Natalie

3 Shades of Blue

I’m floating in one of those fancy swimming pools, where it seems that the water of the pool overflows into the ocean. I look up to the cobalt blue sky, yeah, there are definitely worse places to relax, especially after what happened the day before.

It was one of those days when everything seems to go wrong and Murphy’s Law is invented just for you. Leaving early in the morning I preordered a taxi, just to make sure one would be available at 7AM. At 7:02 AM I call the taxi service, 3min 22 seconds later I get a person on the line. Not too bad, that’s quicker than average. I sometimes wonder all the niceties people say to these automated machines. I feel like cursing most of the time, and sometimes I do; but mostly I try to outwit the machine. ‘Please state your destination now’ the machine would ask, and I would say something like heaven. ‘I repeat, your destination is Craven’. If I say to the loo, the machine would answer Waterloo; and when I tried top of the world, I learned that it’s actually an existing place. It had become a bit of a game to try to fool the automated answering machines and I would time how long it would take the machine to finally give up on giving me more and more options (none of which usually apply to me) and I would get a real person at the other end of the fiber optic line. Anyway, I scolded the operator for my taxi not showing up. ‘I’m afraid we have no booking for you at this moment, but we have one for 7PM. You want a taxi now?’ Of course I do, otherwise I’ll miss my plane!

I’m squeezed between a fat ugly woman who smells a bit rancid and a Chinese guy picking his nose. Nice! Where are the cute guys when you want them!
‘Dear passengers, please do not panic, we are going to make an emergency landing’. I open my eyes, close them again, did I just hear what I think I heard? Am I having a bad dream? I open my eyes again and the look on the other passenger’s faces is telling enough. If the pilot wished for undivided attention, he got it. ‘We have some technical problems and need to have them checked. We will fly to the nearest possible airport where we are authorized to land. We thank you for your cooperation and ask you to remain seated with your seatbelt fastened’.
It takes a couple of seconds for things to sink in. Surely this must be a joke, are we being X-ed or something? I think about all the corny books I’ve read where it states that in the last moments of life you see your life flashing by. Not me. The only thing I can think of is: A. why did I never pay attention to the safety instruction and B. who should I pick for a last hug when we go crashing down: the fat lady or the nose picking Chinese? Where are the cute guys when you need them!
I start to look frantically for the plasticized safety instructions but my brain does not want to register what I’m trying to read. Should I ask the crew to repeat their safety routine? None of the crew is in sight and I wonder if that’s a good sign or a bad one. Did they hide themselves in the back of the plane, the place with the highest survival rate when planes go crashing down? Or was it the front? Why else would they put business & first in the head of the plane? Does the crew have somewhere a secret stash of parachutes and are they preparing themselves to open the door at a lower altitude and jump out of the plane while the rest of us is sucked out of the plane?
I try to calm myself by looking out of the window. Somewhere between the triple chin and the bosom of the fat lady I see that we are flying over the ocean. So where are we? We left Sydney 5 hours ago, so we must be somewhere flying over the Pacific Ocean. But where are we going to land? I try to find the TV channel with the real time flying path but it seems they closed the entertainment system. Oho, that’s definitely not a good sign! I take the flight magazine out of the seat pocket and look on the map to guess where we should be. I trace a line with my finger from Sydney up to Hong Kong. West Papua, could that be it? West Papua where regularly violent clashes occur between the military and the independence fighters? No, not where I want to land. I trace with my finger a bit higher. Southern Philippines. Even worse, that’s where the JI has a stronghold and they target specifically Westerners. I remember the many kidnappings of relief workers and even tourists some time ago in the region. I look around on the map for a save haven, but it seems all the places on the map are involved in some kind of conflict. I feel the airplane making a left turn. The voice of the captain comes on again.

We land safely in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo. Later it turned out that some moron was smoking a joint in the toilets, the alarm malfunctioned and the smoke was sucked trough the ventilating system right into the cockpit, causing the necessary alarm there. After some hassle with the local bureaucrats about paperwork and probably some bribes to be paid, the doors of the aircraft are finally opened and we are released on the tarmac. Never felt so good to have bitumen under my feet. I feel like the pope and want to kiss the ground but hearing my Chinese co-passenger snort and spit, I reconsider.

We are transferred in small groups to hotels in the vicinity of the airport. We pass small markets on the way and when the van stops at the red light, vendors come up to the car selling everything from banana’s, dried fish & red bull to Moroccan cigarette boxes. I wonder if I should get one to give as a Christmas present to my friend as she likes this kind of stuff but the van is moving already.

My mobile buzzes and a text message says: your requested taxi for 7 PM is on its way.