounding. "Will we make it?" To further irritate myself, I formulated a timetable in my mind. We had to be in Cubao by 1:15pm and the airport at 2:00pm. The self-imposed deadline added to my anxiety.

By 1:10pm, we were in Cubao. So far, so good. On the way back to NAIA, there were bottlenecks in Santolan and Shaw. Panic mode! But as we exited the Shaw Underpass, it was clear roads from thereon in. And by 2:00pm, we were at NAIA 2. Timetable followed. Crisis averted.

I was at the waiting area by 2:10pm, with 20 minutes to spare. The flight boarded and left on time. By 5:00pm, I was in HKG. Woohoo!

Since it was still early, I proceeded directly to Harbour City to see the remnants of the sale season. First stop was Zara, of course. And when I got inside, another panic attack!

They were on their final markdown and the goods were really cheap. Really, really cheap. It was slim pickings, though, since they've been on sale for a month already. But thankfully, there were still some nice items at even nicer prices. This led me to go panic-buying for about half an hour. Then it was off to H&M where - fortunately - there wasn't too much to panic about.

Gosh! Too much panic in a day! I hope it won't be as bad tomorrow. I'll be visiting the other branches of Zara and H&M.