Manila (CNN Philippines Life) — The hardest part about being a flight attendant, as I have been for four years already for Cebu Pacific Air, is the erratic schedule. This year, I will be celebrating my New Year on a long haul flight to Riyadh. I had better luck with Christmas, but will have to leave on the 25th for a late flight. The good thing is, at least, I’ll be home for noche buena.

It gets easier, but as with most things, it only does so with time. You learn to take things in stride. You get used to the idea that you’ll miss Christmas back home. Or a dear friend’s birthday celebration. A reunion with the barkada. After a while, you learn to adjust and accept the fact that you’ll always miss something. Your responses take a familiar form: I’m sorry, I have a flight, I’ll make it up to you next time.

Four years ago, I walked into the Cebu Pacific office in Pasay to apply as a cabin crew. They check your height (at least 5’3″ for women), your skin, your overall appearance. You undergo a few interviews. I suspect the clincher is this: you have to be approachable. You have to be confident. You wear your smile as you would wear your earrings, a bracelet.

The training follows, for approximately two months. You train on different kinds of aircraft: a turbo propeller (familiar if you’ve gone to Boracay), the Airbus 320, the 319, and the 330.

It’s easy to be a flight attendant but it’s hard to train to be one. It’s not just about mastering the emergency routine before the flight takes off, or knowing how best to approach a sleeping passenger for lunch. You study, and you memorize. There are emergency drills on the plane, on ground, how to do a water landing. The most important thing is to cultivate a presence of mind, even if the drills themselves are already jarring. You are taught to remain calm.

The passing grade is 85, from what I remember. I got a 94. We commence the training with a graduation, and someone is awarded the distinction of being the valedictorian.

***

I usually have flights 5 to 6 days a week. They can either be long haul or domestic flights. The schedule is given a month before. No schedule is ever consistent.

The common practice is to have two long haul flights per month. This month I have three long haul destinations: Dubai, Kuwait, and Riyadh.

While the long haul flights take me farther away from home, they surprisingly take a lesser physical toll than domestic flights, which can have as much as four legs, and require you to fly everyday. Say you have a flight to Davao and another to Cebu, all in one day. So your itinerary is Manila-Davao, Davao-Manila, Manila-Cebu, and Cebu-Manila. It’s more exhausting than it sounds.

The usual call time for flights like that is 3 a.m. You go home 3 p.m. You spend three days departing early in morning, then it slowly eases up into later hours, until your flights start at noon. Then you have red-eye flights, or those that leave at night.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) allows a maximum of six days of work for flight attendants. Any more is not allowed. In hours, that’s 100 allowable hours of work per month. Duty hours per flight is limited to 12 hours, with an allowable extension of up to 14 hours. There must be a 12-hour rest period in between flights; 9.5 if there are exigencies, such as lack of cabin crew. FA

The 12-hour rest period runs the minute you check out from work. It includes the time I spend commuting home to San Juan. The Cebu Pacific office is along Terminal 4, in Pasay.

My mom is used to it: I arrive home, sleep, eat, then leave for the next flight if I have no other plans. We usually have dates on weekends.

On days when I have consecutive 3 a.m. call times, I rarely see her inside the house. I live on an entirely different and fluctuating timeline.

***

I’m not married. As a flight attendant, it’s hard to make time for family, but I have several co-workers, some of whom are mothers, who make it work. They don’t make time — they bid or swap for it.

There’s an app for it online. You simply bid for the alternative schedule you want and wait if you “win” it. Of course, senior flight attendants are prioritized by management. If bidding fails, you can always swap schedules with your co-attendants. It’s hardest to swap for a weekend schedule, or for holidays.

I failed at my bid to have New Year’s off, but I did get Christmas Eve and most of Christmas day off. On the 25th, I have a long haul flight at night. It’s Christmas, I know, but it was hard to pass up the long haul flight.

I prefer long haul flights compared to domestic flights sometimes. You are given a considerable allowance (which I save) once you arrive abroad, and get to clock in more hours of work on a single flight, as opposed to flying everyday — sometimes consecutive days — to earn the same number of hours.

The story is different, though, once you arrive abroad. You feel a certain homesickness, even though you’ll only be staying there for three to five days before your next flight back to the Philippines.

In the hotel where we stay, we are given abayas — garments used by local women to cover their hair, most of the face, and most of the body. In Riyadh, the abaya is a requisite. In open cities like Dubai and those in Kuwait and Qatar, it’s not.

It is advisable to wear closed shoes and not to wear heels.

While the temptation to buy cheap pasalubong is great, I usually keep to my hotel room until we fly back home. I take advantage of the facilities. I work out at the gym while other co-attendants get ahead with their Christmas shopping.

I’m usually raring to fly back by the last day of our stay in any of the Middle East destinations. I have deep respect for OFWs; I can only stand a maximum of five days abroad before I start missing the pleasures of home: adobo, beef tapa.

In the hotel, they serve these for breakfast. It’s not the same.

***

I planned to be a flight attendant only for two years. Four years in and I’m still here. I’m enjoying it, in more ways I never expected.

The hours are long, but up in the air they can fly by unnoticed. In so many ways, we’re luckier than most. We get to travel. We get to meet all sorts of people. There is no daily grind. What we have is a monthly itinerary charting our flights. In it, you see which part of the Philippines or the world you’ll visit or revisit next.

Some days you find yourself too far away from family and friends. Some days, it’s the odd hours that comprise the distance.

The goodbyes, however, are never prolonged. For every departure and arrival, we can always expect to make the return trip and alight the same place where we came from, once the day’s work is done. — As told to Anna Bueno