DominicHamon.com

Life is like a grapefruit

Letter from America

The last time we left him, our hero was boarding a Singapore Air plane bound for San Francisco. Let’s see what happened next.

The Singapore Air experience was, as always, fantastic. Food every three hours, drinks every hour, and a really comfortable seat. We had a transit stop in Hong Kong that was vaguely ridiculous: We left the plane, travelled through half the airport, and then reboarded the same plane the moment we got to the new gate. There was just enough time to have someone top up Oliver’s water supply, and get the news that he was “very active”. I have pictures of him greeting the water-carrier with a great wagging of tail and sniffing of water bottle, and possibly scaring them half to death.

Back on board, the flow of alcohol began. I was very cold on board so I was forced to have coffee with cognac, alongside the screwdrivers, champagne and Silver Kris Sling; a heady mix of champagne, gin, cointreau, orange and pineapple juice, for the vitamin C of course.

The food was excellent, although Mirto will probably have something to say about the running out of the beef before getting to her. When the service is this good, it’s the small things that really get to you. For instance, the wonderful service requires the attendants to interrupt movies a lot to ensure you get exactly what you want. If you’re not careful, you can end up resenting that constant interruption!

Movie-wise, I watched Iron Man, a waste with that screen size, but the noise-cancelling headphones made the audio reasonable, and I’m sure to watch it again, and Kung Fu Panda, which was one of the finest animations I’ve seen in a long time. While Wall-E is a great movie for story and characterisation, the standard of animation is exactly what I now expect from Pixar. This, however, was unexpected and wonderful.

After movies, things started to fall apart. Not literally, thankfully, although we did have a couple of hairy moments flying through active thunderstorms, but my eyes started to droop and my brain started to shut down. I normally make it a rule to not sleep on flights as I find that really helps the jet lag. I don’t know if it was the comfy chair, the relief of stress, the overwhelming amounts of alcohol or the carbohydrate laden food that actually pushed me over the edge, but I slept. Really really well.

Five hours later I woke up (in time for breakfast, yay!) and realised what I’d done. One poor attendant received the full force of it: when he asked if I wanted coffee or tea, I just stared at him blankly, I’m told. I thought that I said very clearly “yes please, a coffee would be a fantastic idea. Thank you”, however I apparently just stared at him until he looked worriedly at Mirto, who was able to translate for me.

I’ll skip over watching Forbidden Kingdom as it was so forgettable that I did not mind when my movie system rebooted during the final boss battle. The movie system runs a customised DR-DOS which unzips the software on boot that it then runs through something that looked alot like Windows 3.1, by the way.

Once we landed, we sailed through immigration thanks to the power of lawyers and enormous piles of documentation, and our bags came off almost immediately. I went over to the animal carrier handling to pick up Oliver, where I could see his crate. The gentleman who was looking out for me motioned that the crate was empty! This, apparently, was a very poorly timed joke on his part. On reaching the crate, I was greeted with a great tail-wagging and snuffling. I’m impressed that he had not dirtied his crate, and was not stressed, but merely extremely happy to see us.

It was not all fun and sunshine, however. We were expecting to be met by a driver, as we were travelling with many bags and the poochinator. No-one was there. Fortunately, we had two numbers to call in case of issues like this. I went to the payphones and tried the first, free, number.

Automated phone voice: “<insert name here> is not available, please leave a message or hit 0 for assistance”

Me: 0

Automated phone voice: “General mailbox… is not available, please leave a message <phoop>”

Me: “bum”

So I found some US coins and tried the second number we had, a more direct line, apparently.

Automated phone voice: “Our office is now closed. Please call back tomorrow morning after 9am.”

Me: *sob*

It appeared that while I’d successfully made it to the new country, and successfully brought my family with me, I couldn’t get out of the airport, and was stranded there. I can tell you that I have never felt so impotent and frustrated as that moment. I really did not know what to do. It didn’t help that Oliver was sitting in his crate with his legs crossed. He really needed to go.

Meanwhile, Mirto has made friends with a family with a kid, and they’re all fawning over Oliver. I’m glad that she was able to relax, and I only worry what the family must have thought about this blustering, harassed brit storming around with bits of paper flying everywhere on the verge of frustrated tears.

Mirto suggested that I go and find an alternative limo or taxi who could take us, which I think was her way of getting me out of her hair while she thought of a solution, but which I did anyway. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hello, large van limo driver, I have lots of luggage and a dog. Can you take me home?”

Driver: “Yes, I’m your driver and have been waiting for a call from the office who were waiting for you to contact them.”

Me: “Bu.. wha.. Great!”

I could leave it here and say that we are living happily ever after in the service apartment with everyone in one piece, however there’s one really important story that I want to tell.

As we were loading the luggages into the van, it came to be Oliver’s turn. Now Oliver ways 30kg, and his crate is 12kg, but it was also full of blankets and toys, which pushed the whole thing up to 50kg. I can’t lift 50kg, especially when 60% of it is moving around inside. Just as I start to look for a porter, an older gentleman who I didn’t know came over and offered to help. I tried to refuse, but he insisted, saying that he noticed I was looking harassed, and needed to do something while he waited for his wife anyway. Between us, we got the crate to the van and in the back, and then he welcomed us to “Obama country”, which was the first we heard of the news, and went back to the terminal.

I can’t think of a better way to sum up how happy I am to be in San Francisco than to point to that and say that that is the attitude I’ve always wanted to be living around. A selfless willingness to help, and eyes open enough to see when people need help.

A greater welcome to the new America, there could not have been. Thank you, random older gentleman of possibly German extraction.

Posted on 2008/11/05 by dominic in personal | Tagged moving | Leave a comment

DominicHamon.com

Life is like a grapefruit

Letter from America

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