waiting in vain

i will be in dumaguete on november 2 to 6 for a seminar at silliman university. i have passed by this place many times, to and from zamboanga by boat, but never to stay for longer than a few hours stopover.

i have heard many things about their boulevard, always in comparison to our cawa-cawa on r.t. lim boulevard. how ours is so dirty in comparison. do you ever notice how zamboanga's anything seems to be always dirtier than other city's? just recently, i heard someone declare pagadian's bus terminal is better than ours. and should i talk about our main public market? maybe not. that feels like a rant fit for a blog entry of its own. or even seven million entries.

my workshop starts on the 3rd yet but because of our domestic flight schedules, designed with the sole purpose of vexing travelers, i have to be there on the 2nd. i go zamboanga-manila-dumaguete because cebu pacific does not see a need to maintain direct flights between cebu and dumaguete. i have five hours to kill at the manila airport (i arrive around 9 and the plane for dumaguete leaves at almost 3). can anyone suggest anything i can do during that time that does not involve leaving the airport? my sense of time and direction dissipates in manila. has a lot to the with the traffic, i'm sure. so i'd really prefer to stay at the airport, or, if i have to leave the terminal, then only go somewhere that is a walk away. I wonder if there are internet cafes at the airport? i have a laptop now, yes, but it's seven million kilos and i have not yet bought the thingy that will wifi enable it. this laptop is new to me, but in the greater scheme of things, it's old.

i could read, i have a lot of books on reserve for this sem break, entry on that coming up, but i have to make allowances for my epically short attention span. i need to prepare roughly three categories of diversion.

reading is a given. an internet would be good, if there are internet places around. a third cannot be eating because i am the kind of person who sees eating not as a stand-alone activity, but rather one always done in conjunction with another activity. (meals at home? they're time to re-connect with the rest of the family. it's only incidental that we eat at the same time, to me at least, because to my husband, the opposite is true. i know he thinks i talk too much at the table but he doesn't say it to spare my feelings -- and spare himself from a drama.) so i can do the eating while reading, or while surfing the net. maybe i should just bring the HEAVY laptop and watch movies.

or prepare next sem's syllabus. NOT.