Life/Travel/Weekly Prompt
Call It Bad Weather, I Call It Unpredictable Life
A day in my life last March
If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor…
Eleanor Roosevelt
One Sunday in March, 10 am
My last day.
How time flies! It took me 2 months to prepare for this short trip and now it is about to end. I’m sad.
I’m tired from walking. Need to go back to work. But I still don’t want to go home. I should have listened to my wanderlust-self to have a longer trip and not to my frugal-self who calculate everything.
Have you seen what’s there outside?
Yeah, the weather here is like life, unpredictable. It’s been raining for the past 5 hours, non-stop. Strolling the streets with puddles is not what I have visualized in my last morning. But I did.
Why does it have to rain today, why not tomorrow? Doesn’t it know that I’m going home today?
It knows. That’s why it’s raining.
Empathizing with me and my heavy heart?
No! Just want to test my patience, endurance, and innovative skills in dealing with “how to walk, going to Nagoya station under the rain with 2 luggage, a shoulder bag and a tote bag“.🤦♀️🤦♀️
I asked the front desk staff at the hotel if she can call a taxi for me. She said that getting a taxi on a rainy Sunday is unpredictable. If it’s okay with me to wait but without guarantee.
It’s better to walk than wait and gamble with chances. It’s a short distance anyway.
I know…
But how can I hold an umbrella in one hand and the 2 luggage on the other hand while walking in the rain?
Figure it out, Osan!
The station is an 8-minute walk, have to cross 5 streets in which 3 of which have traffic lights. And the rain has no plan to stop. Can’t it spare 8 minutes for me? Cold hearted, bad timing, stubborn rain.
I can do it!
I crossed the streets one-half at a time and one luggage at a time. After I crossed one, the green light turned into red, and had to wait to become green again. That’s the turn for the other luggage. Walking back and forth. What a tiring and wet scenario. It took me 30 minutes to reach the station.
Half of my ordeal was done. How to reach the train platform was the other half. It’s still a long way to go. More than 10 minutes and several plights of stairs.
Figure it out, Osan!
Dial a friend? Huh!!. Go to the Tourist Information Center and ask for help.
And I asked for help. I only asked if there is an elevator that can bring me directly to the train platform. I have no thick face to ask for more than that. By the way, the train station for the train going to the airport is in the adjacent building. The train platform is somewhere out there.
An angel in disguise was there. A volunteer in the center. As he was telling me the direction, he saw my luggage. Thank God, he accompanied me up to the ticket turnstile and endorsed me to a staff there to help me until I reached the platform. Bless these men.
The only thing I had given them in return was to say….Arigatou Gozaimasu.
You know what? If only the airport bus is in operation, life would have been better. But we are in the middle of unpredictable times where normality is in a state of wait and see.
Touchdown
After 13 hours I was back home. As I put out the contents of my luggage, I remembered the umbrella. It’s still all wet. As if the rain of Nagoya was really empathizing with me. Accompanying me until I reached home.
An article inspired by the Quote spark prompt of the A Taste For Life Weekly Prompts Edition 5 by Jason Edmunds.
