You can't have a signature move unless you put
it in to action at every available opportunity. Like John Travolta and a dance
floor, Tiger Woods and a bedroom, er golf course or Dubya and his Texan ranch,
my place to shine is the airport. I'm extremely punctual socially, I'm never
late for work and I'm often too early in bed. Why can't I make it on time for a
flight in the middle of the afternoon? It's like Groundhog Day every time I go to
the airport. It hardly even needs detailing here because it's always the same
story; almost.
Waking up on your last day on holiday is never
a pleasant feeling. Last night's are generally an exercise in alcohol
engineered denial. The hangover carries the extra burden of sadness that
something is ending, other than the desire to never drink again. I stared at
the stains on the bedroom ceiling hoping that seeing something crazy in them
might help me avoid work by having a short holiday in a nut house. One stain
looked like someone had managed to spew on the roof, but aside from defying
explanation, nothing proved my sanity was fraying.
I packed my backpack, thankful I had opted to
buy a 100 litre bag as I needed every square inch. Hawkers, salesmen, touts,
taxi drivers and the whole of Thailand was conspiring with Fate to keep me in
the country and help me go through the last of my remaining cash. A 3pm flight
made me somewhat complacent about busting my chops to get to the airport. The
airport shuttle is punctual and leaves from a certain point near Khao San Road
on a regular basis. Not regular enough for me though. Departures were hourly
during the day and missing one bus by 10 minutes ensured a 50 minute wait for
the next.
That didn't pose a problem as it still gave me
over an hour at the airport. It was cutting it fine for an international flight
but I am a master chef when it came to slicing my luck as thinly as possible.
Unfortunately my bag was a weight-watchers reject and I had to supersize my
luggage allowance. That didn't score me any fries but put me back a further 20
minutes, and removed the possibility of being able to afford some fries for
myself.
With Sarah's back resembling an orchard in
autumn, she was incapable of being her own pack horse. I had to play beast of
burden, and would have done so more merrily if I hadn't have seen a clock on
the stagger to her check-in counter. Alarm bells were chiming gently, but the
airport's force-field was forbidding me from using any of my higher mammal
faculties. I thought a facade that portrayed mild panic was becoming appropriate
and sped through a farewell with Sarah.
That facade got a complete make-over as soon as
I saw the queues for passport control. Mild panic might have been appropriate for
someone who wasn't so well versed in the painful procedures that follow a
missed flight. I had 45 minutes to come up with a better response to a
situation I am more used to than its apparently more normal opposite of
actually making the flight. I settled for apathy, not out of resignation, but an
awareness that hysterics would have far further reaching consequences.
I had to remove my bracelet and lose my bottle
of water to make it through screening, surprised there was no full body cavity
search. 10 security personnel were confronting a problem that would be more
regular than not, and should not have taken 5 minutes to resolve. But it did.
It was passed actual departure time and I was not making that plane. But like a
true Aussie battler, I still ran 500 miles through Suvarnabhumi’s ridiculously long hallways expecting to see a
plane at the gate. It wasn't. And people sitting at the next gate took no small
pleasure in looking at me, looking at my plane taxing to the runway, then looking
back at me to evaluate how appropriately disappointed I looked.
I had moved on from apathy to extreme agitation
as I had decided I would look weirder if I was hurrying somewhere with a really
relaxed countenance. “Just out for a quick jog before I fly around the world
three times. Honestly, I'm not rushing madly after a missed flight, like the
other people you often see at an airport”.
If you have seen someone do it yourself,
chances are pretty good it was me. Say hi next time. I'm not far off having
plenty of time to chat.
I didn't this time as I had to get hold of
Sarah straight away. She was my only avenue for the cash I needed to get
another flight, and hopefully she hadn't spoken to my Nana. Her flight was
delayed, giving her an abundance of what I needed most; time. That miracle was supposed
to fall into my lap! Fate seemed to be throwing around thunderbolts like Thor
on the piss, and hammered home the point when Sarah pointed out she was given a
300 baht food voucher for the inconvenience of the delay. If she hadn't have
already spent it at Donut King, I would have claimed it for myself as a karmic
accounting error.
Going the wrong way through passport control
was made more difficult by the absence of an entry form for morons. I got a
very interesting guided tour through the bowels and inner workings of an
international port, something you would never get on a guided tour. Unless the
tour included a discount if you tried to smuggle drugs back home with you. Each
armed guard I had to seek passage from looked too mean to deal with anyone who
wasn't breaking the law. One snarl from them was enough to think hysterics
would be insufficient if I was in serious trouble.
A $110 'special price' to change to a later
flight made me acutely aware that I was in serious trouble if Sarah wasn't cool
with lending me the money. She was, probably out of compassion, but possibly
just to be rid of someone who was quickly becoming a broken mirror, black cat
and wrong side of the bed proposition to be around. At least it gave us the
chance to say a proper goodbye not knowing when our paths would be crossing
again either.
Having just bailed me out, Sarah should have
stopped me from smothering myself in factor 500 idiot crème, with added synapse
inhibitors. It took me another 30 minutes to get through passport control. I
was close enough to departure time to hurry through the crowds with disbelief,
desperation and a sense of de ja vue trailing after me like I had literally
shit myself. Had it not been for 2 months of white rice, I probably would have.
Hurrying turned out to be unnecessary as no one
was in any rush to board this plane. Docketed departure time came and went
without too much concern from anyone not influenced by the state I was in. 30
minutes later I could hear Fate having a fine old chuckle to herself as we
finally took off with my head full of 'what could have been' had the earlier
flight been so loose on punctuality.
That demoralising thought finally got washed
away when a heavy storm thundered in about 10 seconds after boarding the plane
in Kuala Lumpur. In true typhoon fashion, the dry runway was flooded 2 minutes
after it started raining. Had it drenched me before boarding, no one would have
been able to convince me that the rain wasn't just Fate pissing herself with
laughter.
Which is what she ended up doing when neither
Trev nor I had any money to get out of the airport car-park in Perth. Trev went
off to search the car and suggested I work on my begging or busking routine
while he was gone. Then I remembered that the credit card may have expired, but
my normal account still had double the amount the car-park mafia wanted to
charge for less than 2 hours of parking. 5 minutes back in Australia and I was
made acutely aware of the different standards of living between us and our Asian
neighbours as I could have eaten for 3 days with what a 3x2 square metre patch
of concrete cost for 45 minutes of lease.
