fragileheart's journal

I was chatting with a friend on gtalk the other day and was, as usual, complaining about work. He mentioned something about wishing he had a billion dollars and my imagination went on overdrive. I was suddenly filled with hopeful spleandor at the thought of not having to worry about money.

I realised too that it was something I had never thought about, mostly because of my roots and the fact that I know I’ll have to work for money for the rest of my life – and I had accepted that. I like working; I just wish I was paid more. But that’s besides the point.

My instinctual fantasy was this:
I’d bartend in a cute little Irish Pub with regulars consisting of all sorts of people¹ from all walks of life, in Greece². I’d want to work Monday to Thursday 9am to 5pm³ and have my evenings and weekends off. Notice the four day work week? This is a fantasy after all.

Then I started building on this fantasy:
In the evening and on the weekends, I’d spend time on my yacht sailing around the islands or off in my plane where I can go sky diving. After work in the evenings, I’d walk through the vineyard⁴ and then down to the cellar and pick out a nice bottle of red for dinner. I’d cook my own meals and probably have seafood every night⁵… lobster, crab, mussels, fish, scallops⁶ and of course my absolute favourite shrimp!

Thinking this way put a huge smile on my face… a smile that has been missing from my face for a long time now. This chat with my friend made me realise what it was that I was missing from my life. I had somehow lost the one thing that kep me going through everything that I ever go through. Losing this had caused me to become bitter and even whiny⁷. Now I just have to try and hold on to my hope. Its the first time in a really⁸ long time that I had lost it so I wasn’t really sure what I was missing until now.

I have my friend to thank, but he’s going to remain anonymous because I’m not sure he’d want to be advertised… but thank you.

What would you do if you had a billion dollars?

Footnotes:

1. of all ages[↩]
2. I’ve always wanted to go[↩]
3. because having to wait until 11 to drink is ridiculous[↩]
4. mine[↩]
5. I’m living in Greece for crying out loud[↩]
6. though maybe not as often[↩]
7. ask my twitter followers, they’ll tell you I’ve been whiny lately[↩]
8. like at least 11 years[↩]

I ran out of the plane as soon as I was able, but I shouldn’t have bothered because there was no way I was catching my plane. And even if I had caught my plane, there was no way my bags would have made it on the plane with me. Once I got to the Air Canada ticket desk I was put on standby for the night flight out to Toronto. After an hour and half, we¹ found out that flight was full. So they put us on standby for the next flight… to Montreal². After more running/speed walking I reached gate 27 to find out if they can get me on. Oh and if I may interrupt myself  for a second, who taught the English to count? Why the hell does gate 27 *not* come after gate 26? It went 24, 26, 25, 28, 29 and then 27 or something ridiculous like that. Sure they weren’t all on the same side, but even then it didn’t make sense!

Anyway, once all the passengers were on the plane the lady at the gate typed away at her keyboard for about 15 mintues.  Once she was done, she walked over to the girl beside me and told her that the plane was full and that they³ would have to get her on the next flight. I was only slightly relieved because it was a flight to Montreal and with the way the day had been going, I was expecting another delay. But I wasn’t expecting this…

I walked into the cabin and walked briskly by the first class cabin as I assumed there was no way my seat would be in there – even though it clearly stated on my ticket that I was in 04F- Aisle Seat. I only realised when I walked into the business cabin that started at row 12. So I had to walk back and interrupt the snobs in First Class. I was embarrassed and flustered, and suddenly everything seemed foreign to me. I couldn’t even find the bloody overhead compartment! I signaled to one of the guys in neon vests to help me put up my suitcase when a voice behind me said, “Yes”. I think he meant it to say, “Yes, that is where your suitcase goes”. Feeling even more embarrassed now I pulled open the compartment and attempted to put my case in. It wouldn’t fit, so I opened my expanded case and took out my coat just in time for the guy to come over and put it in the over-head compartment for me.

Thankfully, after the three hour delay we spent on the tarmac, the rest of the flight continued mostly without incident⁴. I would like to go on about how great it was to be able to sit in first class but the endless delays and hassle caused by Air Canada strongly overshadow the exprience. After arriving in Montreal, going through customs and checking in again I realised that despite being delayed in Heathrow for almost five hours, my bags still didn’t make it in with me.

