Statue of Puberty

Why would you bet on anything you have no clue or control on whatsoever. Like this boy, who on a cold winter morning in Wales haplessly placed a bet with his classmate on the varied force of nature. By the time it was afternoon his sister came looking for him in school to find him sitting in the breezy chill of the day on a lonesome park bench. She asked him, “What on earth is wrong with you? Why are you sitting here in the cold?” to which her brother meekly responded “I had a bet with Roy this morning. The bet was that if I urinated on my seat, the urine would freeze and I wouldn’t be able to get up. And well, he won the bet.” “Sis, would you happen to have a match?”

I wouldn’t do something as stupid and frivolously benign (I think). I’m sure none of us would too (I think). But lets take the case of this air cargo shipment fiasco that came to be 4 years back. The cargo to be shipped was live food stock (Chickens & Goats – both alive). One of my acquaintances (not so direct), was an aircraft maintenance engineer (AME) with that shipment firm and was filling his duties to fix a section of the ATR engine which went bust on the last landing. He placed a bet with the crew that he would fix it in a couple of hours. Now, the crew who he was quite pally with, wanted him to come onboard. He wasn’t really keen of course. And so the bet was raised that if he didn’t fix the engines in 2 hours, he would fly with them. As luck would have it, It took him just over a whole day to figure the issue out. (Unlike some Nepali engineers who preferred sacrificing goats to make their airplane fly – Link). When he finally did manage to fix it (traditional AME style) he had no option but to hitch a ride to the destination drop point i.e. Sydney, Australia.

There began their epic journey, the pilot, co-pilot, 4 to 5 crew members and our fellow friend who fixed the airplane engine(s) and lost the bet. The rest of the aircraft was filled with cargo i.e live fowl and goats. About midway through the journey high over the Indian Ocean, one of the engines scuffled in and decided to move into low revs. Within minutes the other one bellowed and folded in too. Panic struck the crew as they scampered to figure their jump & p’shoot options. Our fellow AME friend in the meanwhile inspected the engine (no airborne acrobatics, just data gathering). He realized that the load was a bit too much and that the engines would be in working order if the load came down to a bare supplement.

They unanimously turned around to look at the hapless herd of fowl & goat with vicious beady eyes. They almost carried that “I’m gonna throw you off this plane” look. Little did these poor animals know what was in store for them. They were happily looking forward to being on someones dinner table, but now instead stood to live a massive free fall into the almost infinite Indian Ocean. In desperate last minute crib sessions, some Fowl shouted at their elders for not giving them flight lessons. As far as the goats were concerned, they had no hope really, except that they heavily out-numbered and out-weighed the crew members.

Now, my friend (AME) wasn’t really a heavy builder, well actually far from it. He was once blown to the other side of the hall when a test steamer engine blew out a shaft of excess steam, while his fellow team combed their messy hair and tried to salvage him from the broken plates stored at the back of the hall (he was heavy enough to break some China). Coming back to this airborne fowl play, the goats as I said were huge ass meat balls by themselves, they easily outweighed our fellow scrawny AME twice over (also explains the load). But he and the crew somehow did manage to struggle past pulling them down to the open hangar (the crew strapped in belts of course) and mercilessly pushed each meat ball into the ocean.

Now we’ve seen frogs (or tadpoles) showering in from the skies above and sometimes schools of fish too (Link), but imagine the plight of some innocent wandering ships and their crew when they see thunderous showers of goats and chickens falling down on them (and some of them brave souls alive … if free fall didn’t shock them to death). We don’t really know if this happened, but I can’t help but imagine the state of shock that these seamen would have been in when their ship in pretense had been belted by these huge ass goats and fowl. Imagine this scene where the seamen are having dinner in their open air diner, cribbing as usual to the chef that their chicken and meat are stale and stink, when that huge ton of a goat comes crashing into their plates, takes down the table and bores a hole three layers down to their ship’s cold storage. “Take that for fresh meat!!”.

News has it (since our friend AME lived to tell this tale), that they did manage to bellow out each and every goat and fowl from the aircraft, which got the ATR to rev up and land on the nearest coastal airbase, where he was almost fired by his overseas bosses. He told me that he quit that job a few weeks later and has been since working as a back-office systems engineer in a seafood shipment firm (more on flying lobsters, crabs and fish in the next post).

When he narrated this story to me, I couldn’t help but recount the story of the Nepali Goat sacrifice (Link), spelling out the fact that he should actually have sacrificed a couple of goats before the plane took off. This way, he could have fixed the aircraft, won the bet, wouldn’t have had to travel to Aussi and of course could have skipped the firing line, not to mention the majority of fowl and goats would have managed to fall into dinner tables in the manner they had hoped for before the flight took off.

He laughed it out and a couple of “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes later told me that one of the crew members with him on that fateful flight actually moved out from that shipping company. He now works with Nepal Airlines.

“Have a good one sir”, said Taylor, the pretty security lady at the airport. The good lady directed me to the second of the baggage claim areas for Northwest, which for some crazy reason was next to neverland, behind three other airlines baggage retrieval areas. Call this bad positioning or call this a sadist attempt at being creative in life or simply call it c’giri. The claim area arrangement was like this,

Gate 1 – Northwest Airlines – Flight 467
Gate 2 – Delta Air – Flight blaah1
Gate 2b – Delta Air – Flight blaah1
Gate 3 – British Air – Flight blaah2
Gate 4 – Blaah Airways – Flight blaah3
Gate 5 – Northwest Airlines – Flight 467

What the f$#$ man!!! After 18 hours of fly-time and 6000+miles added to my frequent flyer program, this!!

