Pre-Departure Blues

Nov 24, 2005
4:00 PM Manila Time
8 hours prior to Departure time

Of all my trips, Cyprus wins hands down in having the most stressful pre-departure period. This took three months of visa processing, filling up application forms, having visa's denied and then learning that it was semi-approved, back and forth faxing of documents, couriers to and from different countries and through different timezones, email to and from various people, repeated flight bookings and re-bookings, hotel reservations, cancellations and re-reservations...

..and all of that just refer to the "official" goings-on that need to be taken cared of for a business trip. There is, as with any traveler, the personal aspect as well.

I will put it this way..It took me a day and a half to stress, prepare and fuss over Kevin's recent wedding -- and I was just a plain old guest.
How much effort I would exert for a 3-week trip to a country currently in winter?

It might seem that with my travel experience, these things would be easy. On one hand, it was, since I no longer fuss about minor things --- deciding what to bring is almost automatic. However, having been on other winter trips have had some major effects on me as well. I am now armed with the first-hand knowledge that women my age can and most definitely do NOT look frumpy in oversized, overbulky and overlayered clothes. I have also developed a distaste for having too many handcarried bags.

As a result, I ended up bringing less clothes, buying one or two more-expensive-than-I-would-normally buy pieces of travel essentials.
I have to add, that I did my shopping within 2 days of my real, actual departure. I wanted to make sure I was leaving before I spent that much money and that much effort.

Add all that to my worries over the unusual circumstances of the Entry visa, and what I end up with is an extremely stressful experience.

Nov 24, 2005
9 PM Manila time
3 hours prior to Departure Time

After all that hassle and all the craziness that went on, I breezed past Immigration with the Immigration Officer not even sparing so much as a blink in the direction of my Entry Visa...?!??!?
No word, no murmur, no grunt marked the "interview".
Anti-climactic? Hell yes!!! It was so easy..TOO EASY, now it scares me.