End of a good trip and back home

I woke up to bright sunlight shining through the thin curtains of the hotel room, thinking that we must have overslept. It looked like 10am or so to me in my half-awakened state. It did not help that Fabian was sitting up across the room in his bed and told me, “It’s 10 already”. A quick check of the watch showed that it was only 7:30am in the morning. The weather in New Zealand, Christchurch is simply crazy.

At 9am, we were all ready to head out for breakfast and return the rented Camry. I felt what was probably a sense of excitement at the prospect of going home after 2 weeks, as we lugged out luggages down to the streets and loaded them onto the car. However, we were not able to find a suitable place for breakfast after filling the gas, and thus decided to settle that at the Chirstchurch airport. The car rental guys gave us a lift to the airport, where we had something to munch and last minute shopping.

The plane was delayed due to some administrative screw-ups, and Fabian’s name was called up no less than twice; his request to change to an aisle seat closer to us played some part in that. And in our silly good mood, we started a strange conversation that began like this:

Me: (nodding to a group of 3 Japanese girls to my left) I’ve always wondered how they managed to keep their socks up. Maybe we should ask them where they got their socks.
Fabian: (laughing) Yeah, I also say. I hate it when the socks slip down to the ankles and I’ve got to keep pulling them up. The worst ones are those that slip into your shoes everytime you wiggle your toes. The more you wiggle, the further they slip until the whole f**king thing goes into the shoes.
Wife: (overhearing) Oh there was once when one of my colleagues asked this other guy, “You’re not wearing socks today?” and the reply was, “Oh I am wearing but they keep slipping into the shoes”. Then he started pulling his socks out! Gross!
Me: Man, that’s why you’ve got to buy the good quality thick ones. The thin ones just can’t hold.
Fabian: I suspect if you lift up their skirts, they probably have those straps underneath right up here (he gestures with his hands up his thigh, close to his crotch).
Me: They’ll probably tell you that you need to attend a course, just to learn the skill. Ninjitsu….

Ok, I think you can see how our conversations always go downhill…

On the plane, my wife was “lucky” to have this guy sitting a seat in front of her. By some measure of coincidence, and I’m really not a racist f**k, he was an Indian. First thing I noticed. He asked for ear plugs before everyone was seated, before takeoff. The steward had to fetch those for him before he would stop asking for it. Second, he moved a lot in his seat, to the point where my wife had to adjust her tiny video screen now and then. Thirdly, he probably requested for Indian vegetarian food, which was served before other regular airplane food. Well, as most people know, not all airlines cater to special requests, not the least full vegetarian Indian food. The guy had the nerve (but I didn’t hear this first hand) to tell the stewardess that the food tasted bad and it needs improvement. So much for gratitude. He can jolly well eat bread like the rest of the passengers if I had my way. And I suspected that this family of four (I think) purposely booked seats, leaving the middle seat empty. They occupied 2 separate rows, but the one seat before mine was empty. I strongly believe it’s a ploy in the hope that they get lucky and the middle seat does not get assigned, since it is akward and not favoured by most.

Anyway, that’s just a little gripe before we finally landed and took the cab home… to our land of Char Guay Teow with Si Ham and Bak Chor Mi Pok.