Rookie Mistakes

8:00 am

I haven’t even left the country and, on this trip, I’m already two mistakes old. Neither of them were especially serious, but easily avoided.

First, I had a sudden rush of panic when I realized I had enterer the Calgary airport still wearing my winter coat. Ordinarily, donning a winter coat in the Calgary airport in January isn’t such a big deal, but when you’re embarking on a trip to Southeast Asia and you have very limited packing space, a winter coat is not a wise choice of clothing. I’m sure, once I got to, say Thailand, I could claim it was a fashion statement, but in 40 degree weather, that’s not a statement anyone wants to hear.

So, I quick rush to the payphone to call my chauffeur, (a.k.a. dad), and I was sorted. My only comment to him as returned was, ‘Well, I hope that’s the last mistake I make for a while.’

If what I meant by ‘a while’ was a half hour, then I was right on the money.

I made the rookie travel mistake of carrying a pair of fold-up scissors in my carry-on. It was confiscated of course, but what amazed me about the whole affair is how many flights I must have taken with those very same scissors in the exact same location without having them noticed by security. Go figure.

This will be my last report from Canada as I now sit in the Vancouver airport waiting for the ticket booth to open for my next flight. Next stop, Taiwan.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2006 at 12:00 am. It is filed under Blog, Travel and tagged with taiwan, Travel, travel log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.