Oh but we did have some good enjoyable traps with Jack Daniels and Dewar’s White Label pouring thru the flight. It’s funny though how the drinks flow in the aircraft (OR rather how you’re treated when you casually ask for one more peg AND more so when you ask the same steward(ess)). If you’re in normal economy you will be given the cold stare followed by the nod which presumably says Yes (without the Sire). The economy class for a frequent flyer is much better though. This fact, the huge drunkard dude sitting next to me realized in the first 2 hours of flight (… I didn’t get the stares of course … I was a FF … well, except maybe from the odd desi chicks who it seems were looking at a six-footer Indian male in a plane for the first time … I checked my fly … all fine … no kiddin … they were just very freakin amused … no funny stuff hanging out anywhere … I’m generally good in planes and closed claustrophobic areas … hmm, I can market meself to with these thoughts).

Of course, I couldn’t help but stare at a beau meself. She looked like a cross between Jodie Foster and Cameroon Diaz with Jodie’s eyes and Camy’s jaw-line. Fortunately the rest of her attributes were tribute to her ma n (biological) pa, one would think. But anyways, most of us thought she was better looking than the two actresses combined. Now all the ladies in the house would want to know how we collectively came to this conclusion, righto? Well, we have our ways … it generally ranges from subtle movements in facial expressions to very callous but joyful forms of male expressiveness.

Some guys would go … “whoaaaaaaaaa meaaaaaan … whaadaa chik man”

While some others would pull a meekly “hey man … check her out”, Apoo n Me prefer to be dicreet in matters like this and generally don’t raise eyebrows and related body parts. Iyer, starts putting his best Sanjeev Kumar face and prepares to burn fuel (after he’s finished checking the guys out first). Bird would call for another peg. Alap, in the mean time will be coming back to us with the pretty’s number, mother’s maiden name, msn id etc. Fortunately/Unfortunately for her, on this flight it was only me and a few other dudes who would fall in apoo n bird categories. So the only shots that came about were multiple shots of liquor calls and the subtle stares of course.

Ko … so that was some good hours spent on the airplane going thru MUM-AMS-DET

And then came Detroit Airport, where sweetie pie Taylor helped my blind ass get my baggage. Hugs and blessings to you Taylor.

Before I even reached the baggage area though, I had to go through the immigration checks which happens to everybody who’s not a US citizen. Apparently, the rest of the world and by that I mean Asians alone and within that the brownies only are conveniently assumed to be terrorists, unless of course you prove otherwise. And so began my scrutiny. They took both index finger prints (left and right of course … how many more do you think I have) and also took a retinal imprint.

Now folks at the counter, I’m not gonna change my hands the next I come to this land. Yea yea, I know the retinal scans stand more for future arrangements, of times when you enter doors on the basis of ur retinal prints … blah blaahhghoo …

yea dudes … but common knowledge says this about me (in case you haven’t heard … it’s even come out in newspapers some say). I’m pitch black blind and I may choose to go for a brand new pair of eyes next week man … what do you do when I come again to this land and you find out that my finger print crosses against some Scottish drunkard. Would I be penalized? Or asked to go back home or stand in the corner on one leg? Or be asked to replace my old eye and enter? Or show proof that I didn’t kill the Scottish?

Yes I’m going too far with this I know (and I was kiddin bout me eyes too … god forbid that should never happen to me man). Also, for this to come from a techno freak is even bad. But I just wanted to pull one on the officer who interviewed me. This was the funniest conversation I had with a presumed non-techie.

Ok now, I’m primarily a functional lead analyst with my company in Mumbai and my purpose of visit stands purely for meetings n discussions over an enterprise wide application. We have to transition a process running here in the US, down to India . In simpler words … “I’m getting a process down to India ”

And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, but as luck would have it, it ended up being a fun filled tech babble yap … wait … not from me … but from Mr. IthinkIKnowItAll (or IthinkICanSpellDanger) Officer.

I’ll post the exact conversation (in classic conversation mode in the next post … this one’s getting a bit too long anyways)

But after the conversation or interview or scrutiny or whatever the crap that was, I came out (despite the fact that I got my i94 signed) a loser (think I lost weight too) and Mr. IthinkIKnowItAll Officer came out impressed with his assumed astute knowledge of technology. Also, he was so damn impressed by the work I do back home … mann he went nuts. He showed me out of the immigration area like I was some VIP … all the way out. I figured he was gay or just simply impressed by his own misinformation on himself.

What was good enough to cheer me up after this entire fiasco though was that I was not a terrorist. Only for a brief moment though, after which I reached the confused baggage claim area and all the blah happened there. The rest of the journey went well till I reached gate A21 (after 25 minutes of walking across the airport) for my final flight to Charlotte . Luck had good things in store for me there too … a part of it was being stuck in the aircraft (yes inside the grounded aircraft) for 5 hours and the plane was not even being hijacked or something … no fun man.

I may choose to write about this 5 hour fiasco too in another post as it seems I’ve run out of ink and wo.d. ma. st.. .lo.i.g h..cef…h

All in all, it was an eventful journey, with sweet Taylor , Unnamed hot Blondie, Fat Drunkard, Mr. IWillThinkOfNewSadNamesForYouEverytimeIRemeberThisIncident Officer, my Retina and my Angoota Chaap on electronic machines and of course yes The Smooth Scotch.

More gifts for the person who gets the dots in “wo.d. ma. st.. .lo.i.g h..cef…h” filled.