Season 04, episode 02 - Adorable fragility

In episode 2 we are skipping ahead a few months, until Christmas 2012. During the autumn there was a family trip to Paris but it would not add much to this particular story.

Christmas tradition with a trip to Australia to visit sister seems to have become the same habit as the spring trip to Japan, and I am doing a CPH-DIA(OTBD, old Doha int)-MEL this year. In my files though, the receipt of this trip has been lost and so I can't really account for how, when and why this trip came about, nor how much it cost. I am sure it was a bargain. And I am back on my new favourite QR.

While the travel bug has not bitten my new larger entourage, I'd say the new entourage has already affected my ability to travel freely. The trip duration is just 9 days in total, and with travel taking 3 whole days that leaves roughly just 6 days at destination.

My sister has moved house since last visit. They are now settled in a small town in Victoria, renting a house that features a decommissioned caboose as guest house. I settle quickly into both my accommodations and to small town laidback life.

Nephew has grown and is in a very active age. A highly appreciated daytrip for him is a visit to "the dredger" - a site of a dried-up creek where a Chinese company used to dredge for precious metals. Story goes, operations were not profitable and/or owners grew tired of it, so they just left machinery and went home. Now, years later, it has become a very special playground for kids of all ages. The nephew just marvels at the technology (while traces inside the vehicles shows older kids enjoy the site for a number of activities they'd probably like their parents no to know about).


The dredger










Anyway, a delightful trip but without enough originality to warrant space on FT. If it wasn't for the return flight.

Have you ever visited the pet shop without any intention of buying, only to succumb to the friendly eyes of a puppy and end up taking it home?
Well, me neither, but I am sure that puppy feeling is generally known and recognizable for all and I am sticking to it as the explanation (or possibly prevarication) for what happened.
OK, I need to get this down in detail for this drivel to make any sense.

I am in 3K on the B777-200LR from MEL. After sleeping I wake up to find there has been a change in staff and the right side of the cabin is now served by a flight attendant that immediately captures my attention. I can't really say what and why. But there is something that makes her stand out from the crew. QR crew are usually very nice but slightly robotic. They strive to give good service, but they are all made from template 1A. My experience so far is that they basically all look and behave the same - the consistent high service level just leaves no room for personality or a deeper connection with the passengers.

Maybe she is new on the job, maybe her background story is different, maybe it is her first shift in the J-cabin. I don't know, but there certainly is something. I can't really describe it, but I guess it starts with her being really proud of being in service and being on QR in the J cabin. Furthermore, she is as far from robotic you can come. She is that type of person that wears everything on the outside. There is no barrier to battle through, no mask hiding the true self. You gaze straight into her soul. You see the true, honest, innocent real deal upfront. And with that, the adorable fragility that just pulls you instinctively in.

Here is where the puppy feeling comes into play. I wasn't shopping, but suddenly all I can think about is how to take her home with me.

- Daddy, daddy, can I please take her home? Please, please please!!

OK, not possible out here in the real world, for a number of reasons, but if we just accept the analogy for what it is, ignore the unintended sexism lurking there and the fact that I just recently brought another puppy home with me, I guess this pretty much paints the picture of my infatuation.


In general, I am a bit careful with eye contact. Maybe this is a cultural thing too, but my feeling has always been that I can read people's mind through their eyes. I enjoy doing it a lot, but I've also realised that if I can do it others can probably do it to me too, so better to not give away too much! Keep those eyes slightly offset when I speak, and all my secret feelings will be hidden!

Also, this wouldn't be the first time flirting gone wrong, and I have read threads on the BAEC subforum where flight attendants basically tells the crowd "Don't do it - there isn't a pick-up line we haven't heard and besides, we don't come to your office to drop cheesy comments, do we?"

So the flirtatious road is bumpy and best avoided. Still, I am anxious to explore how deep this connection goes. How do I go about that? This question is on my mind as I enjoy the company of "my" flight attendant and for each interaction the urge to act grows stronger and stronger.

As I am sitting there, pondering how to best approach her, our eyes apparently lock on for an extended period of time. And of course, the theory about mind reading through eye contact is now proven, as she breaks the silence and says with an inviting smile:

- You are thinking about something, sir! Please tell me!
- eh...
I am still hesitant on what road to choose.
- Do tell! I can take it!
What?! Is she expecting a complaint!?
- Well, I just like to say how happy I am it is you who are serving me today!

Now, this might sound a bit tame in writing, but it worked well as a conveyor of the message that she really stood out in the crowd and that I was very happy with her entire appearance. The smile on her face shows how the message hit right in the heart.

