Give me Shelter

All my anxiety came true. Flight delay Toronto to Frankfurt – 3 hours, with 1.5 hours layover in Frankfurt I knew it would be a true miracle if that plane had waited for me. Couldn’t believe Air Canada still served a full meal at 1am – why? I declined since I wanted to get some sleep even though my agent had ordered a special meal for me and he didn’t tell me about it. For breakfast while everyone ate their high carb filled muffin at 11am while I munched on a small dried up vegan bagel – could have called it mini hockey puck with frozen butter and jam. Couldn’t win here... speaking of hockey puck, I was sitting beside Daniel, the cousin of Joanas Gustavson - Leafs Goalie’s from Sweden. He was really quizzing me about our hockey culture and why we don’t punish a bad team and pushing them into the AAA hockey team if they don’t play well like they do in Sweden. Anyone help me? I tried to manage but my knowledge of hockey and I pretended to sleep. John or anyone going to Stockholm you are invited to a hockey game compliments of Gustavson’s family.

At Frankfurt Lufthansa was kind enough to book me on a flight to Dubai where I would pick up a flight to Mumbai. But it was 5 hours late... I am not winning here today. It was the oldest Retro Lufthansa plane ever... they still had head sets and eating trays with coup holder and old TV screen in the middle of the isle and soft pastel seats like they did in mid 70’s.. Didn’t matter to me, another flight in the right direction, more bad food and more sleep – that worked for me. This time no celebrity beside me. Awww yes my blood glucose was just doing dandy.. It was in the teens with all the time difference and bad processed and high GI food. I need some quinoa salad people – even my caring agents request couldn’t be done in this plane since I wasn’t supposed to be flying that route.

Dubai – 5 hours late and I thought I was going to get some sleep, wrong! The Dubai airport hosted the best party in the galaxy with frenzy shoppers buying BMWs and Gold like it was going out of fashion. Yes there is a car dealership and one of the largest gold shops. I had 5 hours to kill to catch my next flight to Mumbai. If you’ve seen Dubai airports old terminal, check out the new one that they’ve just built. You get a shopping cart and coupons and get to go shopping – at every gate and it goes for blocks. The whole shopping area has been setup so the cart can go anywhere and it’s designed to go everywhere so you can fill in the cart as much as you can. NO I didn’t buy anything – but was tempting! I couldn’t believe the gold bullion people were buying.. Being born into Goldsmithing family you don’t forget your roots.. and was fascinating to watch people buy gold and negotiating 1/100 of a gram..

What was scary is that you can buy a knife at the gift shop and take it in the plane and there was no security at this point and to the gate to aboard the plane. But they took my water away from the Frankfurt plane to the Dubai’s connection – I want my four euro back

Finally on the plane to Mumbai – I could almost the taste dust in my mouth as I got closer to Mumbai as the flight arrived late at Sivaghi Airport – they tested everyone with the thermal detector looking people with H1N1. One hour to get my baggage and one lunch rush hour traffic, (the hotel was very close to the airport) – Alas I found my hotel, couldn’t believe I still got to Mumbai while thinking I was going to be stuck in Airport hotel in Frankfurt for 24 hrs.. 20 minutes away from my first appointment with the agency, I am going to make it. I get inside the room, hey this is not what the Internet said when I booked the hotel... where is the?? More on the next post...