Favoured by the gods, thwarted by men

The weather gods were kind to me on the day of my journey to New York. The horrible heat that had been plaguing England for the past few days abated, so I was able to maintain some semblance of decorum while lugging my bags to the bus stop at Headington Shops.

What God giveth, however, man sometimes taketh away. The appearance of control I had possessed vanished as soon as the bus driver asked me what terminal I was going to. With a distinct air of uncertainty, I suggested terminal five, to which the driver responded, “So you’re flying with British Airways then?” I was not flying with British Airways, so lord knows why I said yes. When I was on the bus, I checked my plane tickets, and they confirmed I was indeed leaving from terminal five, but with American Airlines. Why, then, was the bus driver so sure I was flying with British Airways? I spent the rest of the bus ride fretting about increasingly unlikely scenarios of what might happen once I got to the airport.

The matter resolved itself rather quickly. Once I arrived at terminal five and saw that all flights were operated by British Airways, I asked one of the employees about my mysterious ticket. He seemed entirely unfazed and directed me to terminal three (which can be reached by a relatively frequent air train). Only on the train did I finally notice signs saying that many of the airlines had been reshuffled. I checked my mailbox and saw that in the emails I had received from the company since purchasing my ticket, the gate had indeed surreptitiously changed. Why the airline did not point this out explicitly – and whether they did not know about the upcoming terminal change when issuing the tickets – remains a mystery to me.  

Even with these bumps in the road, however, I made it to my gate three hours early. I usually add some extra time for every leg of the journey that might go wrong, and objectively speaking, not that much went wrong after all. I was also pleased to find that the skies stayed clear despite predictions of thunderstorms, which could have interfered with our flight.

Continuing the theme of God giveth and man taketh away, the prediction of our arrival time changed from 20:00 to 19:00, ostensibly due to favourable winds. As we stood on the runway waiting for a bunch of delayed flights, however, that prediction shifted back again by half an hour. And, US customs being what they are, I arrived at my hotel in Manhattan at around nine thirty, which was more or less the time I had expected to get there.

The flight itself passed by without any major incidents, except for my left eye becoming unsettlingly red after half a day in a facemask and four hours of watching films on the aeroplane – I tried to pack so lightly that I did not even bring a book with me. Now, I am one of those people who get emotional during flights (I remember bawling my eyes out over Blue Planet one time), and I spent about half of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once tearing up. It is a very good film though, at once hilarious and touching; also, we need more inter-generational media in this youth-obsessed culture.

The second film I watched was Gorillas in the Mist, which I think remains a relatively solid film. Obviously, some of it doesn’t quite fit our present-day sensibilities and the effects could not help betraying their age (the animatronic baby gorilla looked like an Ewok, speaking of which, I still randomly chuckle at the line “Juju Chewbacca” from Everything, Everywhere, All at Once). Having just finished Inga Clendinnen’s Aztecs, I do wonder what the author would have thought about Fossey’s attempt to communicate with the Rwandan poachers using her doubtlessly flawed perception of their culture. Did they understand Fossey’s threats as black magic, or did they see right through her? I also feel the film could have dwelt more on the implications of Fossey’s opposition to tourism (which I thought a pretty good financial alternative to poaching) and addressed her character flaws in a more comprehensive manner.