Assuming you’ve been reading of my adventures in chronological order, you’ll recall the exciting conclusion to my Indian Epic, having received a message from the airline that my luggage “didn’t make it.”
After digesting that and saying “no matter, nothing I can do about it” I soon thereafter got a message from the universe. While something may have gotten lost in translation, it went effectively like “hahahahahahahahahaha!”
So arriving in Shanghai, I figured my mission would be fairly simple: deplane, find customs/immigration, then the ever popular and friendly luggage assistance office.
All goes according to my master plan but when I do get to said luggage help desk, the lad there tells me that there is no record of my bags being delayed or missing the flight, so I should get my butt back out there with the rest of the cattle grouped around the luggage carousel and wait for it.
In slightly more helpful terms, he tells me that it is carousel 10 that I should be huddled around as though one of the rest of the swine, packed together waiting for delectable slop to be doled out.
Humor me – I was tired and the change of news was both encouraging and dubious. I did not want to get my hopes up, but then again, I did not want to go on without my luggage.
So I go over to carousel 10 but, being a proud elite traveler I refuse to squeeze in between the other 300 people. After all, the sign on the carousel shows several other flights’ bags are here but not yet my flight. This is typical – bags coming from a newly arrived plane often take a long time, presumably because they must first be throw, dropped, kicked, stepped on, crushed, squeezed, manhandled and otherwise put through various means of torture prior to release to their anxious owners, and all this takes time, you see. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well, and certainly this is the motto of baggage handlers world-wide.
On the long walk from the plane to where I am now, I had noticed that my feet were not feeling as nice and comfy as they usually are. Standing in place waiting for luggage with little else to do, I notice my feet are getting somewhat insistent that something isn’t quite right. I debate whether I should sit on the floor and remove my shoes and socks to investigate but it has been a while since I did have those shoes off, this is a foreign land, and were my actions to evoke concern or even panic it would not help me reclaim my luggage, and so I thought it best to keep potential foot funk locked safely away for the time being.
Soon I notice that the crowd is thinning rather quickly. While the signage about flights’ bags hasn’t changed I do notice that the noisy women sitting in the same row as I suddenly get up and grab their bags. So clearly I am being misinformed by the carousel flight readout. This once again raises hopes – surely if they can get THAT wrong, they could be wrong about my bags not being on that flight. I creep closer to the carousel.
30 minutes later I’m the only one left, now trying to remember whether one of the remaining parcels or bags that has gone by me is the same one I think I recall from the last circuit. Once so convinced, I head back into the luggage office to fill out a form.
These forms, incidentally, have the helpful title of “Property Irregularity Report.” I must say that the means by which the system degrades the urgency of your “where the hell did you lose my underwear?!?!?” with ambiguous descriptions such as “property irregularity” is quite ingenuous.
Instilled with the confidence that all will be ok now that bureaucracy is focused intently on my problem, I begin my exit of the airport. Next mission: find the driver who has been allegedly procured by SAP Labs to drive me to the hotel.
Exiting the controlled baggage reclaim area, I next find myself walking the gauntlet toward the exit. There are people on both sides of a somewhat narrow cordoned-off lane that one must bravely parade through in order to find true freedom at the exit. I took a picture of the guy in front of me who seemed to have lost his luggage as well.
Of the 100s of people situated along the sides of this lane, many have signs. Some of these signs are readable to me, and some are in scripts and calligraphy that I cannot interpret. I’m hoping that the driver is (a) here and (b) using a language I’ll understand to signal his presence. And indeed, he does, using a combination of English and HTML. I wish I had gotten a picture of this – it made me chuckle at this blatant indicator of how technology doesn’t always simplify communication.
The sign, in hastily-scrawled, hand-written letters that were arched down as they made their way across the page, probably because they were written on the paper as it was draped over the driver’s leg in the car while he was driving is the following: “Hamilton, Scott ”
For those who do not know, the is code for non-breaking space, used most often in HTML. Someone must have highlighted my name in a web page, copied that to the clipboard, then posted it into some other messaging media like SMS text or text-based email and sent to the driver a little extra info without noticing. The driver, probably thinking that these crazy foreign names can take all shapes and sizes, likely had no idea whether it was legit or not. And since he didn’t speak English, there was no way to confirm or deny my suspicions.
