Despite all the scare stories, you still get smiles in the U.S.A.

NEW YORK – Believe me, I didn’t want to come to the United States of America. I’d heard all the tales about bad things happening to good people at US ports of entry, like airports – coming and leaving. But my wife and I just had to visit our daughter Rachelle who just had serious surgery for cancer. A very experienced nurse who’d studied in the US, taken her Board in Atlantic City, and had worked for years in St. Barnabas, she had been "ambushed" by an aggressive type of cancer which is life-threatening.

Anyway, we found her cheerfully bearing up, driving a car, getting the kids off to school where they all have "A" grades, Arielle 11, Gabrielle 9, and Janelle 7. Her husband, Robert – a Cuban-American born in New York, huge, handsome and supportive, is a supervisor at the big Jersey piers.

We used the excuse of a three-day conference in Washington DC to prod us into breaking into an altogether crowded schedule and hieing off to New Jersey where they live.

What had annoyed me when planning the trip were anecdotes and warnings from friends and acquaintances quoting their own ordeals, or what they had "heard" from others about American Customs, Immigration and Homeland Security becoming increasingly paranoid, pulling people off the line for "Guantanamo Bay" type interrogation, luggage being thoroughly searched – broken into if "locked". Pinoys being subjected to insults and intense grilling, fingerprinted "like criminals", et cetera. All the gripes of counter-paranoia, ruffled feathers, and affronted amor propio.

Not having been to America in two years, I was ready to believe all that. Indeed, last September having just arrived from Jakarta where I witnessed the carnage of the September 11 bombing of the Australian Embassy in the Indonesian capital (I had arrived only the day before to attend the birthday of now Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono), I even cancelled a speaking engagement in Los Angeles when I learned Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge had declared a "state of alert" in LAX (Los Angeles international airport). Didn’t want to reinforce the impression, I guess, that bombs exploded when Soliven arrived.

This time, we were warned: "Don’t lock your suitcases. They’ll break into them when you get to the US if x-ray glimpses anything suspicious! They’ll think you’re acting fishy and pull you aside for Third Degree treatment," and so forth. What the heck, I said to myself. I locked them, so there.

When we got to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, no such hazards awaited us. They courteously directed everybody in line from our Hongkong-JFK flight to one of the windows. The Immigration officer was a polite young gentleman with the ominous name of, would you believe, "Killshot". He smiled at Precious and me. He riffled through my worn-out passport, and grinned: "Boy, you’ve been to a lot of places."

I replied, "Guess so – it’s my job." He asked me to put my left forefinger in the machine which leaves no smudgemarks, then my right forefinger. "This one’s dry," he smiled, "please rub it on your forehead." I did and repeated the dry-run. He stamped our passports, said, "Welcome to New York" and waved us through.

Our bags were already on the carousel when we got there. I grabbed the three off the carousel into a cart. Walked through to the Customs exit. The Customs man took my form, helped me fill out a couple of blanks I had overlooked, then said, "Okay, sir." And we were out in the lobby, without fuss or fidget!

Oh, well. A caveat. Don’t take my word for it and blame me if you make a similar expedition and you don’t simply breeze through. Guys and gals from Immgration, Customs, or Security get off on the wrong side of the bed sometimes. Or you might look like Ali Baba, or a Senator. Or a columnist who writes fiction. In sum, anything could, or could not happen.

However, the bad things predicted didn’t happen to us. But it’s early days yet. The same Grinch who stole Christmas may still get a crack at us, especially when we exit Los Angeles (where I’m supposed to give a speech to a Filipino organization). They might interrogate me on what Mickey Mouse revealed to us in Disneyland.

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Another myth you mustn’t listen to is the one which says it’s now getting warm in New York and New Jersey. No, sir. It was fine but very cold when we ventured forth for a Portuguese dinner in Linden, New Jersey – in a place frequented by Longshoremen named L’ Algarve.

Today, it’s raining outside my hotel window. The temperature may drop to 12 degrees celsius from a high of 19 centigrade in the daytime. Would you believe, though, some fellows are already sporting T-shirts, while I shiver in my woolies. (Just proves I’m a hot-blooded Ilocano).

