The long road home

Date: Monday, August 15
Location: Somewhere 29,000 feet above the South China Sea
Cockroach count: 0
Pervert count: 1
Smelly feet count: 4

Am currently on the flight from hell. My cough is worse and I’m afraid I’m infecting the whole flight and crew. Ah well. Can’t be helped. My aunt and uncle have installed a sort of paranoia and germ-phobe fear in me which has made me take all my meds and then some. I’ve even requested that I get hot water instead of cold water here. Next thing I know, I’ll be requesting they microwave all my fruit. Yech. What have they done to me?

Someone, nay everyone, told me that Cathay Pacific was a good airline and that it was awesome. I had all these high expectations but instead, when I got to the airport, I was told that they’d double booked my flight and had to rearrange all the seating so now, I had to wait another hour until I could get a boarding pass. This was after I had already queued an hour to get to the check-in counter. They gave me a lame coupon for a free drink in the airport worth less than 10 bucks Canadian which I couldn’t even use at the airport 7-11. Sad.

I had no time for the dim-sum lunch I had anticipated with aunt and instead, spent the hour stuffing my face with a nasty pastrami and red cabbage sandwich across from a mean-looking English guy with greasy hair parted in the centre and a countenance entirely too red to be healthy. My aunt sat on my left in the uncomfy airport terminal seats announcing the merits of wearing a SARS mask on the plane as the recirculated air was a sure way for me to inoculate my weakened immune system with more germs.

I steadily refused to wear a mask and she eventually gave up. After two more attempts to get my boarding pass and more waiting, I finally got it and had to run through all the gates to board on time. I was running and noticed after five minutes of straight running that I was only at gate 20 whereas my plane was boarding at gate 67. I sighed and huffed and puffed my way there with 5 minutes to spare. It was as I approached that I realized there was an underground tram system that could have spared me the running, blisters and funny looks I got as I bustled through all the gates.

I got on the plane to discover it small and stuffy. The smell of over a hundred passengers who had been sweating out in the HK heat oppressed my senses and I nearly retched. I sat down and began a coughing fit which only gave me a headache and dirty looks from the people around me. I sighed. Mothballs and sweat were ripe in the air and I looked in vain for an aircon nozzle above me. “Ah well, another 20 minutes before take off, I can do it!” I sat patiently enduring the heat and stuffy air.

Another hour later, after much delay, we made it into the air. Turbulence and lack of leg room were getting to me and there was still the pungent smell of dirty sweat and mothballs in the air. We finally made it to cruising altitude and the air conditioning finally kicked in. Unfortunately, it brought with it the stench of several hundred pairs of sweaty sandaled feet as everyone began taking off their shoes to get comfortable. I sighed. It couldn’t get much worse than this.

And that’s when the old lady behind me shoved her feet onto my arm rest.

If there’s something in the world I find gross, it’s smelly old ladies’ feet. We’re talking scaly, veined, corned, yellow, crackly, calloused, smelly, leprous-looking feet. It was something akin to horror as I watched her gently begin to rub her feet together, creating a sort of sweaty, calloused friction to ensure her odour got through to me. As she began to comfortably wriggle each of her toes, I watched stupefied as little flakes of dead skin began flaking off one by one onto what I realized was the hood of my black hoody jacket which I had shoved behind me for back support.

I think I just gave up at that point and resigned myself to my fate. This was gonna be a looooooong flight. I gave one last flare of dignity, mustered all my strength and leaned over her feet to look back through the crack between me and the window to give the old lady a dirty look. Unfortunately, my head was too big and I couldn’t see her. Just a pair of legs disappearing off to the ugly turquoise of the seats. I tried to get up to glare at her, but the person in front of me chose just that moment to lean back their seat, so I was shoved back down into my seat with a thud. I looked at the girl on my left and she was fast asleep. I was stuck.

The feet continued their rubbing and the snowfall of dead skin kept falling unabated onto my precious hoody. Finally, everyone had to lean back their seats and lower their tables so our lunch could be served. The feet disappeared but their odour still lingered. My flight attendant flopped my meal in front of me. I checked the menu and realized I was either to choose “steamed fish with black wood fungus” or “eggplant parmigiana with parmesan cheese.” The horrible stench of the feet turned me off from anything containing cheese and I resigned myself to the fish. I opened the foil lid and nearly gagged as the fishy, fungus smell wafted up. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to eat much.

I looked at the clock on the screen in front of me. Another 9 hours to go. Ugh.

_______________________________________Vancouver Airport, Gate C32
Monday, August 15th, 1pm Canadian Pacific Time.

Well, I can safely say that was the worst flight of my life! Ended up reading the whole time and couldn’t sleep worth a damn as, can you believe it? On my left, another pair of feet appeared. The stench was awful and combined with the smell of feet on my right, the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf and steamed noodles steaming on my dinner tray in front of me, I almost puked. I never get sick on airplanes but I almost did on this one. Meanwhile, I needed to pee and couldn’t get out and the stench of mothballs and halitosis would at times waft up to make me want to seek refuge in the bathroom more . . . only that I was two seats down from the toilets and near the end of an 11 hour flight, the stench coming from there was also horrible.

