Wow! I am actually home pretty early tonight! This rarely happens on a flight day for me. Why? A smooth day at work here is a myth. There is no such thing. You'd have a higher chance of finding the loch ness monster doing the breast stroke in the waters of the bermuda triangle. Yet somehow, here I am, sitting at my computer banging out a new blog post.
The check-in and boarding today went pretty smooth. Of course we'd get the usual bunch of morons who would refuse to queue and walk straight to the front and demand to be checked in. Good thing I've got my trusty big burly bouncer style security guy who is always willing to help me out coz I occasionally give him some ice cream. Bozo (yes his name is really Bozo!) will just come up and point out where the queue starts and that usually solves the problem. One of the numbskulls who refused to queue made a big fuss and started shouting at the counters but finally relented when he realised everyone was staring at him. He went to the back of the queue grudgingly and guess what? When it got to his turn, he realised that he had been queuing at the wrong airline's counters! He walked away angry and red faced to the accompanying chorus of synchronised laughter from all of us. "Ahem! ready guys? Ha Ha Ha Ha HA Ha ha. Ok enough, get back to work." Airline-1 Moron-0.
Boarding was pretty smooth too. Non of the usual drama of passengers playing hide and seek, getting lost in the departure gate's 3 cubicle toilet, falling asleep under the benches, talking to a wrong number on the phone etc etc.... Of course, something had to screw up right? I mean, this is Jeddah! After all the passengers had boarded and all the doors were closed, we were waiting for the pilots to get clearance and push the aircraft back. The ground engineer was standing there with his headphones on, looking pleased that the boarding had finished 15 minutes before the departure time. I was pretty pleased myself. "What a great night!" I thought to myself as I looked up at the black arabian sky when a flutter of frantic movements caught my eye. The captain was waving at me from the cockpit, as if trying to tell me something. I looked at the ground engineer and he was still smiling to himself as if his wife had cooked the best curry in the world earlier in the afternoon for lunch.
"What is the captain trying to say? Is he not talking through your headphones?" The engineer looked puzzled and tapped his headphones. "No sir?" He replied and proceeded to check the jack that was plugged in to the communication port. It wasn't plugged in. "oh sorry sir, its not plugged in"
The pilots could've pushed back ages ago. If only the engineer had plugged in his headphones properly, heard the command and told the tow truck to move. No matter, we still had 10 minutes to spare so the flight went off early still. So thats that. Another day, another dollar. If only every flight were so easy. I wonder what's in store for me tomorrow?
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