And this is where it starts to go downhill. In an effort to even better show how well she meets and exceeds my expectations, she works harder, faster, better, stronger. Cue 'Daft Punk', the theme song of this episode...

There is now no end to the smiles, the offerings, the courtesy.
The attention is very nice, but it is over the top and frankly slightly annoying as the balance between us has shifted. This is no longer our soft secret connection; the two people whose paths randomly crossed; two objects that got caught up in each other's gravity and started to intertwine. There is now a tiny dissonance in the cosmic serendipity, a taint of master/servant, and looking back I almost wish I gone down the more flirtatious road instead - those bumps I know how to handle!

Still, this is a minor issue. Just a small smudge on cloud nine, where life to 99,9% is in blissful pink.

I'm eating a phenomenal shrimp cocktail. They are individually prepared, served in small glass bowls from a waiter's tray. With some pink champagne I imagine it slid down the oesophagus very quickly, to the complete delight of my flight attendant. With one down, and happiness on my face, logic has it there is an easy way for her to double my happiness. So she is quickly there to ask me if I'd like another one. I agree and she hurries back to the galley and returns with the tray where the last bowl of cocktail sits in majestic solitude.

Harder, better, faster, stronger - she is now in overdrive.
Yes, harder, better, stronger, but above all faster. Too fast, as it turns out, because when she returns from the galley in supersonic speed, she is like Mika Häkkinen breaking very late on the corner. As she breaks late and hard not to overshoot row 3, the inertia of the majestic cocktail-bowl makes it slide along the tray. It hesitates a fraction of a second at the edge, but finally decides to free itself with a somersault, up-and-away, it defies gravity for a full second before it needs to divert to the airport of my left leg, where it does a spectacular belly-up crash landing.

My reaction is ... anger?
It surprises myself, and perhaps the reaction comes partly from tiredness of a long trip and partly from the fact that I travel lightly and have no change of clothes in the carry on. Or because I'm free-falling from cloud nine and the ground looks very hard.

I manage to keep my exterior decently calm. She apologizes profusely, fetches some table linens to help salvage the wreckage and does a pretty good job. The purser arrives on the scene and after a quick assessment insist on me removing the pants so she can work some magic on the stain.

Pantless in the restroom at 10 000+ meters altitude, I think the readership can agree with me we'd all rather be singing that other Daft Punk song ("Get lucky"), if only it had been released at the time...
Hand-signals from the purser through the door slit tells me there won't be any such singing today. While the shrimp cocktail perished in the accident, she happily informs me that there were no casualties on the ground - My pants have been recovered and only minor signs tell there ever was an accident.

Pants go back on and I go back to row 3. Everything else should also go back to as it were before, right? But the spell is broken. We are into robotic interactions. I want to reach out and say "everything is OK" or "don't worry, stuff happens" but somehow I can't make myself do it. There is no opening for it when in robotic mode. Shields are up, and you can't easily mend when something fragile got broken. Besides, there is a lingering feeling of guilt as I clearly put the pressure on her - and got angry with the result. So we fly on, with that mask on that does polite smiles very well but shows little else.


After the flight, I still can't let it go. Not only the strong connection that got lost, but also my failure to reach out, either directly to her or to the purser.
This feeling lingers for years. Every time I read about QR staff having difficult working conditions, getting unfairly disciplined or discharged, I am back in my guilt-trap. I cannot help but think about her and worry what happened. If there is a moral to the story, it is to mend things when you can.



Epilogue
Many years later I am thunderstruck. I am on one of all those QR flights from somewhere to anywhere and think I see her, working the other aisle. Older and less open/warm, but there is an air of something I recognize. I have a very poor memory for faces. Still, my intuition screams it is her, and I guess my memory is better wired to store demeanour and body language than physical attributes. The more I watch her work the more convinced I get. I sit and watch her furtively, while I ponder how to best approach her. Wow, that same dilemma all over again!

-Excuse me, did we meet on a Melbourne flight years ago when you dropped a shrimp cocktail in my lap? I am so glad you didn't get fired and that there is a bit of your adorable but fragile puppyness left!

Well, I play that conversation out in my mind multiple times and I just can't find a way to phrase it without being a candidate for the Nobel prize in cheesiness. And/or in lunacy. Despite waiting for this moment for years, I chicken out. I have to let this go, or I'll go crazy. I convince myself my intuition is suffering from confirmation bias and that this in fact is a completely different person.

Doumo arigatou, Mr Roboto. ;(




Post scriptum
Stuff happens! All is forgiven. Please come home!