Time to refresh my cantolish. 14 months in Macau made me quite an expert in Cantolish-English spoken the Cantonese way, fairly simple…just construct your English sentences in the simplest form possible and alternately punctuate your sentences with “la” and “wor”. Now here in Hong Kong, to hear and to be able to speak it again after 3 years of not doing so is quite a treat, if only I didn’t have to worry about bringing my ass to Japan before the day ends.
The girl who met us upon our arrival assisted us to the transfer desk. She explained that since we missed our flight to Haneda, she will be having us transferred to another flight that would depart roughly 1 hour and 40 minutes later than our original flight. We asked if we could be transferred to a flight to Narita since this is our ultimate destination, we were told that the next flight to Narita will depart a little before midnight and will reach Narita at around 5:00am the next day. Not a good option because our class will start at 9:00am.
This trip was sponsored by our client airline in Japan, thus they have the right to know about our whereabouts. So while waiting for our turn to be checked in on our next flight, we told the nice lady from Cathay Pacific that we need to make a phone call to Japan. Unfortunately, I failed to activate my mobile phone’s roaming, under the assumption that it will be automatically activated. After we were given our new boarding passes, we were each given complimentary prepaid phone cards. Each card was good for a 10-minute international phone call. We were told that we needed to proceed to the boarding gate area where we could find phone booths.
Sir Eric immediately tried to call Japan using the phone booths; he was not successful and had thought the complimentary call card was no good so he went to the information counter to ask for help. After he vacated the phone booth, I tried using my call card and called home. I was able to talk to my mom and told her not to worry. After my short call to my mom, I followed Sir Eric to the information desk. He was not able to talk to our contact person in Haneda, Ms. Mari. Instead he spoke with a colleague of Ms. Mari and was told that if we are to arrive at 9:00pm, there will no longer be a shuttle bus available to transport us to Narita. We were told to advise the agents at the boarding gate about this. We did as we were told and explained that we needed assistance for our transportation to Narita. The boarding gate agents committed that their staff in Haneda will take care of us.
In cases where in a disruption in the flight was caused by the airline, it is ok to ask for the things you need. But please be reasonable when asking for something:
- · You can ask to be transferred to another flight if the airline caused the misconnection, but please don’t ask to be accommodated in business class! You paid for an economy class seat after all. They did not mean to delay your flight.
- · You can ask to inform your meeting party that you will be delayed. Some airlines will ask you to write down the message and contact details of your meeting party, and then they will contact them for you. Other will just let you use a company provided mobile phone. Should this be the case, please be considerate enough to just call the person who needs to know about your situation. Call your meeting party and inform about the delay. Don’t call your boyfriend and ask if he has eaten, or call home to ask if your poodle has been brought for a walk by your sister.
- · Some cities don’t have 24-hour transport services, in cases like this, the airline would arrange for your transportation. Please don’t demand for a limousine service. All you need is to get to your final destination; you need not get there in style at the expense of the airline.
We boarded the flight and were seated away from each other. We were all given aisle seats. Luckily there was no one assigned to the seat next to me. The next aisle seat was assigned to Japanese. I was too tired to try to exchange pleasantries. And at the back of my mind, I was already thinking of asking the flight attendant as to what time they will serve the meals. I was feeling a little cold, maybe due to the fact that I am hungry, so I asked for a blanket. The aircraft did not have the video on demand kind of entertainment system. What they had was movies played on several channels and once it has already started, you cannot rewind it. I was able to watch half of an Ashton Kutcher film entitled Killers and half of Despicable Me.
Come meal service time, I was asked to choose between a chicken dish and a pork dish. I chose the mildly spicy ground pork dish. Butter and bread was available so I ate it first. Cold soba was also served. I noticed wasabi on top of the ramen and a packet of soba sauce. I immediately removed the wasabi before I placed the soba sauce. Ate the soba before eating my rice meal. I think I consumed 4 glasses of orange juice and went to the washroom thrice.
I was able to sleep for a little while before the announcement was made that our flight was arriving 15 minutes earlier than schedule and that we are already in the final descend.
Finally! I will be in the Land Of The Rising Sun on my next post!
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