Home Is Where The Heart Is…..
Yesterday was especially chaotic for me…the moment I got out of bed, I was cranky as hell. I spent the whole morning calling the numbers from Cebu Pacific Airlines web page (customer service, call center, International numbers) and to my dismay, nothing worked other than the HK line, which just kept ringing. Ron had been trying to buy my HK-Manila ticket since last week but for some reason they could not process US-issued Visa and Mastercards. I ended up trying to purchase my ticket via phone through a number they gave, thus, the endless calling yesterday. I just wasted my call card waiting for someone on the other end to finally talk to me but other than a song I could not understand in the background and the periodic advertisements while customers wait to be connected to a representative, I was left with two choices: should I keep on waiting or should I keep on wasting my call card? Oh, alright, I figured I just have to wait until the night when Asia will be up.
Half past nine in the evening and I was back into my rather frenzy phone calls. I mastered counting from one to ten with exaggerated exhales and inhales just so to save my phone from kissing the wall as my irritations had built up to the limit for every failed connections. In the end, Ron and I decided to just buy from Cathay Pacific…..the transaction was quick but, of course, for twice the price…..oh well ( at least, I saved my poor phone, which had nothing to do with the inefficiency of Cebu Pacific, from crashing!)
After keeping my itinerary and documents in order, I had a little chat with my husband as he was buying his own ticket online (he will be in the Philippines two weeks from now). We were going through some details and I noticed I kept saying "I will be going home to the Philippines on this date" and then "I will be going home to the US on that date"…….where is home, really?
When I was still working overseas, I always called the Philippines my HOME even when I was there only for a month each year for the last nine years. Now that I am married, I have established a new life and a new home with my husband here in the states. I guess it does not really matter which place we call home. For as long as we have our families and our loved ones, it will always be home for us. There will always be that certain place with certain people that we always feel at home with…because home is where the heart is and home is where we are happiest….and even when we are far away , the happy memories linger in our hearts for as long as we can remember!