If you only have 17 hours to live in a day…

Time flies being a flight attendant. A month feels just like one day and our one-day feels like one hour.  I don’t know about other jobs, but as flight attendants we work on DATES not on DAYS. We don’t care if it’s Monday or Saturday, weekends or weekdays as long as we see in our schedule the word “OFF” that is our weekend.

Sorry we wont be able to relate with the saying "Thank God it’s Friday", because Friday does not have the word “OFF day” and could you remind me what DATE is FRIDAY again? Because maybe I even have a flight that day.

I recently had a 17-hour layover flight to MANILA, and I have to admit that it was my shortest time spent back home. In my mind, I was still considering if I should sleep or not with the amount of things that I want to do and loved ones I want to see. I want to savor every minute of it even though I was dead tired from my flight (mind over mattress). Yes, what I do every hour counts! 

I couldn’t afford any moments spent back home where I would just lie in my bed, looking at the ceiling and just let the time goes by or browse my facebook to stalk other people’s page over non-sense things, or even have the time to sit at home with my family just to say I am bored (I always do that when I was young and was still in school) because time is ticking so fast and before we know it, it would be time for me to go and leave home again.  

I think being a flight attendant trained me to be efficient with TIME, because TIME is very important for us. We live in a world outside the norm, that whenever we visit a country, we are either given more or less than 17 hours, 24 hours, 30hrs (we work by military hours) and it is up to us to make use of that time wisely.

I had this realization to make myself more efficient with Time management, I asked myself this question what if I only have 17 hours to live in a day, what would be my priority? To whom will I spend it with? How would I spend it?  Well of course when I had that thought in my mind, I could easily filter unimportant things and just focus more on the things that I really want to do because every hour do count. 

Well I want to share with you what I did in my 17 hours stay back home:

We landed around 1030 in the evening in Manila.

Got out of the airport around 11pm, 

drove 20 minutes from the Airport to the hotel. 

Arrived at the Hotel around 1120pm and my mom was waiting for me already in the hotel lobby and we got into my room around 1140pm. 

My bestfriend Maus came in the hotel around 1230am, went out for coffee and catch up with my friends till 3am in the morning.

 Slept around 4am till 9am.  

Went for manicure/pedicure at 10am till 11am. 

At 1130am went for a brunch date with my mom till 1240pm 

1-2pm I went for facial. 

215 I arrived back in the hotel, rested my eyes a little bit, showered, then left the hotel to the airport around 350pm for my flight back to Abu Dhabi. 

If you sum that up, that’s already 17hours.

Time management baby!

Was it quick? Yes.

Did I have fun? Yes because there was no time wasted and no dull moments. No time for dramas, traffics and negative things (in that 17 hours, would you still engage in some disagreements?) but only focused on positive things that would give good results thus create good memories.

I remember back in Abu Dhabi, as I was having a conversation with a 60 year old businessman who lives in New York once said, GOD only gave us 24 hours in a day, we never know until when we are going to live, we may either live only today or tomorrow or maybe even reach the age of 100, but these things we don't know. So the greatest thing a person can give you is their time because they chose to be with you so always make an effort to make it worthwhile and great.

In my 17 hour Manila it made me realize that TIME will always equates to LOVE. There will always be a time for everyone and everything when there is Love.  

To my mom who always makes her time available for me 24/7. The love of my mother always reminds me that love should always be consistent. There is no such things as the song goes “I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow” because pure love is always consistent.