By the end, I’d just about lost it. I’d been up at 6:30am HK time and according to my watch, it was nearly 4am over there. I’d been up almost 24 hours straight and I was cranky as heck. The girl beside me slumbered on peacefully, occasionally letting out a fart.

We were further delayed once on the ground and the poor lady five rows ahead of me wanted to puke in the toilets, but the flight attendants wouldn’t let her out of her seat till we were “safely parked and stopped at the gate and the captain had turned off the seat belt sign.” She resignedly took the air sickness bag from the flight attendant and stumbled back to her seat. Poor woman. For the next 40 minutes, we stayed on the ground, occasionally turning here and there with pitiable sounds coming from the poor woman up front. The air conditioning had been turned off again now that we were on the ground and we baked in the stuffy air.

I got off the plane and breathed a sigh of relief. Cathay Pacific could kiss my ass as far as I was concerned.

Calgary Airport
Monday, August 15, 2005. 8pm Canadian Mountain time.

Am finally back in Calgary!!!!! HOORAY! Only problem is that my parents and sister seem to have forgotten to pick me up. I told them I landed at 7:30pm but I guess they forgot. Sniffles. Called all their cell phones and finally had to call my parent’s restaurant before I got to whine to our waitress who said my parents had just left to pick me up. And they wonder where I get my tardiness from! Hmph!

Ah well. At least I won’t have to go on a plane for another few months. My flight from Vancouver was a gong show too and I was wondering what else could possibly go wrong after all that. I should have known no one would be here to pick me up! I had to wait 4 hours in Vancouver airport and the food I ate on my Cathay Pacific flight was not quite agreeing with me. I was standing painfully in line and finally got to the check-in counter for Air Canada. “Hi, I’m going to Calgary. Are there any earlier flights? I’m supposed to go on the 5:15 one but I was hoping there was an earlier flight.”
“I’ll just check dear.” Said the lovely woman behind the counter. I sighed in relief. It was good to be in Canada. Everyone was so polite, so efficient. They smelled so nice! The air was fresher, the sun was brighter . . .
“I’m sorry, my computer just crashed. Wait. Nope, it’s frozen. Just hold on a minute.”

Well, after crashing once more, timing out twice, and another 20 minutes of me standing at the counter while angry people behind me in line were demanding to know what the hold up was, they finally got the computers working again. “Nope, no more seats on the earlier flights.”

I sighed and made my way to the gates to wait for the 4 hours till my flight. I found my gate and sat down and opened my book. My eyes kept closing though as I’d been up for 26 hours straight.

I woke up to the sound of my own stomach gurgling and making funny sounds. My book was still on my lap, open to the same page and I was drooling on my shoulder. The kids across from me were giggling and the big business man beside me seemed to be smirking. I tried to wipe up my drool with a semblance to dignity, calmly raised my book up to eyelevel and steadily read from it, hoping that it would cover my face till those people boarded their plane. Gosh that was embarrassing.

At long last, after another drooly nap and more stomach gurgling, I got on my plane. All seemed to be good. Another 2 hours and I’d be home free. The plane seemed to be full, but fortunately, the seat beside me was empty so far. Suddenly, a huge sweaty guy in a Hawaiian shirt boarded the plane. His face was red and he was wheezing as he squished down the aisle towards me. I was sitting at the back near the wing (I’m always on top of the wing so my window seat really doesn’t afford me a nice view), and watched in horror was he pushed his case into the overhead bin at my seat and squished in beside me. His body odour was overpowering and he was so big that his elbows were well in my personal space. He kept brushing against my arm and he was sticky and clammy.

I took it all in calmly. I guess I was just so tired and jaded at that point that I didn’t care. We took off and he ordered a white wine from the flight attendants. His sweet/sour alcoholic breath mingled with his body odour was something powerful to behold. He was getting redder and redder by the minute and just when I thought someone couldn’t get more purple, the plane landed. The man waited till everyone else had disembarked before stirring from his alcoholic slumber. I tried to squeeze past him several times as people were getting off, but it was all in vain. He was huge and his hairy legs and pot belly prevented me making nay leeway.

In the end, I was practically the last one off, but I didn’t care. I was home.

Home.

I breathed in the fresh night air in Calgary and nearly swooned in ecstasy. It was clean, it wasn’t humid and it smelled good. I love Canada.

So now I am waiting for my parents to pick me up. I’m so happy I’m home that I really don’t care that they’re late. I guess the fact that they are late as usual makes me feel even more like I am finally at home.

It’s like they said in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, “East, west, hame’s best.”

I couldn’t agree more.