Paranoia management
I don’t check my bag at airports, but insist on lugging it with me on the plane. I travel light anyway—one benefit of a) not following fashion, and b) being regarded as a kind of weirdo/eccentric—and upon landing I get out of the airport faster. Sounds very practical, no? but this is just a side-effect of paranoia. I have this fear that my luggage will be lost forever, and I’ll be wandering a foreign country without a change of clothes and my stuffed leopard Guga.
This fear is not unfounded. I once took a connecting flight from Paris to Rome. In Rome I stood at the carousel and waited for my suitcase. I watched the bags go round and round on the conveyor, to be seized and taken away by the other passengers. I saw a lot of bags, I waited, I counted the good-looking guys getting their luggage (the percentage is higher in Italy) and waited. Finally I looked up and I was the only person in the arrivals hall, there was one sad suitcase left turning, and it wasn’t mine.
The airline rep was very reassuring—apparently my suitcase had been spotted sipping a kir in a cafe on Saint Germain—but you know how it is when people are lying to you, and you know they’re lying to you but you want to believe them, and they know you know they’re lying to you, but they don’t know what else to do and they actually start believing in what they’re saying? Yes, like a relationship. It took me several hundred calls to Alitalia to retrieve my suitcase, but four days later it followed me to a town near the Austrian border. This is a happy ending as lost luggage stories go—you should hear Ige’s lost luggage epic/operas—but now I can’t let my suitcase out of my sight.
I remember seeing a CNN feature about a warehouse in Arizona (or another US city) where lost luggage ends up. There’s a plot for a novel: Imagine what they’ve got in there. Apparently the stuff is sold off, so if you’ve ever lost a suitcase in transit, rest assured that total strangers have pawed over your underwear.
So I have this paranoia. But I also have these episodes of what-the-hellness in which IÂ figure, What’s the worst that could happen? If it happens, then you have nothing left to be afraid of. Embrace randomness. I took the shuttle to Kowloon station, where they check your baggage even before you get to the airport, and I thought, What the hell?
At NAIA I watched the carousel with mounting dread, certain that my suitcase had vanished without a trace. Or worse, that it was visiting St. Petersburg or Budapest without me. Then my bag materialized on the conveyor belt and everything was fine. (Of course for the true pessimist, this is an omen that a whammy is about to hit.) Does this mean I’m going to check my bags from now on? No.
Speaking of Italy, the Italian football team narrowly avoided elimination at Euro 2008, scraping past France 2-0. Luca Toni must’ve had a dozen attempts, but no score. On one hand it’s terrible that the reigning world champions were so close to an exit; on the other hand, we get drama.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 20th, 2008 at 06:39
How was your Alitalia experience.? I think their pilots are counterparts of bus drivers on EDSA. The entire time I half expected the craft to plummet into the Mediterranean. I lived. So did my luggage.
June 20th, 2008 at 08:47
Luca Toni was terrible this whole Euro tournament. Abidal was sent off for tackling him when he was angling for a shot, and the guys at the Times “The Game” blog said Abidal should’ve let him take the shot anyhow. At best some poor spectator might’ve been hit with the ball in the face.
/and end football rant.
June 20th, 2008 at 23:04
I wish I could carry everything with me in the plane as well. But I pack a lot when I travel. my husband and I have lost luggages twice. One in Scotland and one at NAIA. In Scotland, the suitcase containing all of my husband’s clothes got left somewhere two days before New Year. My two ones survived:-)We waited and waited and then nothing. In the middle of the night, we filed a claim with British Midlands. The first place in Scotland we went to the next day was a Tesco store to buy clothes. The suitcase arrived New Year! The second one, we were so sleepy and tired after a 16 hour flight and to top it all, no luggages! Fortunately, both times, we got the suitcases back – the second time, a box of chocolate was missing. I think.:-)
Euro 2008. Do you know where I could watch the matches? I tried Skycable last weekend. Nothing!
June 21st, 2008 at 08:32
I watched an old episode of Globe Trekker with Ian Wright as the guide. Apparently, there really is a place where lost luggage are sold in Tennessee. Ian bought a chicken costume from the store, that could be an equivalent of our ukay-ukay.
June 21st, 2008 at 09:08
The best airlines for me are the ones that are from Asia.. Korean Air, Japan Airlines, and oh yeah, the infamous, and most pricey, Philippine Airlines.
Korean Air so far, has exceeded my expectations, flew with them for four times now, food is great (at least to my taste), airfare not too expensive, inflight entertainment choices were nicety picked not to bore any conscious passengers in a 13-hour flight, flight stewardess are very courteous and accommodating, and not to mention hot! Their planes, if not on time, are always ahead of estimated time of arrival to destination.
The Philippine Airlines, in spite of the snooty flight attendants, and the more-often-than-not delayed flights, the service is great, and they have skilled pilots.