Stranded and Getting Punched in the Schnoz

Last Friday was definitely as fun as it was oddly surprising. The night started innocently enough, We celebrated Rhae's birthday with a chocolate cake and was supposed to be homebound by 11:00 PM. Well, someone had a bright idea: Why don't we go to Tagaytay after the pseudo-party? We did. Bad Idea.

Fast-forward, We were half-way to Tagaytay around 2:00 in the morning, happily chatting about ghost and the dim possibility of getting stranded on the road when the unthinkable actually happened.

On the darkest, scariest part of the road, our car wheezed a couple of times, stalled, and went totally silent. Rhae and Hannah, both having third-eyes, began to nervously giggle and squirmed in their seats while I, on the other hand, was half-dozing in the backseat. I woke up with a start, put two and two together in the dark and thought of lots of possibilities


You see, not only is this the first time in many, many years I went out on a road trip but also the first time I experienced being marooned in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of the night. Simply put, I was mildly alarmed. My only consolation was we've got our mobile phones, I have my stun gun (yes, I do carry around a stun gun, folks) and even a ZTE broadband phone (which later, proved to be useless since everyone we tried calling up was asleep)

There were only 4 of us, John the designated driver, yours truly, Rhae the birthday celebrant and Hannah. 3 girls and 1 boy. We got out of the car, tried our damnedest to figure out what the fuck's going on, realized nobody knows a thing about car trouble and tried to ask help from cars that were passing us by (which were almost nonexistent). We gave up after 30 minutes, calmed our frazzled nerves and figure out a plan.

One shinning moment, somebody stirred in a nearby house and we begged that he take a look at the engine. Thankfully the guy knows a thing or two about car trouble, he tweaked, prodded here and there, and came into the conclusion that we ran out of oil. Exasperated, John laid out a plan: Hitch a ride, head to a nearby petrol station, get oil. While us girls, go inside the car, lock the doors and windows, be extra-vigilant and wait it out. He scored a ride pretty soon and we were left twiddling our thumbs.

As soon as he was gone, we got out of the car and checked the damn engine ourselves and tried several times to start up it up. Alas, the car was so far gone and we gave up. 40 minutes later, John came back with a couple liters of oil. We were about to do our respective victory dances but after we filled the car with oil, the car still won't start. Tried several times but it. Just. Won't Start. Now we got frustrated, I headed in the backseat, got comfortable and tried catch a snooze figuring we'd be stuck well until the daylight comes.

Amazingly our salvation came an hour later, a cab driver helped us out, checked the engine, found out our trouble was caused by a busted Timing Belt. We had no choice but to be pulled back to Manila. Arrived in Ortigas at around 6 fucking AM. The end. As nerve-wracking as the situation was, we actually had fun. Strangely, it was quite nice to be put in unfamiliar situations like this once in a while.

On a lighter and totally unrelated subject, me and my sister got into a friendly little scuffle last night. She "accidentally" punched me square in the schnoz. It was actually hard enough to make my eyes water. I rolled around the bed while yelling "Not the schnoz! Not the schnoz!!! " then when she tried to check my nose, I "accidentally" smacked her on the head... Oh, good times!