There were times while planning for my
trip and just prior to departure when I wondered if I was meant to proceed with
my trip. There were events or things happening beyond my control that directly
or indirectly affected my trip and made me wonder if there was a meaning behind
it all. Was I meant to take this journey? Should I take this as God’s sign that
I should not proceed? That was why I wasn’t altogether confident that the trip
would go ahead.
There was the severe drought lasting
months where Klang Valley was badly affected, so bad that we had a water
rationing. It was mighty inconvenient but I understood why it had to be done.
(I just wish more people will learn from history. This happened back in 1998.
And yet, we are still wasteful when it comes to resources. We don’t appreciate
God-given resources such as water. We waste it as we please because hey, after
all, we pay for it, right. Wrong). And because I was at work, Abah had to
refill those pails and containers with water. I got worried when the water
rationing was extended. I didn’t foresee this problem when I bought the ticket
of course.
Then there were the rescheduled
matches. I had planned on attending the Arsenal-Newcastle match and was not
pleased when it was rescheduled to Monday from Saturday. I didn’t want to spend
extra days in London when I could be elsewhere on Monday. I could not confirm
my plans until I could confirm if I was going to any home match and I couldn’t
confirm that if the match fixtures kept being changed. The notice about the
rescheduled Arsenal-Newcastle match came out in March with ample time for me to
change my plans (yes, at that point, I still hadn’t bought any intra-Europe
flights). But I wasn’t happy when I learnt late on 14 April – after I had
bought my intra-Europe flight tickets - that the Arsenal-WBA match was also
rescheduled. In my anger, I sent an email to Arsenal demanding a refund, not
expecting anyone to read it (surely they get hundreds of emails a day?) and
when I calmed down and rationalised that I could change my flight (at a cost of
course) and did exactly that, I found that Arsenal had taken steps to refund me
my match ticket... the agony part wasn’t fun at all. Good thing it all worked
out in the end: I didn’t change the flight yet again and I managed to get a
ticket via Ticket Exchange. And oh yeah, I managed to bunk with my MBA classmate
for the unplanned additional night in London.
My iPhone acted up in the afternoon of
my supposed departure. The WiFi option had greyed out and I couldn’t get it
right no matter how many times I switched the phone off, reset network settings
and even turned on Do Not Disturb. This lasted throughout my trip which meant
that while I was carrying an iPhone, it wasn’t functioning as a smartphone.
Then there was the flight delay out of
KUL which affected my next subsequent flight and schedule in Sicily. I had to
really do a whirlwind tour of Ragusa as a result but thankfully, I managed to
cover most of the sites with a lot of gasping, huffing, puffing and panting, but of course.
But just like after backpacking all
over Europe (where I hauled 15 kg on my back for a month and returned tanned and
dark all over except for my neck upwards), I will do it all over again in a
heartbeat.
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