airport vol 1

This is something that I wrote on Dec 16 and haven't posted yet...

Sitting at the Vancouver International Airport, Domestic Departures, Gate B22. Length of time I’ve been sitting here: 4 hours and counting. A lady just screamed at an airline employee: “We been here five hours and all you give us is shit food. This is worse than food bank.”
All it took was that one woman, to first say this to her friend and then repeat it out loud to the staff, to which her friend agreed. Then, of course with mob mentality, other people began to chime in. People complained about everything. And when the staff told them that they were doing their best and that they are frustrated too, people said “but you’re getting paid to be here”, as if money if the motivator for all things in life. People paid money for this flight, after all. And, in the end, they will be on a plane, right? They’ll get their vouchers and they’ll write their angry email and make the angry phone calls because they spent their whole day in an airport and time is money after all. Well it seems that many people on my flight think that their time is very expensive, since there was a big stink…and the RCMP had to come and talk to this one dude who was particularly irate, starting a fight with one of the airline women, who really had done nothing wrong…some people just have anger issues.
This relates back to economics class. My flight to toronto has an accounting cost of $245, what I paid with my VISA for the ticket, however, the economic cost of my flight is the $245 plus the oppotrunity cost of my time, what I could have been doing had I not been sitting in this uncomfortable waiting room. How much is my time worth?

But, in the end we’ll all get to Toronto, some of us will arrive with higher blood pressure and more stress. And I bet that everytime that they tell this strory (and they’ll tell it a lot, to a lot of people, on account of the holidays coming up) they will conitnue to become enraged and they will never fly harmony airways again.

So, they decided to give us taxi and food vouchers. I thought that maybe I’d take a taxi downtown (why not, its free) to go say one last goodbye to the hostel, since I had a few hours to kill.
I went to the taxi area and the guy who gets paid to get people taxis got me a taxi.
I got in the cab, asked the cabby if he’d accept my voucher and he became irate because the voucher wasn’t for his cab company and that I should have mentioned that to the guy who got me the cab. Oh my it was too stressful and kinda pointless to waste harmony’s money and gas on the cab ride so I said eff that … I won’t go anywhere, this place is hilarious, maybe I can learn something from all of the random people who are here in the airport.

Two of my favourite things to do are people watch and evesdrop, and the two go hand in hand, so that’s what I’ve been doing. And surprisingly I’ve had a good time.
Right now I’m sitting at the Medallist, a restaurant, waiting to order some food, a Meditarranean Chicken Salad (hold the chicken, hold the feta) and some fries and there’s a woman at the table close by who appeared to be talking to herself as she eats her burger and fries, but then I realized that I guess she’s got one of those bluetooth thingys and shes gossiping with a friend. However, she could just be crazy, I mean this is the airport. The best part of this conversation though, is the fact that she’s making the correct facial expressions as she tells these stories of whats going on in her life. Its as if her friend is here with her sharing this moment, technology is wonderful isnt it? She’s even drinking a glass of wine! It’s a virutal Saturday night with the girls!

So I thought this should be fine, I’ve got my laptop, I can just waste time on the internet…but apparently “nothing is free at the airport” and wireless costs $8 an hour, that’s insane. But, oh well I don’t need the internet.

I tried to watch Napolean Dynamite, cause I have it on my computer, but I got bored, its difficult to watch a funny movie alone in a room full of people, you feel like you can’t laugh out loud cause only you can hear the joke. I find that this same thing happens when I’m listening to music and I want to sing along, but im in the library, on the bus or in an airport waiting room and only I can hear my music. These things are more fun with other people.

So, you may be wondering, why didn’t I make some friends? I did, I made friends with Natalie, the cutest 4 year old ever. She and a couple of the other little girls were playing tag. It really made me admire the ability that children have to make new friends. I talked to a bunch of people, but I find, as often in these situations that the conversations tend to be centred around complaints. Everyone tells their story of why these circumstances suck for them (my story is that I was Ms. Stressy Rushy Pants all day trying to leave my house on time, get all my stuff packed and get my room cleaned up…and then turns out I had no reason to rush). While its nice to connect with people because of a common shitty situation…there’s not much to it and I had more fun with the little girls. Natalie can do the splits.

So now I’m back at gate B22, my new home. I’m so excited to get on the plane and actually get my journey started…theres been so much anticipation all day, the illusioin that I’m actually leaving, when I havent even left Vancouver yet, and its been 10 hours since I left my house.

I sorta feel like Tom Hanks, you know in The Terminal, except that I don’t actually have any problems, my country is still in tact and my family is all safe…but my flight was delayed so that sucks I guess. This airport has everything though…doctors, spa, shopping, a chapel. I wanted to go to a service at the chapel but they didn’t have one Saturday night. Some people have made good friends today though. Its nice to see people who don’t know each other hanging out and sharing stories.

I’m so excited to take a cab home from the airport, I never do that stuff, and then I am going to sleep aaaaaalllllll day tomorrow, I need it.

Well the plane is in the gate, almost time to go. Soon I will be in a nice warm bed in Toronto.