Ruminations on early morning flights


We woke at 2:45 to get the kids out of bed and off to the airport, and although that was successful, I’m now running on significantly less sleep than usual. A few thoughts, then, upon the experience

  • Is there a word for the feeling of relief when you get to the airport and discover you have arrived on the correct day, after having a nagging feeling for the last week that you made a booking to depart on Sunday and not Monday, and your wife will kill you when she is presented with this error? The Germans probably have a word for it – something like antischadenfreude.

  • Air Canada are trying to mess wjth our heads. I booked flights in December for this trip, which were fully refundable. Then my wife updated her surname in her passport to match mine, and Air Canada said they couldn’t change that on the itinerary, so we had to cancel and rebook, and it wasn’t fully refundable because there was a change fee of $450.

But then when we rebooked the flights were $600 cheaper, so we were $150 better off.

But instead of being three flights (Singapore to Tokyo, Tokyo to Toronto, Toronto to Halifax) it was now four flights (an extra stop in Calgary for shits and giggles, the prospect of which has been stressing my wife out for weeks).

But then we got to the desk today, and we’re back to three flights again (the original itinerary) so as long as they make their connection in Toronto, they’ll be in Halifax two hours earlier than anticipated.

But for a laugh, Air Canada is seating my wife two rows in front of the girls for a 14 hour leg from Narita to Toronto.

But my wife is annoyed about this, rather than valuing the respite from sitting with the kids for 14 hours.

  • Wil my children adjust to not being celebrities? In Asia, blonde hair is literally remarkable: for ten minutes La Serpiente and Destroyer were the centre of attention for some Chinese tourists, who were insistent on taking photos with them. What exactly do they do with the photos? Do you imagine a conversation like "hey, here’s this random girl we saw in the airport?"

  • The taxi drivers at Terminal 2 Arrivals are really, really cross. I’ve been through there a few times now, and while it’s hardly the loveliest of environments, the men standing and yelling and tapping their feet are so, so vehement about something or other that I can only imagine this is the output of a misguided attempt by the Singapore Tourism Board to surprise and delight visitors when they disembark from their taxis and bid adieu to The Angriest Men In The East. Nothing else makes sense.


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