How to pack light

I am no light packer. My aunts and cousins always tease me about bringing too much stuff I don't need. Even on Sundays, when we go to church, my relatives would be so amazed on how many times I change clothes in a day. My bag is my mini-closet. You could just imagine how hard it is for me to pack things when traveling.

But, for my trip tomorrow, I availed the cheapest of all flights. Could you imagine going to Cebu for only PhP 400? Yes, via Tiger Airways. However, the thing is, there is no check-in luggage. I'm only allowed to carry 10 kilograms of my stuff. I accepted the challenge.

Initially, these are the things I wanna bring:

Yep, if i could bring everything, I would bring everything. But the trick here is to bring only what you need. What I do is I schedule clothes for each day and bring two to three extra pair of clothes. Plus, never forget to bring a party dress. You'll never know when a party comes knocking on your hotel room.

Speaking of hotel rooms, if you are staying in one, you need not bring towels. Towels are huge space fillers. If you're the sensitive kind of person, instead of bringing a towel, you could just buy a thin and light string-dyed malong. Because they are thin fabrics, they're very easy to dry and to bring.

If you're also traveling with only carry-on luggage, never bring any liquid toiletries. In the Philippines, sachets are everywhere. If you're not in the Philippines, there will always be a 7-11 store. If not in the Philippines and there's no 7-11 store, the hotel will give you these for free. Just don't expect the shampoo to be foamy.

And this is perhaps the greatest strategy to packing clothes: the art of rolling.

Trust me, folding your clothes this way is a big, big, space saver. I was able to fit in more clothes than I imagined. And this bag would probably weigh 5 kilograms or less. I still have space for pasalubong! Yay!

Also, never forget to bring an extra plastic bag. Or if you live in the Los Banos area, a cloth bag would do. What for? To separate your dirty clothes from clean ones.

So there, my quick tips to traveling light. This is step one of my ultimate dream of traveling with a cute summer dress, just a small sling bag, a straw hat, and lots of moolah. :)

Shutting down my evils

I thought I packed my teenage rebel angst way down my system. I was wrong. It's still there, just pressed forgotten inside a notebook in my everyday carry-on luggage.

Maybe I am naturally evil. Maybe I was just trying so bad to suppress those evils inside me. Maybe I wasn't really nice, not really easy to deal with. One thing's right about me though, I am flexible. I am a water who fits any container. However, sometimes, too much water overflows.

Better earlier than early.

A month ago, I did this volunteering for my company's scholarship program together with a colleague. Unfortunately, we did not catch the check-in time for our flight to Cebu. The company service arrived in my home at about 3 AM, much to my surprise that our flight was to leave at 4:55 AM. Some form of miracle happened when we arrived at NAIA at about 4:20 AM. But sadly, Cebu-Pac already closed their system for checking in. They were too heartless to let us check-in, nor re-book for another day. Tragic, we had to pay 5,000 PhP for new tickets at Seair.

Tomorrow, I will be doing another volunteering for the scholarship program in Iloilo. I'm quite saddened that I won't be enjoying the benefit of a long weekend, or even just the usual late Friday nights. Additionally, I had to wake up earlier because the company service won't pick me up at my house. I somehow think that the person in-charge of logistics thought that picking me up in our secluded village may have resulted to our coming late that dreaded morning of the Cebu-Pac incident.

I'm sorry, this is starting to look more like a rage comic. I'm just... quite disappointed that it feels like the blame was being put on me indirectly. I do not want to come clean, I might have been at fault, too. I could have just stayed in the staff house the night before and it could have saved us about 30 minutes.

But what's done is done, what happened happened. Lessons were learned and sadly, the hard way.

Tonight I will be sleeping at 7pm to wake up at 12mn so I could be at the meeting place at 1:30AM just so we would never be late for the check-in of our 5AM flight. All good, better earlier than early.

I just often remind myself that volunteering is done not to improve my resume, but to improve myself. Thank you Angel Locsin, I read that from your Twitter.

Im Gleed to this song.

I borrowed a book once from my college buddy about why pain is essential in life. We feel hurt so we feel pleasure. Pain alerts us when we're in a dangerous situation. Pain is a sign that we're alive.

But, God, this pain is unbearable.

Why does it hurt so bad?