travel snafus

a recurring theme this weekend. our new travel agent consultant, i've now realised, needs actual checking over her work, so now i've learned my own lesson too. thankfully there are systems in place and once you get past a certain socioeconomic level, with the available infrastructure, things can be done very efficiently here, so no mistake has been that grave. but adoi. now i'm awake on a sunday. but at least people are on their flights!

but regardless, there is something abt work travel esp when you have other people facilitating your logistics that makes you very trusting of the process. i remembered happily getting to the airport in singapore only to find out tht the tix booked for me was for the day before. thankfully, i had my pathetic face and the fact there were available seats on the flights tht day, because somehow i got given a space on the next available flight without any sort of penalty. and i wasn't too worried, because singapore was nearby anyway. i've done it to others too, except in this one case it was for the long stay professional visa (1 yr), and it was more like i didn't send a reminder to this scholar of his visa expiry date and he booked a flight a week after expiry. I remembered his call from the airport when I was out on the field/outstation myself, and i was about to take a shower and nowhere near the office. thankfully he was a foreigner and a white american and he did take a trip down south earlier that month, so he managed to argue that he's well within the 3-month tourist visa, and he was leaving anyway. that particular job involved a lot of little stories like this. for one thing it taught me our immigration really didn't care for facilitating travels for afghan nationals.

in terms of personal travels... i remembered rushing through heathrow to my gate because i genuinely forgot how long security theatre can take. lawl. and my bestie hasn't quite forgiven me for nearly getting us stranded in siem reap because i misplaced our airport tax money. the fact that it wasn't stolen because i found it months later was something she didn't find funny at all. (back when we didn't realise we should've turned on the foreign ATM function, but otoh in that old job we had partners in the city so i borrowed money from them. >.> a genuine cool cucumber who was nearly getting her body sold according to her bestie, me.)