Written: October 25, 2010
It’s Monday evening right now and I’m writing this blog from Jakarta, Indonesia! This trip pushed through last minute as I got word from Coach Cassius on Saturday morning when we played in Southwoods. What a blessing that was to learn that we were going since a couple days before, Coach Nes and Coach Cassius said that it wasn’t going to happen anymore. Now, I am super pumped that we’ll be here for the week playing the year’s final Mercedes Benz Championship ASEAN Tour event. It’s basically the tour championship with the top 60 pros from the money list (plus a few of us amateurs) competing in this 4-day, no cut tournament.
As much as I wanted to play this event, I wasn’t down about it when just a few days prior, Coach said we weren’t going. Once he said that, I didn’t dwell on the negative news and instead told myself that there was nothing to worry about. While it would have been a great opportunity to play the event, I told myself that I would have so many chances in the future to play in such types of tournaments. So missing out on one despite being so eager to play wasn’t that bad when looking at the bigger picture. My old self might have seen it differently and would have focused on stuff like, “it’s the last tournament of the season, I won’t get a chance to play one of these for a long time,” “My next event isn’t for another 3 weeks, what am I going to do?” or “they already promised me this tournament, why didn’t it fall through?” But it’s incredible how things work out sometimes and right now, I feel blessed. When you’re not desperate and you accept whatever outcome, it’s amazing that it’s those times when you actually end up getting what you want.
Today, Coach Cassius, Dante, and I met up in the airport at 5am. All went smooth until they started questioning my U.S. passport again and why my visa was expired. I explained that it is because I am a dual citizen however my Philippine passport is expired and pending approval. They were kinda making it difficult saying that I needed to extend my visa and pay a fee of about $150. After Coach and I tried asking politely if there was anything else they could do, they declined saying that paying in the cashier line was the only option. So it was time to use the connections. Coach called up some head of immigration guy, passed the phone to the highest ranking officer, then that officer immediately walked over to an employee in a closed counter, a couple whispers later to that employee and I had my passport stamped and cleared. See? Nothing to it. Gotta love the Philippines.
We traveled along with the other pros Murakami, Bibat, Ferdie, 2nyt Fernando, and Gene. Connected first in Singapore then to Jakarta, Indonesia. Checked off two countries which I haven’t been to in one day! Our hotel room is pretty spacious as Coach Cassius, Dante and I comfortably fit. For merienda and dinner, we ate downstairs in the coffee shop. In between, I took a four-hour nap. Now that we’re done with dinner, it’s back to sleep again. Then in the morning, we’re catching the 10:30am bus to check out the golf course for a practice round. Updates to come this week. Only, we don’t have Internet connection. One of the nights I’ll go downstairs and pay for internet in the business center. Goodnight!
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| In transit from the airport to our Hotel |
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| From from our hotel room |
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