Tagged it Up!

I am one excited girl...finally, I am going to be able to do my act of gawking at the magnificent Taj with open mouth, breath in the polluted air of the pink city Jaipur <* pls do not tell me how many minutes I will shorten my life by just doing that! *> and be a Delhite. Rolling out my luggage from the car, I bid Razzak goodbye and headed towards the departure hall. And so it all begins...

Arghhh...tags tags...I was turned away from the check-in counter cos I did not have a 'Security Checked' tag on my baggage...now where is that big baggage screening counter which my cork ed eye missed. "Mam, the plane will be delayed by 1.5 hours"...oh gosh...oh well this is India and plane delayed is a norm...at least it is not the 18 hours delay I had when I first came here! With the boarding pass safely tucked in my hands, I headed towards the departure gate. Oh my oh my...what a long queue...wonder what's happening...ah hand luggage screening...no probs...normal procedure..."thump"...stamp on my bag tag...oh...then guard signals me to join the women's line...huh...oh body x-ray...then a female officer waives some kind of scan gadget all over me..."thump"...another stamp on my boarding pass...oh.

No electronic departure boards...interesting...then I saw airline staffs running down the departure lounge corridors yelling to passengers to board their flights...then I heard very heavily Indian accented English over the speaker informing passengers on flight departures. Ok, I better not fall asleep! No wonder there are so many airline ground signs around so staff knows where to zero in to shout!!


"Where's your bag tag?"...oh no where's my tag...it must have dropped in the lounge...so I told the guard..."Dropped in the lounge". "No tag, no boarding. Go back to check-in counter". What...you kidding me...you want me to go through the whole security ordeal again...the queues are horribly long! "Next".

As I walked towards the check-in counter, head down feeling miserable, I stumbled upon a tag lying on the floor. Hhm...maybe this will do. So I picked it up, attached it to my bag and rejoined the queue. Nervously I showed the guard the tag and this time he smiled at me. Phew...finally...Spice Jet, here I come!!! To whoever that tag belongs to, I am so so SORRY!!!

My plane has wings...yippee!!! And it is an imposing Boeing 747. Well, the thing being my boss was shocked when he found out I bought my ticket from Spice Jet 'just like that' from the airport without knowing anything about the airline let alone knew it existed. I told him "They looked ok - had the Virgin Blue feel, the cheapest and accept international credit card!". He said "Nicole, you better make sure they got wings to fly you there!!!"