Monthly Archive for June, 2007

If there’s one thing worse than killing one spider before 6 am…

…it’s killing two spiders.

Yes, two. Before 6 am. Before consciousness kicks in. Before I’ve had any carbohydrates whatsoever in my system.

I wake up, go to the bathroom, do what I’ve got to do, turn around, and see the BIGGEST spider in the world.

I yelp “F**k it!”, run out of the bathroom to grab a slipper, and give it a good whack.

Don’t ask me why I didn’t use the slippers on my feet. (Well, you can ask me, and the answer is “Hello Kitty.”)

I think, okay, that’s all the excitement I can take before food. But nooooo.

I head to the computer to read the news, and there is the SECOND BIGGEST spider in the world on my wall.

This time, I use the Hello Kitty slippers on my feet and whack away.

I believe in karma, so I’ve probably ruined it for myself now.

Two spiders in less than a minute?

That and all the cute furry animals I eat have got to put me in Negative Reincarnation Points now.

Jay’s been playing with his new toy—the Samsung Blackjack phone—for a few weeks now.

If it didn’t come with so many buttons each the size of a nail clipping, I’d have loved to get one too. Because when you shoot with the phone, it automatically uploads the photos onto Jay’s flickr stream.

So enjoy the highlights of our hour at Fancy, courtesy of phon-tographer Jay: Erich made hotdogs, I almost got an awesome furry eyeball ring, Leroy wears his sunglasses because he knows he’s getting a piece of hotdog, and Doug talks about jerk chicken.

Today’s post is brought to you by the letters, W, T, and F, and by the lesson “If the airline check-in person is just 10 minutes from ending his 12-hour shift, go to another counter.”

Here’s the setup. This is an epic of Seinfelden proportions, so you must read till the end.

1:20 pm I’m early at the airport and ask the check-in counter guy if there’s an earlier flight I can take. His response, “I’m about to end my shift in 10 minutes.” I ask, “Should I go somewhere else?” “No.”

1:21 pm He tells me there is an earlier flight at 2:10 pm, but it boards at 1:35 pm. I don’t want to rush through security. I tell him I want to get food, so I’ll wait for my original flight at 5 pm. He prints me a ticket and away I go.

1:22 pm I hand my ticket over to the first security guy, who looks at it, my passport, and me, and waves me through.

1:23 pm Yeah. No queue! I hand my ticket over to a second security guy, who looks at it and my passport, and waves me through.

1:24 pm I reach US immigration (In Vancouver, you clear US Customs and Immigration before you leave the country). The officer checks out my ticket, my passport, my face, and says “Have a good day.” I breeze through customs. I head for the security scanners but my camera, tape recorder, and random thumb drives show up on the X-ray weird and they search my bag.

1:40 pm I end my “chat” with the scanner guy and walk towards food. I keep walking.

1:45 pm I look at my ticket on a whim. Circled in large red ink is BOARDING TIME 1:35 PM. Naturally, the gate is on the other side of the airport. I turn around and f*cking run like hell.

1:48 pm People. I ran 20 city blocks in 3 minutes. I huff my way to the bemused woman at the counter who politely tells me the flight has been delayed. Boarding is now 2:30 pm.

1:49 pm I look at the ticket again. I wonder why the guy didn’t put me on my original flight. I don’t see my name, but I notice “Holland,” thinking it’s an internal code for boarding. I even take a picture of it…see above.

2:30 pm Time to board! Airline Woman punches my seat number into the computer and says, “That’s funny, the seat is taken, Ms Holland.”

“Who?”

“Isn’t your name Ms Holland?”

“No, I’m Ho.”

“Why does your boarding pass say Holland? Step aside, please.”

Airline Woman finally figures out that Mr 10-minutes gave me the boarding pass of a Ms Holland who was supposed to be on the 2:10 flight.

“I was just looking for food! I didn’t even look at my ticket! I was tired! I ran! How did I pass every security checkpoint? And immigration?”

She gives me a new ticket.

After listening to two days of aviation security talks, the irony does not escape me that I unwittingly clear every checkpoint under another name.

I never knew if Ms Holland made the flight.

If you’re still in Canada, accept my apologies.

I got into some random conversations with random people about random things in life today.

Humans talk a lot.

We talk because we are nervous. We talk because we know that we know nothing. We talk because, well, have you ever seen any other species talk so much?

I guess it’s our way of grooming each other, picking bugs off each other.

It’s survival.

Speaking of which, Darwin’s quote has been blowing my mind since I read it a day ago.

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Do you think we’re there yet?