When Cheryl knocked a cyclist down, she cried. When I knocked a cyclist down, I scolded the chap even though I was cycling on the wrong side of the road. My argument was: it takes 2 hands to clap and he should have looked where he was going as well. It was a dumb, baseless contention, only God knows what possessed me to abandon my usual conflict-aversion.
Not too long ago, I was the Amanda frequently voted to be ‘most likely to get out of trouble by smiling’. Well apparently it takes more than just smiling to get things to go your way in China.
Like today. If I had stuck to my tried-and-tested style, I’d probably still be on the plane now. It all started when I checked in and found out I was 20 kg in excess. The fee came up to about S$400 and that sucked although granted, it was my fault. Nobody asked me to accumulate 6 pairs of boots.
When I wanted to pay, it took them 20 minutes to find a machine that worked. 4pm flight. 3.20pm I was still at the counters waiting impatiently. And they still had the cheek to tell me I was running late, and that they needed to close their desk and would I please make my payment at another desk all the way at the other end of the terminal. Or, they suggested helpfully, you could wait 8 hours for the next plane at midnight. Fuck off, I more or less replied.
So because I insisted on taking my rightful flight, they suddenly realized they had to get me onto that plane on time. I was assigned 5 minders, some ran ahead to clear the channels for me, some carried my hand luggages for me… but none of them could ward off the security idiots that seemed hell bent on making me miss my flight.
At security stop #1, they insisted on unrolling all of my posters for some reason unfathomable to me. “We’re late!”, all 5 minders whined. So the security lady just dumps the posters into a paper bag and hands it back to me. I glanced down at my watch and decided there was time to be bitchy. Hello, I admonished my minders, WHO made me late in the first place? And then I ordered the lady to roll the posters back nicely and put it back into the case.
At security stop #2, they insisted I take out all 8 bottles of my birds’ nest, a gift for my grandmother, out from the box and put them into a plastic bag. I know the laws; no bottles exceeding 100ml, and I guarantee you, none of the bottles exceeded 50ml even. And c’mon, making me hold the emptied box in one hand, and the plastic bag of bottles in the other - what fucking difference does it make!??!
Seriously that did it. I got so angry that I blistered all the idiots standing around me until an airline representative came to calm me down and rescue my birds’ nest from the evil security people. On hind sight, I was surprisingly proficient at slandering in fluent Mandarin.
I lost S$400 and hell a lot of my coming-home cheer to the Peking Capital Airport. T.I.C.
