i ‘heart’ PAL

I always look forward to taking PAL flights because they never fail to throw me back to my childhood. Like in my recent trip to Manila and all other trips before that, we had a children’s party at 38,000 feet above sea level.

I’m not sure but I think this started when PAL was (partly) privatized and Lucio Tan took over. Back then party bags contained edibles labeled in a language written like cat scratches on our kitchen door. Now they contain, aside from the English alphabets on the label, the following: a pack of Bingo biscuit, a sachet of Happy peanuts and a cup cake. For drinks, I had choices between a mineral water and a juice which, I’d like to think, emanated from the same source only that the other had a pinch of food color in it. Coffee was out of the question for a child like me.

Had I been accepted as flight steward way back in 1993 when I applied (I was offered the position of a ground steward instead. Duh!), I would have donned a clown suit rather than the usual white uniform that has obviously seen better days.