said the lady behind the check-in counter at the Wellington International Airport. I nearly said “Glad somebody finally noticed!” but my sister beat me to it, saying “That’s the best compliment you can give her!”
She was referring to my mom, whose packing skills are considered legendary, at least to the people she travels with (mostly us). I guess traveling a lot, you pick up these kinds of skills that you can later turn into an expertise — packing a lot that your luggage just hits the mark of your baggage weight limit. Ours, for this particular flight, was 23kg. And one piece of luggage, I kid you not, was weighed at 22.9kg. The other two were 22.6 and 22.7. Honestly, I think the airport personnel was secretly hoping to see one luggage be overweight. I guess she didn’t count on us having a friend who has a weighing scale in her house, specifically for the purpose of weighing luggage.
It really is a skill, I think. I have an aunt who lives in New York, who is an expert at packing Balikbayan Boxes. Honestly, she can look at a pile of stuff and tell you which ones would fit but would make the box too heavy, which one can still be broken despite padding it with towels, and which ones you can force in the little spaces so the box wouldn’t get all deformed when they’re being handled at the airport.
I guess we acquire these skills because situations call for it. It’s really not that easy to travel, as I’m sure you know. And one of the most difficult parts of it, in my opinion, is packing. And I think it’s a bit harder for us Filipinos because we have the pasalubong custom, which is the practice of bringing back a souvenir for almost everyone you know. You know that everyone’s expecting something and will be disappointed if you don’t bring back even small trinkets for them, so you’ll have to find a way to make everything fit into the limit you’re given. And in the case of my mom, she’ll move heaven and earth to be able to do it.
image courtesy of my sister
Packing is underrated. I have seen and read a lot of travel books and magazines, but very few of them ever discuss packing. For that matter, for all the times that our luggage weight has almost just missed the mark, the woman at Wellington airport was the first one to notice it. I guess that’s why we were all very pleased when she did, because it’s always been a big deal to us when we’re packing. We even include it in our itineraries. It felt really nice to have it acknowledged. 
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