When Humans Fly.

Recently, I was on a 16 hour flight - yes, one of those international flights from one end of the world to half way around. Only a couple of hours before that, I had to fly from Orlando to New York. A comparatively short trip you would think but, and I am sure you have experienced something similar, leave alone heard about it, there was a small boy sitting in the seat right in front of me. He seemed to be about 4 and you know what happens when that is the case. And while that seems a normal occurrence, what do you do when, on top of all the child-antiques-in-an-airplane, the boy throws up - on the seat? Last thing I wanted was for him to stand on his seat facing me and throw up on me and luckily enough for me, that didn't happen - although he did regularly stand up on his seat to give me a smile.

Anyways, as if that wasn't enough, I had to do 16 more hours of flying and I was here at the New York Airport watching the Italy vs Paraguay World Cup match, waiting for boarding to start and thankfully, it wasn't a long wait.

What happened next? Well, it was just the normal routine flight until I found out that yet again, there were children sitting in the seat in front of me - not to say that made the flight any exciting. And not one, but there were two children! They didn't really bother me though and honestly, I think they only added to my experience. They were cute and always wanted to know what I was watching on my so called TV screen. As usual, I didn't get enough sleep in the airplane owing, I like to think, to the lack of leg room. The mildly exciting part came when we landed at the Frankfurt Airport - an hour halt before resuming the journey again.

The runway at the Frankfurt Airport was so good, it made an unpaved, muddy dirt road, look bad. Ok, so we were taxied to a gate on Terminal C and even though we had to continue our flight in the same plane, we were asked to 'leave it alone' for a while, a break, I am sure all parties involved enjoyed - including the plane. We were told to go to gate 54, Terminal B. We did as said. And guess what? After 45 minutes, they tell us a bus will be taking us to the plane. Fine. But what most people failed to notice was that the bus took us to the same gate in Terminal C where we had got off the plane. What was the point of making us walk between Terminals? None that I can think of. What I was thinking about over anything else was that I had just missed a perfect opportunity for a Home-Alone style adventure. Incidentally, one of the passangers, not me of course, decided to put thoughts into actions! We waited and waited for a while until it was announced that "Mr. X's baggage is being removed from the plane for security reasons since he seems to have failed to find a way back to the plane." I will admit, I couldn't help but laugh.

The rest of the flight was uneventful although I have a lot to talk about but I am just going to leave it here. I am trying to read Frankenstein right now - summer homework you see. Apparently, breaks are for teachers and not students.

Au Revoir, mes amis!

Writings on Stone

Sometimes I wonder if all the people I have met, remember me, think about me. And thinking about it, I wonder if the friends I am creating memories with, right now, will remember me a few decades later. Will we be able to recall inside jokes? Or talk for hours about some funny incident in high school that had got everyone laughing? And in wondering, I create what 'looks-like-a-poem' while having a shower - as always, can't be more creative any other time - and here it is - for you, and for all my friends:

a rooster crows. the moon shines.
in an attempt to pass the few seconds in between,
i engrave in stone; myself, my imagination, everything,
the world around me - as i see it.
but, i was told, today, that stone erodes -
and with it, the writings on it.

will You remember me?
long after the writings are gone,
long after the moon rises;
until the rooster crows again;
until, someday, our paths cross again,
will You remember me?