My holiday to Mexico has barely begun yet I’ve experienced so many things today I want to write down.
I’m sitting at the Qantas Lounge, it’s been about 3.5 hours since I got here and my flight to Dallas has been delayed 8 hours meaning I will miss my connecting flight to Cancun and I have to stay a night in chilly Dallas (last checked it was 7degrees eeep! I only have summer clothes packed, uh oh). That’s ok, that’s life I supposed. Me before moving to Australia would probably be cursing my bad luck and be quietly seething in rage – how dare the world inconvenience me. Boy, I used to be such an entitled brat.
The customer service officer at the Qantas counter was empathetic to our situation and showed competence in his job as he managed to get us a few options for us (transiting to Vancouver instead which was unavailable as we wouldn’t be able to get a Canadian visa in time or adding an extra stop after Dallas at Honolulu which would put us in Cancun 3 hours earlier tomorrow – however that would include a 10-hour layover). Spending a night in Dallas felt like the best option). He printed our boarding passes and sent us off with a cheerful wave and said “Don’t let this little hiccup get to you, don’t you get upset, you’re going to have a wonderful holiday!” I really appreciated that and gave him my biggest smile. I was already impressed by how well he did his job (I’m sad to say I’ve met so many people who really don’t try) and also happy he didn’t ever once say anything like “oh typical Qantas” or “yeah it’s a shitty situation”. I get the feel he likes his job and is proud of Qantas, which is such a great attitude!
With hours to kill, I started reading my 2nd book of the year (woohoo!) ‘Becoming’ by Michelle Obama. The book flows easily and I’m thoroughly enjoying it, my only fear now is that I finish the book in 2 days.
I occasionally glance up at the other travellers in the lounge, the man behind me is very fidgety, and frequently bumps my seat, so much so that I have to move my one-seater sofa forward – which makes it out of line with all the other sofas :C
I notice the table beside us has a Tumi bag, a pixel phone, a laptop and a Gucci purse left unattended with 2 other carry-on suitcases. I feel uncomfortable just looking at that and I could never leave my 1/20th-of-the-price items left unattended at a public place, even if it was a business lounge.
I spy a man eating his ice cream from a tiny cup with a spoon and fork. He is carefully loading his spoon with ice cream and taking very gentle bites. How interesting!
Marty takes a shower and I decide to take one too. This is the first time I’ve ever taken a shower at an airport and oh my goodness, what a treat! The shower stall is huge and is more than double my height, so about 3.5metres tall? The rain shower has the perfect pressure and the soaps smell delicious. A hot shower must be one of my favourite feelings in the world. Closely followed by the feeling of taking your shoes off after a long day (especially if they’re heels) or the feeling of food (like the scampi nigri from Toko) melting in your mouth, heck I could eat some of that now!
There’s only about 30minutes left before we head to the gate. I’m going back to Michelle’s childhood now!