Destined Path: Last minute person

Kiki will laugh reading this...

Why?

Last Sunday we bumped into Fr Alban after mass at Fisher House. I told him it's my last mass in Cambridge before I return to Malaysia.

"Where would you be after this?" Fr Alban asked.

Kiki burst into laughter. Fr Alban was taken aback, probably thinking we were making fun of him or something. I had to explain.

"No, Father. The reason Kiki laughed was because, I am still undecided where I'd be after this. In fact it was only last week that I bought my ticket home!"

Fr Alban quipped, "Well, that's nothing bad about it. At least you have options to choose from."

Spot on! I am certainly the kind of person who likes having lots of options before committing to a decision. Perhaps these are the very things that turned me into a last minute person. I hate to think that I am suffering from a Chronic Last-Minute Syndrome (LMS), if there's such a thing. But I am, at least some people think I am!

Take for example today, I told myself that I will reach the airport 4 hours before flight departure. I did. I left Wolfson College at 11.30am, to catch a 12 noon bus. I reached London at 2 sharp and went to look for my dad's keychain for about an hour. Then I went on straight to the airport. I arrived at 4pm. By the time I found the check-in counter and enquired about the e-ticket at the information desk, it was already 4.30pm. I am glad I enquired further if a 26kg luggage was fine. They said it was fine, so I took advantage of that to stuff in some other non-essentials. It weighed 27.3kg after that!

I thought for a moment I can proudly (and finally) announce to Kiki and some other like-minded friends who think that I am suffering from chronic LMS, that I was at the airport 4 hours ahead of departure time! I was completely stress-free for once, doing airport! Yay! That's what I thought....

While queuing together with other flight passengers for the 5pm flight, a personnel walked up to me and asked, "Sir, what time is your flight?"

"Half past eight." I said softly (but clearly proud of myself) trying to drown in with the ambience noise, hoping that people behind the queue will not curse me for hogging the line at such an early hour! Then I thought the personnel was going to scream at me and ask me get the hell out of the line!

An unexpected response followed, "Sir, would you want to take the 5 o'clock flight? We have plenty of seats in this flight. We have overbooked the eight-thirty flight and it's full now."

"Can I do that?", I asked curiously

"Yes, we have plenty of seats in this one, you can choose your seats. We can even get you a 4 in a row by yourself, so you can rest in the flight," the personnel sold this really hard.

I was actually tempted for the emergency seat rather than the 4-in-a-row. Without hesitating, I said, "Alright! I'd love to switch to the 5 o'clock flight then."

So, instead of having 4 hours to kill, my time was drastically reduced to less than 30 minutes to board the plane! You can imagine running for your life with only 30minutes left to board a plane in a huge airport like Heathrow!

With hindsight, I should have asked for a free upgrade to the business class! I had the trump card over Emirates! Drat! But thank God, I made it in the nick of time. I had 5 minutes before the gate was closed...phheeewww....

I kept thinking to myself while running to the security check and boarding gate; I am "cursed". I am so "cursed" with LMS!

I wiped the sweat off my forehead as I took a seat and breathed a huge sigh, turned off my mobile and thought, "Now what am I going to do with 6.5 hours in Dubai!"

**Hence this blog....**