IT’S nice to be back. The Sydney swing sort of reenergized me.
A bit tiring, of course, but I can’t complain.
So that even as the trip had one stain, I won’t allow the glitch to spoil the party.
I lost the two keys of our room in Sydney that I thought I had dropped at the box in obedience to hotel rules when checking out.
Turns out I didn’t.
Our Sydney-based friend, who had booked us at the Waldorf Apartments and had paid our bills in advance, called us up about the missing keys just minutes upon our arrival.
“Dear Al could not have possibly dropped the keys at the box as per records of the CCTV,” said Offie O’Sullivan, my wife’s high school mate married to Eugene, the Irish gentleman.
“In that case, please tell Offie I will pay for the missing keys,” I told my wife. “CCTVs never lie.”
Events had happened so furiously fast that dawn of our departure for home sweet home in Quezon City.
I thought of dropping the keys in the box found at the lobby left of the lift when, in a flash, I made a chase of our Rimowa bag scooting so swiftly outside on the downhill pavement.
But I wasn’t that fast. Not anymore.
Or my knees weren’t up to the challenge?
God, it was raining.
Instinctively, I had to slow down midway into the dash as the surface was slippery.
Some years back, I broke my right elbow following a slip on my way to the locker room of a golf course. For almost a year, I couldn’t play golf; all that time, I used only my left hand in tapping the keys of my laptop every time I wrote a column, or a news story.
So in short, I missed Rimowa. Completely.
Fortunately, it was about 2:30 in the morning. Not a single vehicle traversing Liverpool St. to flatten the runaway red Rimowa, which traveled about maybe a hundred or so feet away.
“Good thing it didn’t burst open,” said the missus, giving me dagger looks. “All the chocolates for pasalubong would have gone for naught.”
And then this knockout of a query from the missus when we finally got settled down at our PAL jet seats: “Honey, did you drop our room keys at the box?”
“Yes, honey,” I said.
Then I fell asleep.