Anyway, arriving at the old terminal I was struck by the number of Filipinos outside, with big bags and/or sealed boxes, most obviously OCWs waiting to enter the terminal as a group to start their journey to a hoped-for better life elsewhere.

I was struck even harder by the number of Pinoys inside the old terminal – making it a noisy, chaotic but in many Pinoy ways, a lively place. Admittedly, some westerners didn’t seem to enjoy the bedlam, but, hell, they were on their last few hours in the Philippines so they might just as well have suffered a little more.

Checking in was a breeze, not because Cathay checks in passengers more quickly than others but because I wasn’t queued for Economy (he he). From there it was off to the airport fee counter (what for, I am often tempted to ask, then again bedlam comes with a price) and then it was time to line up for Immigration.

This is where I wished that Luli Arroyo was in the same queue as I was.

When I lined up at 9:24, there were about six Immigration booths occupied; five were for ordinary passengers like me, while one (the extreme right one) was for VIPs, people with disabilities, parents with small children and maybe the usual one or two power-trippers.

Unfortunately, there seemed to have been at least four flights whose passengers started to collect in the Immigration area. Four flights of about 250 passengers on average, and that would be one thousand people. At the very least, that is. Of course not all of them were at the queuing area all at once (God help us) but a sizable number was there. I’d say about 200.So there were about 30 to 40 people lined up in front of one of the five Immigration booths. And the line just kept on growing longer.

To think that there were about the same number of booths (six) unattended. Understandably so because Immigration officers work in shifts and at that time I suppose the shift required six officers.

I kept one eye on the digital clock and one eye on my queue, and a third eye on everyone else around me. I noticed the clock strike 9:28, 9:32; 9:40 – and I had moved maybe five people forward.

I also noticed four gentlemen in long and short sleeved barong tagalogs standing in the middle portion of the room where there were no lines, talking to each other, sometimes breaking out into laughs. I wish I could laugh with them, but every minute I spent standing in the line meant a minute less that I could spend in the lounge, working. At about that time, too another Immigration booth opened (happily!) but it only – at least to me – showed how system-less we are: people from various lines were allowed to break ranks and run to the newly opened booth.

At that point I couldn’t control myself any longer and, excusing myself from my line, I walked over to the gentlemen and inquired who among them could answer my questions about our processes. "The Immigration Officer on Duty", I was told. I noticed that this officer’s desk could be found behind the Immigration booths – so back to my line I went as I could only get there after I got my exit stamp marked on my passport.

I finally got to the Immigration booth at 9:52, or 28 minutes after I first lined up. And I was out of the booth by 9:54. By that time I was standing outside the Officer on Duty’s cubicle, itching to share my thoughts.

The Officer on Duty turned out to be a nice lady, Pelia, I think her family name was. She was kind enough to hear me out, as I explained why I thought the queuing system we had was not the best system we could adopt. You see, I explained, not all Immigration officers work at the same pace. Some work faster, some work slower. Some officers also have to deal with passengers with faulty papers, or faulty hearing, or faulty IQ. Now, when you happen to be in a queue leading to an Immigration booth whose officer was slow, or who had to deal with a wacko passenger, then your whole line gets held up.

Other countries have the so-called "snake queue" – everyone lines up in one long, snaking line, whose end is the point from which passengers are routed to the next available Immigration officer. The advantage of this system is that one slow Immigration officer doesn’t affect the whole line, because passengers next in line are just routed to the immigration official who is available.

Additionally, opening a new immigration booth doesn’t affect the line of passengers negatively – it only helps speed up the whole line. There is no "unahan" – a system so prevalent in our current way of doing things.

This snake queue is so efficient that it is the queue being used in Japan and the United States. Heck, even at the Hong Kong International Airport, the snake queue is in use. Shouldn’t that tell our Immigration officials something? Or don’t our officials ever learn anything from their junkets?

Ms. Pelia says they tried this system before, but claims that the problem was that the line became too long it snaked right out of the immigration area and into the area where people pay the terminal fee. I said the length of the line is of less importance than the speed with which the passengers are processed. And frankly, I can’t imagine how a snake queue will use up more space than a queue of passengers before every one of the different Immigration booths, half of which seem to be always unoccupied.

Anyway, I obviously got through the departure hassle, and am now about to focus on what I am here at the ex-Crown Colony for. It just gives me that sinking feeling that in a few days I will have to return to Manila, and confront another queuing issue – this one for the arrival Immigration area – again a place of bedlam, of palakasan, and of half-empty Immigration booths.

No wonder we’re getting left behind even in the area of tourism!