flying to AUS

the flight to australia was hands-down the worst flying experience i have ever had.  cyclone evan delayed my plane by 12 hours, but none of the passangers were informed until about 2 hours before the flight.  un/luckily for me, Queen Chrisann had just dropped me off at the airport and wished me bon voyage not 10 minutes prior to some airline employee casually walking by me mention that "oh, if you havent heard, youre going to be delayed 12 hours."  so i quickly called the Queen and she swung back by to take me home, because ill be damned if im going to be this close to home and sleep in a shitty motel by the airport. 

so i finally got on the 915am flight to Nadi, Fiji.  the 14-hour flight really wasnt that bad, and the airport itself looked pretty much unchanged from the last time i was there- last year.

so i hurried up and waited in the trasnfer line for a layover that i knew was going to be 14 hours.  clearly, i was thinking that this is going to give me plenty of time to walk outside the airport, take in a couple of sights, have soem local food, etc. 

no.

i was dutifully informed- after waiting an hour in this line- that i needed to go back downstairs, outside the airport, to the front desk and rebook my flight because even though there was a cycone, i apparently missed my flight.  i rushed downstairs to rebook the same flight that i was already booked on. 

i start this comment by saying that i recognize vast cutural differences in a number of suddenly obvious ways.  fijians live in a wonderful time/space continuum called "island time", where western definitions of work ethic just cannot be applied.  there is quite literally no sense of urgency, and oftentimes there will be 5-8 other employees wandering around and admiring the mayhem occurring around them. 

this would have been highly entertaining if you werent the one waiting in line FOR 6 HOURS to rebook your flight with the 100 other people who needed to do the same thing.  this would not have taken 6 hours had they simply turned on another computer and had more than one person working the front desk.  because of "island time", the other workers stood around, watching all of us miserable passengers pleading for their help, and all of them saying that it wasnt their job. 

it actually is hilarious looking back on it now, probably because i know that i will never vacation to that country and probably never use it as layover destination either. 

all turned out well in the end, because since i was the very last person to be helped at 1130pm (i had arrived in fiji at 2pm), the only hotel with room still available on the entire island was a 5-star resort.  so i spent my last 5 hours on fiji, sleeping, in a stunning, beautiful room on the beach... with non-fuctioning AC... because its "island time".