One Suitcase, Three Days, Four Airports.

I hate airports, sorry, I need to clarify that, I hate the needless expense that is spending time at airports. I recently had to do a four cities in three days trip. As you can imagine an unnecessarily large part of those three days was spent at one airport or the other. Interestingly there is a certain symmetry to most airports, the ones in the small cities are quiet almost serene, regardless of the amount of air traffic, while the airports in the bigger cities are rather rowdy and the passengers a little more obnoxious. As to my trip itself, it was relatively unremarkable but at some point I started to pay close attention to my surroundings, that is when things got rather interesting.
Airports – Local airports are like train stations, unremarkable, the seats are kind of the same, the restrooms dangerous, and the food expensive. But I did notice in Atlanta the sheer size of the place and the volume of people coming through was enormous. Milwaukee was almost eerily quiet, and yet the search guys there were the most enthusiastic, like people that would very much love to give you a thorough cavities search. Memphis has this fantastic smell of barbecued meat in the air (might have been that the gate I used was located right next to the restaurant) and has this beautiful rotunda with a blue glass ceiling.
The search at the airport – One word, embarrassing. If like me, your last name is almost Arabic sounding, you are getting the business. Make sure your undershirt is clean because that jacket is coming off, the stripping does get tiresome after a while and keeping your sense of humor is hard. Get angry and you might be asked to “please, step aside” and you do not want that to happen. They put everything I had through the X-ray machine, they almost put me in the machine. They searched my computer case, tested the computer. Please do not carry any cosmetics in your over night bag if you intend to leave the airport the same day, someone took a shower with my shower gel, even used my body lotion to make sure it was not a bomb. These guys were ruthlessly efficient but all the same, it was very time consuming. Forgo, hand luggage and getting in and out of the local airport is not so bad.
Flying – Is it my mind or do the smaller planes fly with less turbulence? On the flight to Memphis, I was stuck in the middle of two large guys. Miserable will not begin to describe the next three hours, the flight was packed, so there were no empty seats. The guy to my right had a belly like a drum, his gut spilled over the divide, shoving my elbow off the armrest. While the guy to my left snored like a man playing the trombone with plenty of power but no skill. If you are in a hurry, carrying all you luggage as a carry on, you will appreciate the time saved not waiting for your turn at the baggage claim. The only problem is finding space for your luggage in the overhead bin is a hassle especially if you are one the last to get on the plane. If it is too big and does not fit in the bin, you are going to have to find space for it, most likely under your leg between two large guys.
Things I noticed – That people that work at the airport all seem somewhat proud of the fact, the guy serving cheesy pretzels has an attitude, no biggie but worth noting. There is a certain amount of grim determination amongst the passengers, almost like the travel is a chore they have to conclude. Unlike international departure lounges where some passengers seem to be walking on air, the lack of joy around the local section of the airport is palpable. I have a problem with the practice of shining shoes while the owner of the shoes is still wearing them. I find it servile and somewhat degrading, there is nothing wrong with getting your shoes shined but why can’t you take it off first? Why must someone knee at your feet for a $5 service?
Nedu Nnadi

Tired Of The Excuses

Sometimes, I go back to read stuff I had written before, old blog posts, articles, responses to other peoples blogs, that type of thing. The idea being to get a sense of my state of mind at the time and to see if I my perception of whatever it was I was trying to say at the time has changed. Sometimes, I find that my view has moved on from my previous positions and that what once were strongly held beliefs, are now loosely embraced ideas. The general premise of the original post may still hold true but the underlying emotion I would find to have sometimes suffered significant drift. But by far the worse thing about my old stuff, were the God damned TYPOS! They were everywhere, embarrassing, cringe inducing, headshaking, “I wonder where this guy got his education” type, typos. The origin of the problem is of course, known to me; I am a “Hunter Pecker”, be it a fast hunter pecker but a pecker all the same. I stare down the keyboard when I type, I hunt down each individual letter and sometimes can jam out a whole paragraph while barely getting a look at the monitor. The worst part is that I do not have any particular type of mistake that I commit consistently, I generally seem to hit all the high notes (all the “don’ts”) in any given piece of writing. On any given post, I would do my best to appear as poorly equipt (I guess the word here should really should be Mis-educated :-) ) as possible. I commit errors of omission, leaving out entire words in a torrid stream of rushing sentences that barely connect and only serve to tell the reader that I need either better glasses or need to start writing strictly in Igbo. I commit errors of addition, I use the wrong tenses, incorrect verbs and adjectives litter just about every piece I have ever written. In my head I am thinking the word “there” on the screen I am typing “their” and the whole thing is compounded by Microsoft Words automated error correcting software. So while I plow on ahead trying to get to the end of my rapidly evaporating thoughts, the software is busy correcting my errors into even more grammatically inconsistent gibberish that ends up leaving the reader bewildered, thinking this guy really must stop drinking and writing.
So you would ask, after spotting these dramatically wild half sentences or phrases that seem to have been put together by Kokolet; sentences like “ .. starts to knock on the window, asking you to winding down the window” or even “ …which funnily enough was staged by a group of a delusional nationalist group of southern soldiers…” why don’t i make the necessary corrections and move on? Because it would be dishonest and the truth is that no matter what I change, I can’t make anyone that read the initial post, unread it. So after much thought I have decided to invest in a Spanish to English dictionary to brush up on my vocabulary, I will be re-enrolling in the free English for Indigenous Tribes classes at the local community college and lastly I am purchasing a typing for beginners and other slow learners software program that will teach me to type the proper way. Hopefully in a few months I will be able to complete a few lines without completely rendering the reader brain dead. In the meantime I apologize for any previous or current occurrence of random shelling you might have endured from my misguided attempt at blogging. Now that I have gotten that off my chest, i can now go back to misunder representing educated Nigerians on the internet, God help us all.