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It is either that we should be careful what we wish for, because the universe will give it to us whether we are serious or not, or that we subconsciously rearrange things in our lives and make decisions that will ultimately service that maybe only half-meant goal, whether we are aware or not.

I have the idea that that was what happened to me yesterday. I was supposed to go on the staff summer excursion.

We were supposed to leave at 530am, although at one of the later pick-up points I could have reached at 615am.

I needed to go to Santo Tomas that evening, but already had the plan to leave late that night to sleep nearer the meeting point.

I admitted to someone there that I wasn’t excited about going though I wasn’t dreading it either, just indifferent.

This made it easier for them to convince me to stay the night and just leave early the next morning, which I agreed to, or more specifically, where I gave in to the path of least resistance, which was not to leave.

I woke up at 430am, and was out the door by 5am, knowing that with the volume of vehicles at that time I could get to the farthest pick up point well before 615am, assuming regular Friday dawn traffic.

And it was with that assumption that things broke down. The experience of March 24 was still somewhat fresh in my mind, of travelling along the same highway but getting forced to walk from Carmel Ray Industrial Park to the bus terminal due to non-movement of vehicles at 5am. I was lucky back then that it was a short hop from the terminal to the entrance of the expressway, where there was light traffic.

This time, I had not even reached the First Philippine Industrial Park yet, and there was already drive stoppage.

The driver of the bus was able to talk to a fellow driver who had come from the other direction. It was a bus and truck that had collided outside the Yakult factory we were told, at 3am. The bus was at the toll gate by 4am, and had only then come through, an hour and a half later. They also bemoaned the fact that the northbound vehicles were already occupying three of the four lanes on our side of the build up, and that the same was through on the other side with the south bound vehicles, which created more of a bottleneck passing the accident side to go through.

In other words, I was not able to make the rendezvous, despite efforts by the organizers to accommodate my situation.

Part of me washes my hands of the situation and that it could not be helped, and that it was just bad luck.

Another part of me says I already knew of the alternative where the odds were less of such an occurrence and I should have taken it despite the supposed tiredness that was more suggested by others.

After all, it was supposed to be a trip of rest and relaxation where I would have been able to recharge. Not that I wasn’t able to do that after I got left behind, something that has happened a lot lately.

It was a very productive two days, but there is no post for yesterday because it still was a holiday, but since today is not a holiday, I still would have written an entry even if it would have been at returning from the trip.