Who Needs a Jacket in Thailand?

The trip to Thailand took a bit longer than expected because of the snowfall in London. What was supposed to be a 23-hour journey from Newark International to Bangkok via Heathrow ended up degenerating into a 65 hour long slog. But I had no real reason to complain. That won’t change the weather.

I missed my connecting flight by five minutes. The flight from Newark to London was delayed in the US because of a sick passenger and again in London by the weather. I sprinted to across two Heathrow terminals to try and catch the flight but didn’t make it in time. Then the snow hit.
The airline put me up in a hotel for the first evening where I got to watch the Superbowl sans commercials. I remember being in an obligatory debate about the merits of American football vs. football in the rest of the world with an Irish bartender in New York and he said football (soccer) will never be popular in the United States because there isn’t enough room for commercials. Well, the converse is also true. American football without commercial interruptions is hard to watch. It’ slow and has a stilted feel and the down time on the BBC broadcast is punctuated by surreal sounding Englishmen pontificating about this and that.

By the next morning, the hotel had been snowed in. I passed on the complementary traditional English breakfast of baked beans and parboiled eggs and sat around watching news reports of furious Londoners complaining about the inefficient response of the government to deal with the influx of snow. It was pretty clear that London (and maybe all of England) didn’t have the proper infrastructure to deal with the weather. But it was curious that even the underground subway system shut down in the snow.

I tried to avoid the fray and subsequent mob rage by generally keeping to myself and imagining what a different world this would be if superpowers existed. Public relations people would surely need to have some level of invulnerability. Calls were made, beers consumed, Internet time purchased and the cold monotony continued.

After several calls to overwhelmed customer help lines and despite the worsening weather, I was told that the only thing I could do was head to the main desk at the airport to reschedule the flight—which was cancelled later that evening because of mechanical problems.

A second night was spent in a hotel which was much more interesting because the complementary tuna fish and cucumber sandwiches offered were a bit on the old side so I spent several hours in bed dreaming of three empty shot glasses talking to each other. I don’t know if I’ve recovered fully yet from the sandwiches, time changes, unexpected cold weather and smell of recirculated airplane farts. Like meat biscuits.