I didn’t think I’d be still in my lovely town. There is an ‘engineering’ issue with our craft and we are the only ones left in this terminal. The only but not the few. There are a few hundreds of us. Among them I think I recognized Ashika, a former work mate from Fiji. Since she doesn’t seem to recognize me, I might be wrong. So I don’t approach her. If she’s the real Ashika, just as well. A few years ago, when I was producing a TV ad for an a brand of icecream, I used her for the voice over and what had to be a inviting ‘icecream’ turned out to sound more like a languid ‘I scream’. So now I’m still at anchor. Long ago I exhausted all the duty free stores that are still open on a Sunday night when there’s only one plane to leave (this airport is pretty much in Christchurch itself, not miles away, so flights are not scheduled at night). With my last ten NZ bucks all I could by was an RTD. For those of you who may not be from this place, the abreviation means: Ready To Drink. It’s a pre-mixed alcohol and soft stuff, say vodka and coke or gin and tonic and it comes in bear-sized bottles. They terrible for young people, mainly for girls who get hooked into drinking by these sweet juice-like poison. I had one: Ice Smirnoff. We had another announcement that the delay is still unknown. People are calling home. A lady wearing gold with a golden laptop says to her golden Blackberry: ‘the cruise ship is having a bad day’. I check the toilets. Over used by now, they are getting drier and dirtier. The fact that they are few and far in between doesn’t help. We are nearly one and a half hours late and no news about any sort of boarding. I have about four hours in Sydney before my connecting flight to Dubai and soon I’ll be thinking that I have to cut it very finely. On the one hand, who wants to fly in a plane that had just been kind of broken? On the other hand, I assume if the captain says ‘yep!’ he knows all’s good to go. But that moment has not been announced yet. I’d better send this and give my phone battery a real. I forgot to mention that I have no travel insurance. But if it’s the airline’s fault, so they have to sort it out. Or have they?
Some kids saw they were trying to fix the front wheels
then a guy said they are waiting – drama! – for a part to arrive from Auckland in about three hours, than to be fitted in 15, minutes. In that case, we’ll leave here after I should depart from Sydney…
I speak with one of the Emirates staff and she can only guarantee that she doesn’t know much….
I try to make arrangements to leave tomorrow…
More drama: now we’re boarding in ten minutes! How did the wheel fix itself?