With driver identified, it was a quick trek to his car, and then began our ride to the hotel.
 |
| So close. |
After digesting that and saying “no matter, nothing I can do about it” I soon thereafter got a message from the universe. While something may have gotten lost in translation, it went effectively like “hahahahahahahahahaha!”
So arriving in Shanghai, I figured my mission would be fairly simple: deplane, find customs/immigration, then the ever popular and friendly luggage assistance office.
All goes according to my master plan but when I do get to said luggage help desk, the lad there tells me that there is no record of my bags being delayed or missing the flight, so I should get my butt back out there with the rest of the cattle grouped around the luggage carousel and wait for it.
In slightly more helpful terms, he tells me that it is carousel 10 that I should be huddled around as though one of the rest of the swine, packed together waiting for delectable slop to be doled out.
Humor me – I was tired and the change of news was both encouraging and dubious. I did not want to get my hopes up, but then again, I did not want to go on without my luggage.
So I go over to carousel 10 but, being a proud elite traveler I refuse to squeeze in between the other 300 people. After all, the sign on the carousel shows several other flights’ bags are here but not yet my flight. This is typical – bags coming from a newly arrived plane often take a long time, presumably because they must first be throw, dropped, kicked, stepped on, crushed, squeezed, manhandled and otherwise put through various means of torture prior to release to their anxious owners, and all this takes time, you see. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well, and certainly this is the motto of baggage handlers world-wide.
On the long walk from the plane to where I am now, I had noticed that my feet were not feeling as nice and comfy as they usually are. Standing in place waiting for luggage with little else to do, I notice my feet are getting somewhat insistent that something isn’t quite right. I debate whether I should sit on the floor and remove my shoes and socks to investigate but it has been a while since I did have those shoes off, this is a foreign land, and were my actions to evoke concern or even panic it would not help me reclaim my luggage, and so I thought it best to keep potential foot funk locked safely away for the time being.
Soon I notice that the crowd is thinning rather quickly. While the signage about flights’ bags hasn’t changed I do notice that the noisy women sitting in the same row as I suddenly get up and grab their bags. So clearly I am being misinformed by the carousel flight readout. This once again raises hopes – surely if they can get THAT wrong, they could be wrong about my bags not being on that flight. I creep closer to the carousel.
30 minutes later I’m the only one left, now trying to remember whether one of the remaining parcels or bags that has gone by me is the same one I think I recall from the last circuit. Once so convinced, I head back into the luggage office to fill out a form.
These forms, incidentally, have the helpful title of “Property Irregularity Report.” I must say that the means by which the system degrades the urgency of your “where the hell did you lose my underwear?!?!?” with ambiguous descriptions such as “property irregularity” is quite ingenuous.
Instilled with the confidence that all will be ok now that bureaucracy is focused intently on my problem, I begin my exit of the airport. Next mission: find the driver who has been allegedly procured by SAP Labs to drive me to the hotel.
Exiting the controlled baggage reclaim area, I next find myself walking the gauntlet toward the exit. There are people on both sides of a somewhat narrow cordoned-off lane that one must bravely parade through in order to find true freedom at the exit. I took a picture of the guy in front of me who seemed to have lost his luggage as well.
 |
| It was just like this, except different. |
The sign, in hastily-scrawled, hand-written letters that were arched down as they made their way across the page, probably because they were written on the paper as it was draped over the driver’s leg in the car while he was driving is the following: “Hamilton, Scott ”
For those who do not know, the is code for non-breaking space, used most often in HTML. Someone must have highlighted my name in a web page, copied that to the clipboard, then posted it into some other messaging media like SMS text or text-based email and sent to the driver a little extra info without noticing. The driver, probably thinking that these crazy foreign names can take all shapes and sizes, likely had no idea whether it was legit or not. And since he didn’t speak English, there was no way to confirm or deny my suspicions.
With driver identified, it was a quick trek to his car, and then began our ride to the hotel.
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