Now, back to the 5 days ago.
While I was doing my last minute packing (like I always do), I chucked my tooth brush into the luggage which I normally check in. Nothing new to that though. It has always been my practice to keep my toiletries in a toiletry bag and have it sardined in my luggage together with all my socks and underwear, together with all my other clothes and food if I happened to pack some Malaysian specialty. Little did I know about what would be the outcome of my simple yet inconspicuous action that caused me much misery for the next 5 days to come.
My travel from Kuching (where I live) to Oran (some small town in Algeria) required 24 hours of traveling, most of the time being spent encapsuled inside the hull of the plane. This time round, I slept through most of the journey, contrary to what I normally do - watch as many in-flight movies as I possibly can. Despite having slept most of the journey, I still had it in me to sleep some more. It was as if my 3 weeks of holiday, mostly spent on eating and sleeping, was not enough to fill the void of sleep which was obviously still a vacuum which required more sleep to fill. Until today, I still think that this sleep-hunger-void had a role to play in what eventually took place for the very first time in my last 8 years of aerial travel.
On arrival at Algiers, Algeria's
Seeing that it was lunch time, I proceeded to the fast food restaurant to grab a burger. But truth be told, I only went to buy that burger because I didn't want to look like a cheapskate who just wanted a place to rest his bum while waiting 3 hours before entering the departure hall. The burger cost RM10 for a mere 2 over-cooked pieces of beef patty and 2 miserable slices of cheese sandwiched between a bun cut in half. For RM10 in Kuching, I could have had the biggest, juiciest beef burger with fries and soft drink that McDonalds has to offer and still have a few cents to spare, lose change that I could donate to the orphans!
Anyway, after waiting 3 hours sitting at the fast food restaurant, I could finally check in and move on to the departure hall and have a different view of scenery and people. While waiting, I took out my folded boarding pass numerous times just to confirm my boarding time. Clearly written on the smaller piece of the boarding pass, in numbers I could understand, it was 1715.
At the departure hall, I was looking at the twin propeller plane similar to the one that I was going to board (based on past experience), and observing the faces of people in an effort to find people that I might know to kill time with. No luck. I didn't know anyone at the airport this time. So there I sat, waiting, and at the same time pondering on the last time that I was at this very airport and how my flight was rescheduled, and recalling the words of my colleagues that there is only 1 flight from Algiers to Oran a day and it would not take off until it was full. Pretty much like what most Malaysians experienced when Air Asia first started operation when new management took over. In fact, truth be told, Air Algerie is much worse than Air Asia, although they do serve free drinks during the flight.
On and off while waiting, I would just walk to the departure gate and check on the screen to see if the plane the passengers were boarding was the one that I was supposed to board as well. This was a small departure hall no longer than half a football field with only 6 departure gates. Recalling back, I know I did not see any "ORAN" being displayed on the screen.
But as time drew near to my "boarding time", I still did not see "ORAN" being displayed on any of the departure gate screen. Thinking that the flight was probably delayed, I went to check another screen which displayed the schedule of the flights. I saw the word in red right next to my flight, "TERMINATED". I was then thinking to myself, what the hell does it mean, terminated? And as I starred at the run way, a plane, the plane which looked like the plane that I boarded the last time I flew between this two destination, tires screeching on the run way and then taking off into the sky. If there was such a thing as sixth sense, I had a feeling that I was supposed to be on that plane.
After the plane had taken off, I took out my boarding pass again, this time, I unfolded the boarding pass and had a good look at the other bigger piece that I almost never paid attention to. Suddenly, my eyes opened so wide you would not believe that I am Chinese by heritage. I then looked again at the smaller piece which I normally glanced at for boarding time, departure gate, and seat number. I could not believe my eyes what I saw. On the bigger piece of the boarding pass, in small print on top of the numbers 1645 was Boarding Time, and on the smaller piece of the boarding pass, also in equally small print, on top of the numbers 1715 was Departure Time.
WHAT THE HELL?!!!!!
Then I remembered what my colleagues said, "There is only 1 flight a day from Algiers to Oran". So I had a look again at the screen with the flight schedule.
1945... ORAN...
Those were the numbers and word that caught my eyes. What a relief...
I noticed that the flight number had also changed...
"Ai, must be the uneducated Algerian system of changing flights whenever they like", I thought to myself.
So I continued with the wait at the airport, this time laying on the bench in front of the flight schedule screen, just in case the status of my flight changes again.
At 1900, suddenly the phone in my pocket started ringing coupled with a tingling sensation from the vibration from the phone. Upon sliding out the phone and looking at the screen that had already accumulated many careless scratches, on it displayed the name "Pascal".
"Hello"
"Where are you?"
"I'm at the airport."
"Which airport?"