We got to New York I must say in rapid fashion. I can recommend the Cathay Pacific non-stop. You hop over to Hong Kong from Manila (one hour, 20 minutes), transfer to CX 830, a long-haul nonstop Airbus A340-600 which jets the 8,000 miles from HK to New York City in 15 hours and a half by taking the polar route across Siberia.

That’s a long flight, and not recommended if you suffer from claustrophobia – but if you’ve taken the bus to Laoag, or to Sorsogon, why it’s a breeze. They ply you with food and drink, and you get to watch all the inflight movies you were putting off – unless you’re one of those who support the pirated DVD industry. (Warner Studios recently announced that DVD piracy costs Hollywood and the movie industry a loss of US$7 billion per year – that’s and they even hint it helps fund Osama bin Laden, but that’s what they say). In any event, I got to see Ray (about singer Ray Charles (they keep on saying Two thumbs up! but I borrowed Precious’ hand and gave it a Four thumbs up); Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (which turned out to be the edge of Boredom); and, finally, a delightful Bollywood comedy, corny but comic, named Hul Gul starring handsome guys who need a shave and the usual stunning Indian beauties whose bosoms are delightful but whose names are unpronounceable.

Don’t watch too long. Take a snooze. Then, voilá, you’re landing in New York.

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Our cousin Richard Silverio (he’s leery of being called Dick by women) picked us up in his new SUV with global positioning satellite. I fulfilled my threat, uttered when one surly Consular twit at the Chinese Embassy in Manila denied me a visa. (Hu Jintao’s staff told me they would be happy to give me one, after all, even a free dim sum dinner).

I told Dick to set his GPS for New York’s Chinatown you know, Mott, Bayard and Canal street. We made a beeline for Mei Lai Wah, a hole-in-the-wall on Mott to which Filipinos flock like, pardon the sacrilege, our Moros head for Mecca. New York Pinoys and Pinays call it Lawai or saliva. There you can get the best siopao, asado or bola-bola. Next we went around the corner, my usual circuit, to "Wanton Palace", on Bayard st., where we got fishball soup, seafood soup, wanton with noodles, etc. Believe me, it’s worth the trip.

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It was tragic to hear about the helicopter crash which killed our friend, the nation’s leading volcanologist Raymundo Punongbayan. You really take your life in your hands when you ride a chopper, even in the best of times and conditions.

Don’t want to scare you, but it’s axiomatic that it’s more difficult at times for a pilot to handle a helicopter than a jet. I’ve flown on choppers at least a hundred times, especially during the Vietnam War (I was blown out of a US Army Huey during the battle of the Michelin rubber plantation in Dong Xoai in 1965 – only three of us on board survived that B-42 Viet Cong rocket).

The problem is that too many of our Philippine Air Force Hueys are of Vietnam-War vintage – and the 30th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon was commemorated here in the US last Saturday. (58,000 Americans died fighting that war, but to see the honeymoon now ongoing between the USA and Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh City, you’d think there’d never been any such conflict. In my last trip to Saigon and Hanoi two years ago, young Vietnamese on motorbikes were sporting "I Love New York" and "America" t-shits).

Somehow, I don’t still see that happening in Iraq.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . The incoming US Ambassador to Manila, we hear, is Cameron R. Hume who was Ambassador to South Africa (appointed there Nov. 19, 2001). Before that Hume was envoy to the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria (1997-2000). His earlier assignments included tours of duty in Palermo, Sicily, then the Mission to the United Nations. After studying Arabic in the Foreign Service field school in Tunisia, he served as political counselor in Damascus and Beirut and as director of the field school in Tunis. In 1986, he was adviser on the Middle East in the Mission in the UN, then was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy to the Holy See (Vatican). He was American representative to peace talks aimed at ending Mozambique’s civil war from 1994 to 1997. Hume graduated from Princeton University and the American University School of Law. He has been a fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations (1975-76) and at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs (1989-1990). He is the author of several articles on diplomacy and three books: "The United Nations", "Iran and Iraq" and "How Peacemaking Changed".