So I’m at Singapore’s splendiforous Changi International airport waiting for S to arrive from Jakarta. Before I left for Vietnam, S and I had done some “pre-planning” on how we’d meet up in Singapore for continuing down to Sydney. As I’d be flying from Saigon with budget carrier Tiger Airways, it was decided that I’d fly down to Singapore the day before so that there’d be no risk of me missing the onwards flight to Sydney due to delays or cancellations out of Saigon. For S, no such insurances were deemed necessary and a mere 50 minutes between the arrival of her flight from Jakarta and the departure to Sydney would be loads of time…
Needless to say S’s flight was late into Changi and arrived at gate F52, while the flight to Sydney departed from gate E3 — I believe there are some gates further apart but I was unable to find them…
I’d had a few hours to figure this out. The drinks in Singapore are oddly cheapest inside the international terminal ($9 for a beer Vs $12 in the outside world) so in my bar hopping it dawned on me that S would have only 50 minutes to disembark, walk about 1km, check-in and get onto our flight — that seems like plenty of time, but the arrival time is when the plane hits the tarmac and the departure gate closes ten minutes beforehand, so assumming S was first out of the plane, we’d only have 30 minutes maximum for the connection. I started to get myself into what S would call “a tizz”.
This was of course before S’s plane was late.
Also, working on my mind was S’s earlier post on the baby blog about her exploding — so I was expecting a seriously belly-enhanced S.
Plus she was bringing my laptop, which I figured she wouldn’t be too happy sprinting through the airport with.
So taking all this onboard, I wandered over to one of the assistance desks and explained the situation to the ever-friendly staff at Changi. I asked if 30 minutes would be sufficient for S to make the connection. What I really wanted was for them to give us one of those little go-go cars to zoom us between the two gates…
“I think 30 minutes should be fine sir”, the helful assistant said..”as long as she doesn’t have checked baggage it should be fine.”
Damn – luggage — I hadn’t even begun to panic about that!
“But she’s heavily pregnant” I replied, going on to suggest that perhaps she wouldn’t be up to sprinting.
“Oh I see sir.” I have the woman’s full attention now and I can see she’s doing the math in her head 1km, 20minutes, 8.5 months pregnant…
“How pregant is she?” she asked?
“Six months” I reply.
The woman’s face changes immediately –the flurry of panic that flashed across her face five seconds earlier vanishes (as does my chance of a ride in the all-lights-ablaze-sizens-blaring go-go car) — and is replaced by a warm smile as she thinks — ah, so sweet — a first time daddy — they really do know nothing…
“She’ll be fine sir”
And we were.