See You Soon, Little Brother!

I've been running at least every other day for the past few weeks, and every day last week, but for this week, the last time I ran was this day. My excuse would have to be because I had to do overtime at work and I didn't want to run when it was too dark outside.

Another would have to be because my Mom and Dad went to Manila for about three days to see my brother off. I was the only family member who didn't get to see him off.

But I sent him a present with my Dad. I promised him that I'd give him earphones to replace the one that came with his phone for Christmas, but I never got to give the earphones on Christmas. His birthday is on February 19th, so I planned to get him a new pair before then. I already bought myself a pair a week ago, which I've pretty much shown to everyone at the office. I was pretty excited when I got it. It didn't disappoint me. Everything got pretty much blocked out when I had those babies on.

It was like, "DO NOT DISTURB" when I had them on.

On February 12th, he called and told me that he would be leaving the next day. Nevermind if it was just Manila-Cebu or anywhere in the Philippines, but he was going to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I can't just buy a ticket and get there on promo price anytime.

We're talking overseas here, man.


Later that night, we found out that he would be leaving on February 13th, at 7:40PM. I asked my Dad if he wanted to go. I already knew the answer, but I still wanted to hear it and I was ready to get everything done to get the old man there. I took my earphones from the table where I left them, wiped them cleaned and put them back in their box. I then asked the parents to not forget to give the box to the little brother.

He was pretty indecisive about it. He was going on and on about how nothing will make a difference, until I told him to just go and stop thinking about it. My mother couldn't care less about how much it costed to buy round trip tickets on short notice.

The next morning, I reserved two tickets for the parents, which was to take off by 1:30PM. They had about six hours' worth of preparation. That day, I was just being myself at the office and didn't think anymore about it. By 3PM, the parents were already at the airport and my brother just got checked in to his flight.

Ahhh, the drama of that day.

The parents and the little sister got to spend about 20 minutes before the little brother walked through the gate that would keep us from seeing him for the next two years, unless he decided to come back sooner or stay longer. International flyers were required to check in about 4 hours before their flight and since my brother was part of a manpool of employees, he can't skip out on the group before the flight to spend time with the rest of the family.

I'm really thankful to Steve Jobs for inventing the iPhone and whatshisname who invented the Internet. Mark Zuckerberg for getting Facebook online and for integrating Skype with the chat feature too.

So I might miss the little sucker, but this is what he really wanted, so I can't do anything but wish him for the best. I just hope he doesn't grow old working overseas and coming back here without any concrete plan.

Buuuuut! I an definitely counting on seeing you soon, little brother!