Comedy of Errors
So we arrived in Singapore at 12:30, 10 minutes earlier than scheduled. Hadi & I were booked a flight on ValuAir, an airline that I didn't think I've ever heard before but sounds rather familiar for some reason but not until we got on board that I realized why it sounded familiar.
The flight attendants wore black and orange and they had a star motif on their uniforms. An orange star. I began to suspect that my hunch was right and in the seat pockets there were the flight's safety manual and magazine.
JetStar. JetStar Asia to be exact.
Shock. Horror.
Their sister company is the most accident-prone Australian airline.
I've been booked to fly with JetStar.
While that obviously didn't turn out as bad as I thought, the bad came up elsewhere.
Singapore immigration couldn't process Hadi's passport and he had to go through a screening process which lasted probably 15-20 minutes, although I swear it felt a hell of a lot longer since we ended up being the last passengers to go through the gates and pick up our luggage.
The reason? Since his birth certificate didn't include a family name, his passport only has him as Hadi. The immigration officer told us his name was far too common so the software refused to let him through for fear of him being on the unwanted list.
Having three armed guards waiting outside immigration didn't exactly instill confidence though the whole thing seemed pretty comical to me. After all, it was his first trip overseas. Ever. he has never been outside Indonesia in his life. His very first passport was only granted barely a week ago and he already had to go through manual screening (thumb print!!)
When they finally let him go, there was another guy who was let out just a short while before him and he told me that that guy had damaged finger prints which gave the computer even more problem because it kept spitting out this whole list of different people trying to match his prints.
So anyway, we finally got out of immigration with our luggage and headed out to find the MRT station to go to the city. We got lost before a security guard told us the MRT is on Terminal 2. So much for looking in Terminal 1 so we took the Skytrain there. On Terminal 2, we walked all the way to the other end of the building only to find the station was back the other way, just a few meters from the Skytrain lounge.
The problems didn't end there though. We boarded the train heading to Boon Lay with a plan to get off at City Hall and transfer to Dhobi Ghaut. Two stations later nearly everyone got off leaving us rather puzzled. Soon as the train left, we found out why. It was going back towards Changi Airport. Off we got at the next stop to go back to where we were and transfer to the Boon Lay train. This time, it was smooth sailing. Or so we thought.
We got off at Dhobi Ghaut alright, except we can't figure out where to go next, so we called Jessica, a friend of ours, hoping to give us directions. She had no clue. I decided to take the lead and hope for the best. 10 minutes later, we were at the hotel, 3 hours late according to schedule.
Some smart guy told the hotel we would arrive at 11:30 am when in fact at that time we would be 30 thousand feet above the sea level inside a turbine-powered metal tube.
The flight attendants wore black and orange and they had a star motif on their uniforms. An orange star. I began to suspect that my hunch was right and in the seat pockets there were the flight's safety manual and magazine.
JetStar. JetStar Asia to be exact.
Shock. Horror.
Their sister company is the most accident-prone Australian airline.
I've been booked to fly with JetStar.
While that obviously didn't turn out as bad as I thought, the bad came up elsewhere.
Singapore immigration couldn't process Hadi's passport and he had to go through a screening process which lasted probably 15-20 minutes, although I swear it felt a hell of a lot longer since we ended up being the last passengers to go through the gates and pick up our luggage.
The reason? Since his birth certificate didn't include a family name, his passport only has him as Hadi. The immigration officer told us his name was far too common so the software refused to let him through for fear of him being on the unwanted list.
Having three armed guards waiting outside immigration didn't exactly instill confidence though the whole thing seemed pretty comical to me. After all, it was his first trip overseas. Ever. he has never been outside Indonesia in his life. His very first passport was only granted barely a week ago and he already had to go through manual screening (thumb print!!)
When they finally let him go, there was another guy who was let out just a short while before him and he told me that that guy had damaged finger prints which gave the computer even more problem because it kept spitting out this whole list of different people trying to match his prints.
So anyway, we finally got out of immigration with our luggage and headed out to find the MRT station to go to the city. We got lost before a security guard told us the MRT is on Terminal 2. So much for looking in Terminal 1 so we took the Skytrain there. On Terminal 2, we walked all the way to the other end of the building only to find the station was back the other way, just a few meters from the Skytrain lounge.
The problems didn't end there though. We boarded the train heading to Boon Lay with a plan to get off at City Hall and transfer to Dhobi Ghaut. Two stations later nearly everyone got off leaving us rather puzzled. Soon as the train left, we found out why. It was going back towards Changi Airport. Off we got at the next stop to go back to where we were and transfer to the Boon Lay train. This time, it was smooth sailing. Or so we thought.
We got off at Dhobi Ghaut alright, except we can't figure out where to go next, so we called Jessica, a friend of ours, hoping to give us directions. She had no clue. I decided to take the lead and hope for the best. 10 minutes later, we were at the hotel, 3 hours late according to schedule.
Some smart guy told the hotel we would arrive at 11:30 am when in fact at that time we would be 30 thousand feet above the sea level inside a turbine-powered metal tube.
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on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 at 12:26 AM.
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