"At the airport in Algiers."
"What time is your flight?"
"Flight is at 1915."
"What time will you arrive?"
"Flight is at 1915... so... say around 2015."
"Okay. Next time let me know if there are changes to your flight. The driver has been looking everywhere for you at the airport and could not find you."
Then he hung up. That was Pascal, the security manager for the project in Algeria that I was assigned to. The last sentence that he said was stuck in my head.
"Why would he say the driver was looking everywhere at the airport for me? Can't he read the flight schedule at the arrival terminal and see that my flight has been delayed?"
Those were the thoughts in my head. I didn't think much of the call and continued to wait for the last few minutes before the departure gate was opened for boarding to the flight that I have waited almost half a day to board.
Finally, the moment to board the plane came. I queued up like everyone else who had waited there as long if not longer than I for the plane, or so I thought. When it came to my turn to show the officer my ticket, he took a look at the ticket that I had just handed him, looked at me, looked again at my ticket and the part of the ticket that he had torn off from the passenger who was a moment ago queuing in front of me. I was then asked to step aside and let the other passengers go first. I knew something was amidst because as he was cross checking my ticket with the tickets of the rest of the passengers, he also read out the flight number and mine sounded different from the rest of the passengers', at least that's what I could make of it with my limited comprehension of the French vocabulary.
After everyone on queue had left the building and was waiting inside the bus that was to bring us all to the plane, the ticket guy told me that my flight had left. He then continued by asking if I had any luggage and I told him that I checked in 1. Upon hearing that, he shook his head, ran to another counter and pulled out the keyboard and started typing away. I knew he was trying to check on the status of my luggage.
A minute later he came back and told me that he could let me board this plane but I will have to collect my luggage the next day. That to me was good enough as I'd rather spend a night sleeping in the hotel that was already booked without my luggage than to figure out where to spend the night with my luggage had he said that I would have to wait for the next flight.
So I boarded the plane with the safe knowledge that I would not be picking up my luggage from the conveyor system at the arrival hall in Oran. A night at the hotel without the clean clothes in my luggage was not an issue for me. I could always sleep in my birthday suit, something I haven't done in a long time.
The next morning, I had no time to go back to the airport from the hotel and was whiffed to site by the chauffeur and the security escort. I told Pascal about what had happened upon arrival on site. He told me that he would send a driver to pick it up for me. I just had to give him the piece of sticker that was part of the tag on my luggage and he would write a letter on my behalf, authorizing the driver to retrieve the luggage for me. Nothing to worry about.
That evening when I met him again at the mess hall during dinner queuing for his turn to be served from the cafeteria styled buffet dinner, he told me that he had tried to retrieve the luggage on my behalf but the officer in charge at the airport said that I have to be present with my identification to personally retrieve it. So there I was, day 3 without my luggage... without the only tooth brush that I had packed for this assignment in an encampment in the middle of nowhere.
To make matters worse, I had so cleverly planned my arrival back on site to be on a Thursday. You see, in Algeria, weekends are Fridays and Saturdays. Weekends for me and the company I work with are on Thursdays and Fridays. So by planning my return on Thursday, I had an extra day off to rest and reprogram my jet lag body for optimum work performance for the week ahead. But this time, jokes on me. I had to wait another 2 more days before I could retrieve my luggage.
Ever since I started schooling, there was never a day that I would not brush my teeth. There are the occasional times when you forget to brush your teeth in the morning when you woke up late and, in the hurried motion of prepping yourself to go to school or work, you forget to brush your teeth before leaving the house. But even so, you would not forget to brush your teeth at night on the very same day that you forgot to brush your teeth in the morning.
The feeling of hopelessness and self disgust is different from forgetting to brush your teeth in the morning and from not having the means to brush your teeth with at all. I finally know how it feels like to be on the Survivor reality TV series. The plague that has been accumulated ever since the very first 12 hours since the last brush (Colgate 12 hours protection) , the mini fibers of food that got caught between the gap of those pearly whites, and the smell that starts to develop from the parties that the bacteria in the mouth has been throwing, it just makes you self conscience by even doing the simple thing of speaking, something many of us take for granted.
Nevertheless, after 5 hopeless days of brushing my teeth with nothing more than my fingers with the lubricated aid of the tap water, I finally retrieved my luggage from the airport with all my belongings still as picture perfect compared to the memory of how I saw it 5 days ago before zipping it close and locking it with my mini pad lock. What was more precious to me than whatever clothes and clean underwear I had in that luggage was my tooth brush, tooth paste, and also not forgetting to mentioned, my facial foam cleanser. After 5 excruciating days of living like a caveman with no basic dental technology to clean my only last and original set of pearly whites, the feeling of having all, each and every single individual tooth cleaned, is just 1 in a Million.
