Calamitous or Comical?

Well, it's 3 days later and I've arrived safe and sound into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after a journey that I will remember for a while. The day I left Toronto started off as Celine's birthday...Dec. 7th... and Caroline, Celine and I decided to go out for lunch for birthday celebrations/goodbyes. We made the trip to Yonge and Eg but once we got there things got weird....A woman, who had been standing on the sidewalk, had just been hit by a stolen car and the whole intersection had been closed down. Needless to say, I was immediately overwhelmed with the scene became a little stressed out and quite upset.

We made it to Starbucks, where Caroline treated Celine to a fancy birthday drink and decided to walk onwards to lunch at a really yummy burger place but as we were waiting to order, a man knocked Celine's entire drink off the counter and all over her shoes. Then we found out the grills weren't working and that we would have to wait a half hour. You think I'd be really really upset by all of this but I was keeled over laughing by how bad things had gone so far... probz because I didn't know what else to make of these series of events. Little did I know all of this was foreshadowing my trip.

I got to Pearson airport at 10:30 pm for my 1:30 am flight and I was checking in when Patsy, from Cathay Pacific, informed me that I wouldn't be able to get onto my plane because I only had a one-way ticket into Malaysia. So I produced the letter that was suppose to show that I was going to KL for work and that my visa had been approved but that didn't cut it. She asked for an onward ticket out of Malaysia AND LUCKILY I had one going to Indonesia for my cousin's wedding. "Good", she said, "You can print it out from the Cathay office in case they ask for an onward ticket in Malaysia". Unfortunately it was my Aunty Geeta, in Malaysia, that had booked this ticket for me so we frantically called her and she told us that she didn't have the e-ticket and that in fact, she had deleted it completely off her email but she had a hard copy with our booking reservation number......

"Shit." said my entire family.

We decided she would call her travel agent to get a copy forwarded, although it was a Saturday and this plan could definitely FAIL. In the mean time, I tried to plug my reservation number into an Air Asia app on my phone to see if it produced an e-ticket I could show Patsy. But instead of an e-ticket, I managed to check myself into my flight to Indonesia 2 weeks early (LOL / :-S)

Finally, my aunt emailed me the ticket and we took it to the counter where Pasty informed me that it was missing the TICKET NUMBER, i.e.the crucial part needed to confirm that it was a paid, onward ticket. After examining it for 10 minutes Patsy took me to the Cathay office where EVERY SINGLE computer was locked!!!!!!!!

Enter: Random Cathay woman who unlocked a computer.

Got the ticket on my email. Tried to print it out. Printer ran out of paper. Helped woman who did not know how to load paper, to load paper. Printed ticket and ran back down. Obtained my boarding pass and put bags on the scale. Both were over weight (AND I HAD TRIED SO HARD TO KEEP THEM UNDER WEIGHT). BUT - Patsy let them through (probably because it looked like I was going to cry)......

Went through security. Got taken aside and my bags were searched. Got to my gate where a crying child and his screaming grandmother awaited me. Could things get worse? Got paged at my gate. I was informed that my seat had a broken TV..... JUST WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO COLLAPSE ON THE GROUND IN A FIT OF ANGER and throw a temper tantrum about my life, I was told that they had moved me over a seat and blocked off the broken one next to me, so YES! I had 2 seats to myself  and that's when things changed :) I sat next to the nicest man who had kids that went to Havergal, I got a Hagendas bar for dessert, and my flight was incredibly smooth. I arrived into both locations (HK and KL) ahead of schedule AND Malaysia let me in with barely a glance at my passport. I was greeted by my cousin Tasha and my Aunty Geeta at the train station and after 3 hrs of Toronto stress + 14 hr flight + 3 hr of layover + 3 hr flight, all was well :)

Hong Kong Airport

While sitting on the airplane thinking through every little thing that went wrong, I found myself laughing instead of breaking down into tears....which is a good thing to know about myself ---  Looking back, it all seemed pretty comical and nothing I couldn't handle *muscle flex*.

My first sighting of KL from the Train into Sentral!