I have decided to write an update about my vacation. This is probably the ‘bloggist’ update I’ve ever put up, just don’t expect more of this.
So anyway.
I was experiencing my usual pre-travel jitters I always get before overseas trips especially ones in which I’m going someplace I’ve never been before or is far away. (places other than South-east Asia or Australia) This time it was both.
It’s a kind of strange nervousness I think is associated to not wanting to move out of one’s comfort zone.
At this point I am within the departure hall and if you have never been, it is a magical place. It is that wondrous place that is separated from the plain, old ordinary airport with glass and is guarded at its entrances by two policepersons. The glass is there to provide those not fortunate enough, a glimpse at what they are missing out on, (seriously there is free internet and free screenings of EPL matches) this might explain the regular occurrences of people sobbing uncontrollably after being refused entry by the elite crack squad of police that have been trained to recognize people who are actually on a flight just from a cursory glance at your boarding ticket.
There is everything here, liquor, perfume, cigarettes, jewelry, handbags, suits, jackets, books, videogames, sweets, basically anything you forgot to pack or a last minute souvenir for someone that slipped your mind could be bought here.
What really baffled me, however, was a store selling travel luggage.
The thing I cannot wrap my mind around is why anyone would want to buy luggage at the departure hall. The only conceivable situations in which it would be reasonable to purchase a bag when you are already in the departure hall would be if you are planning to buy a lot of stuff at your destination or if you are a really lucky terrorist that forgot to bring his bag. It could be possible that the people working in the store are undercover counter-terrorist police but that would be a really inefficient way to catch them.
One of these bags has a bomb, another has $500,000!!!
Anybody who has travelled on a commercial airline would know about the safety instructional video that is typically shown before takeoff, you know the one which nobody really pays any attention to, that tells you everything you need to do in the event of a plane crash, which nobody will remember because they would be too busy being dead or trying to come to terms with how they arm is now two seats away.
Well, I caught myself watching the safety video on another person’s screen, I could say in my defense that my screen was about 10 cm away from my face, but I know that is an excuse. There is just something irresistible about watching somebody else’s screen, it’s the same kind of attraction of the newspaper a person sitting beside you is reading even though you might already be reading the same newspaper.
Can I also just raise a question about the little window that is behind the toilet? More specifically what the FUCK is it for?
You cannot take a shit while admiring the view because it’s facing the wrong way and you can’t look at it when you’re standing unless your eyes are located at your crotch.
I decided quite wisely not to ask any of the flight attendants about it. In my eagerness to satiate my curiosity, I might have given off an intenseness and nervous fervour that some would mistake for having something to hide. This is all understandable keeping in mind the incident recently where a person stuffed a soft plush animal down the toilet causing it to regurgitate its contents halfway through a 10 hour flight.
I digress.
I love flying. I like the quixotic notions of sailing through the air, there is a real sense of serenity and tranquility to flying that does not happen quite as often in other modes of transportation.
It looks a lot better when you see it in person
And the view, oh the view, when you get up above the clouds.
Its like you’ve ascended into the realm of the gods, a playground for the cherubim, soft, pillowy fields of cotton that stretch on endlessly.
At dawn or dusk, Apollo practices with his brush, in bold strokes of orange and if he’s in an artistic mood maybe even dip into the purples.
Some of them also look like bums. Hehe
Well, there are several irritants that detract from the joys of flying enough to stop me from dissolving into a puddle of happiness. Fact: one of my more obvious features is that I am tall, at about 187cm, I am no giant but no slouch (my mum would disagree but this is not her blog) either. For people who have never been tall before, it is quite common for tall people to have long legs, which presents a problem when trying to fit comfortably into an economy class seat without having them spill over into the aisle. And I haven’t even mentioned the horrors of sitting behind someone that is feeling sleepy and knows what the button at the armrest is for, I hope you are not claustrophobic.
Remember that magnificent view I told you about, well you can only see them if you are sitting at a window seat or bent over a toilet. And then there is the babies.
Babies are the single biggest obstacle to having an enjoyable flight and it is because of one thing, here it is presented in a mathematical formula:
BABIES + AIRPLANES = CRYING
It is an inescapable scientific fact.
They are really sneaky things too, those babies. At boarding gates, the babies are always well behaved or sleeping, so even though you might have your doubts you still hold on to the hope that they stay that way during the flight. Then when the airplane is taxiing and revving the engines and the babies don’t cry, you think that you may be lucky and that the babies are the breeds that don’t cry because they are hunting babies.
That is until the airplane lifts its nose up.
It always starts with one. One baby that decided that it could not let mummy and daddy get some peace and not be embarrassed by the inconsolable cries of their spawn. This is their sole source of entertainment, they feed off the guilt of their parents. Of course, the other babies soon join in and it becomes a sort of competition between the babies to see who can guilt-trip their parents to take them to the toilet first. This isn’t much of a comfort for the other passengers because the walls of the toilet are too thin to contain the unholy ululations that can even drown out the noise of four turbofan engines.
While trying to come up with the most creative(painful) ways to shut the demon children’s mouths, I think I may have stumbled upon an alternative explanation for the babies' laments.
Arrrggghhh… Square container not fit into round hole… make Hulk MAD.
This turned out longer than I thought it would, which is great because it means I can split it up into several posts, then I don’t have to slit my wrists coming up with new topics to write about.
In the next post, I get off the plane!
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