August 11, 2006 – (Manila) - If the rest of the American and British travelers are having a hell of a time at airports immediately after security forces thwarted another plot to blow up airplanes by suspected terror groups, they should try coming out of Manila.
Not to be accused of maligning my own country and its people with bad reporting but that’s the fact, the real fact is that travel in and out of the country is a real test of patience.
Since 9/11, lead time to get aboard your plane has been an average of 3 hours and it gets worst during peak travel season like summer and especially after Christmas when visiting migrant Filipinos return to their new homes abroad.
Security is not to be taken lightly. Who wants to board a plane that will be used as a missile or a weapon of destruction?
Not me! And definitely not you!
Like any obedient citizen, one must abide with the security measures and a little difficulty as against guaranteeing our safety is not debatable.
Leaving for abroad is not really an event that one would want to undertake.
And mind you even domestic travel is also a pain.
Flights are long, seats are cramped, your body clock goes hay wire traveling across the time zones, the food stinks, tickets are expensive, you’re in the center aisle and your bladder is not cooperating and sometimes the stewards are grumpy.
From the vantage of the one leaving this country, the real journey starts at the time when one steps on to the Departure area of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport or the NAIA.
One arrives in the middle of a crowded departure lounge and people are milling into the entrance with long lines as one present their tickets and passport.
One must depart three hours before the scheduled flight to ensure the process of departing will allow a smooth travel in case of some problems.
Three long hours and sometimes the NAIA is not a place one could rate as comfortable with moments when the air conditioning system fails, the comfort rooms are not as pleasant and its overly crowded with people.
With most of our neighboring countries building bigger and modern aircraft passenger terminals, we here are still embroiled in politics and a legal tussle whether or not to operate a new terminal.
This is not all about NAIA and the hazards of traveling but its about another new woe that will be added to travelers and that’s all about a stricter procedure from an already strict security measure.
This is the scenario and what makes us think, one leaves for business bound for New York and one must be at the NAIA, three hours before departure … usual long lines and then voila, a new glaring big sign saying that all items that are in liquid or paste form will no longer be accepted on board planes.
Liquid bombs and explosive components that could be concealed as normal personal items like a toothpaste, mouth wash, shaving cream or hair wax are no longer acceptable as carry all or in your luggage handling even if its in a zip it plastic.
There goes the hygiene!
Using simple and basic chemistry knowledge by extracting elements from relevant household or personal items that could be quickly assembled while on board planes and create bombs with it sounds like a scene from the American television series, “McGyver.”
What else would overly obsessed terror driven people would think of next in order to put the whole world into shivers and fear?
In my younger years, I often looked up at the sky and worry that some missile would drop in the middle of Rizal Park and in a flash all of life that exists in Manila would be gone and so is the rest of the world.
This was the era of the Cold War and at least if the world comes to an abrupt and stupid end, either it’s the old Soviet Union or it’s the United States that has a hand on it.
Now, the enemy for global peace and stability is stateless and often nameless.
Back in the Cold War, if annihilation does occur, one could think of names like Reagan, Brezhnev, Nixon, Andropov, Kruschev, Johnson, or Kennedy as names who could have pressed the button.
Nowadays, the supposed architect to the threat to peace is this old feeble bearded man hiding in the caves between Afghanistan and Pakistan, spews so much anger and hatred, a sly fox who keeps evading the most powerful surveillance equipment of the world’s most powerful nation.
Employing GPS, spy scanners, infra red or whatever available gizmo are often being outsmarted by people who are determined to wage war by using the simplest and most ordinary of things to conceal the item’s purpose.
Now, while world attention is veered away from the rage in Southern Lebanon, the world and the things that some 1 billion people do daily which is travel from one point to another is no longer safe.
These destruction obsessed people who we shall consider as people with a belief that their cause is legitimate but the means to legitimize their cause is simple madness has succeeded in a way.
They have caused concerns and a real level of fear, and even just a simple state of paranoia to a lot of people, a shade of what they have done when innocent people were rammed and slammed on that faithful day in September of 2001.
People travel to relax and do business but without worries, but now, one would have to think twice if a bottle of an expensive cologne left behind the lavatory at the rear end of the plane is not actually a potion for destruction.
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