Once my delayed⁵ flight landed in Toronto, I went to the customer service desk in the baggage claim area and filed a report. They gave me a little card with the tracking information and off I went. I was home. 10 1/2 hours later than I was originally scheduled. We got home at 2am, and the sight of my room made the nightmare more real. I was 3,200miles away from the love of my life again. I had just had an exhausting day and I couldn’t even comfort myself by sinking into his arms.

My only saving grace was that I didn’t have to go into work for another two days. Two days that I had planned on using to unpack, do laundry and re-organise my room and my things⁶ but I couldn’t do any of that. My cases arrived four days after I arrived, just in time for the weekend and the drama was over.

And so ends my holiday tale; have you ever been on a dream holiday that ended in disaster?

Posts in this series:
Part 1: The holiday.
Part 2: The gift.
Part 3: The New Year.
Part 4: Flickr Friday: The never-ending story.
Part 5: Even the never-ending journey has to end sometime⁷.

Footnotes:

1. there were about 8 other people in my situation[↩]
2. insert eye-roll here[↩]
3. Air Canada[↩]
4. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for those who were in economy – I slept during the delay[↩]
5. yet again[↩]
6. of course, I’m just obsessing now because at least I was able to unwind instead[↩]
7. you are here[↩]

This is a bit of an old story, but I’ve had a busy weekend so this is all you get.

xMoniquex wanted to know about my bus ride home from my recent trip to NYC (read journal entries 1, 2 & 3) when I proclaimed that it wasn’t that great on July 7. So I’m dedicating this post to her…

I should’ve seen it as an omen that the bus ride home wasn’t going to be as smooth as the ride over to New York. And I was expecting that I wouldn’t get much sleep on the bus after I discovered that both my Bubble and I had misread the information on where the bus would be leaving from. Granted my worst fear of being packed in like sardines wasn’t realised but having to be semi-aware the whole overnight ride wasn’t that much better.

The bus driver was a really nice guy, but he drove like a maniac. The bus wasn’t that packed so I was able to get two seats all to myself, which meant that I could fold up my legs, lean them up against the window and lay my back flat on the two seats. This was great during the ride over because there was quite a bit of traffic so he couldn’t drive that fast on the curvy highway. But because it was an overnight bus, there wasn’t that much traffic so he was zipping by at a kazillion miles an hour around all the bends. This meant that every now and the bus would jerk and the image of my ass firmly hitting the ground and the entire bus laughing at me would periodically invade my dream of the private concert xJohn Mayerx was holding for me.

It wasn’t the worst that could’ve happened, but it did mean that when I got home all I could do was sleep some more and I’m pretty sure that messed up my chances of getting the interview with the new lead the placement agency has been trying to get for me – because I couldn’t call her to tell her when I was available when I was asleep, now could I? Of course, I probably could’ve called when I woke up at noon, but I forgot.

Of course, this happened a while ago… so forgetting to call the agency isn’t that big of a deal anymore. ;P

Photos above are from my July 4th 2008 weekend trip to NYC.

Having a terrible memory is part of the reason why I need to keep a journal. The last time I made this trip, I also took this long ass bus journey but for some reason I have no recollection of the events during the trip let alone the bus ride down! I mean, sure, it was 7 years ago but shouldn’t I remember something?!

I have photographs that prove I was here and what we did… but no other memory of the time. Of course, I know why I have these lapses in memory but it’s still seems strange to me. It used to be just childhood memories that I had no recollection of. People would tell me stories of things I did when I was little and I’d listen to them as if I was hearing them for the first time.

Does anyone else suffer from this?

As I continue to write this list a part of me is glad that I don’t have my laptop with me because I have yet to buy a new battery since my original battery doesn’t hold a charge that lasts longer than 10 minutes (on a good day). Of course there’ll always be that part of me that will always prefer to have my laptop with me at all times so I can check emails, blog, and read other’s blogs. But it was great being able to get some thoughts down to paper.

Something can really be said for good ol’ Pen & Paper and your own handwriting. However ugly from the road’s rocky-smoothness guiding your hand in directions it doesn’t want to go. In fact it seems the more the world seems to spin towards the electronic word, the more I seem to want to be able to sit down and write things down the old fashioned way.

I would hate to see a world where no one wrote anything by hand anymore.  Our handwrtiing style says so much about who we are, who would be become if we stopped handwriting?

Unrelated announcement: There’s a (long, drawn out) contest featured in my last post. Check out the comments to see how to enter.