Junior Official/Senior Official

At the end of a business trip to Tokyo a few years ago, I made a short trip to visit a friend in Dalian, China. On my return to Tokyo (to catch the flight back to London) I was held up at the immigration desk. The official kept looking at me and looking at the passport. Eventually he ushered me to a small room and asked me to wait, without any explanation. 


I spent about 15 minutes wondering what might be the problem. Had I broken some immigration rule? I knew I was allowed to stay for 90 days after entry without a visa, but perhaps I wasn’t allowed to return so soon? All these questions were going through my mind.


Eventually I was called and told I could proceed through the immigration. “But was there a problem?”, I asked. I was worried maybe there was some problem with my passport that could cause me a problem in the future. “Junior official couldn’t approve, but senior official could” was the answer I got. I tried to press the matter, “But what was it that they were worried about?” 


“Junior official couldn’t approve. Senior official approved”

The Superhero of Clumsiness

One day I arrived, as per usual, a bit on the late side for my first period lecture. I saw my friends sitting in our usual place on the side of the lecture theatre, quite close to the front. I ran down the steps, put my bag on the desk in front and climbed over it to get into the seat in front of my friends. As I was doing this though, I managed to knock over my bag and everything landed in a heap on the floor. 


One of my friends stood up slowly and peered at the mess on the floor. He then looked at me and said in a calm but serious voice: “Let me guess, your superhero is Captain Klutz?”

That passport doesn't look right

One year I was on my way to the airport for my Christmas holiday back in South Africa. It was the 22nd of December and I had heard on the radio earlier that the traffic was the busiest that day for the whole year, so I decided that I would take the train into the centre  and then take the Heathrow express to the airport (I think there was some problem with the Underground Piccadilly Line because I think I was avoiding that).

Half way into London I rechecked my bags for the most important items. Wallet, check, passport, check.... hang-on, why does it have a little triangle cut off the corner??? Arrrgghhh, I'd picked up the old expired passport by mistake!! From having a comfortable amount of time to get to the plane I was now wondering if I could make my flight at all.

The next station was Vauxhall so I jumped out and ran to find the taxi rank. Unfortunately there is no taxi rank at Vauxhall station so I was advised the best I could do was go outside the station and thumb down a taxi in the road. After what seemed like an age I eventually got a taxi and instructed it to head back to my home. This took forever, but eventually we got back, I asked the taxi to wait, ran inside, frantically searched the house - eventually found the real passport, under something on top of a bookcase - ran back and asked the taxi driver to take me straight to the airport.

We gradually made our way towards London's Heathrow airport, with the traffic getting heavier all the time. In addition there was heavy fog that did not help the situation. One thing that almost certainly made the difference between arriving in time for the flight or not was the fact that taxis are allowed to use the bus lanes in London, allowing us to avoid some of the worst queues.

We eventually arrived with 1.5 hours before the flight, so my fears of missing my holiday did not come to pass, but with a £90 taxi bill! (which was enormous, but fairly cheap compared to buying a new ticket to Cape Town)

Oh and then the flight was delayed by 2 hours because of the fog :)

Korean taxi

Taking a taxi to work during the first few months that I was in Korea was often an adventure since I was never completely sure that My destination had been understood.

One day I decided that I should wait on the other side of the road for the taxi since, on that side, the taxis were empty as they were going to the railway station to pick up passengers. The ones going in the direction I wanted were full since they had just come from the station.

I confidently told the taxi driver my destination and he appeared to understand, but spead off with me towards the station. Having been brought back from the office via another route that led past the station I did not worry immediately, but I started getting a but more worried when we headed onto a highway onramp heading out of town. My attempts to tell the driver we were going to the wrong destination did little good, and we landed up in a spot miles from anywhere. I could not explain to him where I wanted to go and he didn't have a clue what I wanted anymore. In desparation I grabbed a pen and some paper from my bag and wrote out in my best Korean 수원 삼성전자 중앙문 (Suwon, Samsung Jeonje, jungang mun - Samsung Electronics, Central Gate) and showed this to the driver. 

His reaction was immediate, he put his hands to his head and made a lot of exclamations that I couldn't understand. At this point I wondered if he might be overacting and he was just trying to get a higher taxi fare but when we arrived at my destination the taxi fare was only slightly higher due to our rather large diversion.

The Toast Incident

The apartments that I was staying in while I was in Suwon, Korea had a buffet breakfast for the residents. It was fairly basic but quite nice. If you wanted toast they had sliced bread ready and a toaster. If you put the bread in the toaster and went back to your table, quite often a staff member brought it to you.

One day while sitting eating my breakfast, one of the staff members brought me two slices of toast. This was great, except for the fact that I had not put any bread in the toaster and was not expecting any toast! Thinking that they had just made a mistake and brought me someone else's toast, I tried to explain this to the waiter.

Unfortunately he could not understand my English and it was beyond my limited Korean. I tried to just say "forget it", but this was to no avail either and in no time at all there were two other staff members trying to understand what the "problem" was. In the end I managed to tell them there was no problem, but they never understood what the fuss was about.

I felt really bad though, the waiter had just tried to be helpful and I had, inadvertently, caused this completely trivial event to seem like a major incident.

Agra-vating Rickshaw Wallah

I arrived at Agra train station, and, being warned by my guide book of tourists being ripped off, attempted to find the proper government approved taxi stand. This was easier said than done, however, and all the time I was being hassled by taxi-wallahs and rickshaw-wallahs to take their taxi. I looked and saw that it was a very nice day and saw on the map that the part of Agra with the Taj Mahal was maybe an hour walk from the station (or maybe 1.5 hours) so I decided that I would take a walk and see a bit more of the country instead of rushing from one tourist attraction to the next.

I headed off, looking forward to a nice walk, but I was pursued by an extremely persistent rickshaw-wallah. He kept yelling at me "Sir, sir, it is too far to walk... sir, sir, it is too far to walk!" I just walked and tried to ignore it but he kept following and kept yelling.

After about 20 to 30 minutes of this I decided that it was completely ruining my day and I although I didn't like giving in to this sort of behaviour, I wanted to get on and enjoy the nice sightseeing day I had planned so I got into the rickshaw. After about 20 mins we arrived at the Taj Mahal. The rickshaw-wallah said that he'd wait for me outside, but I had no intention of being conned into paying for a whole day of this guy's time, so I said clearly that I did not want him to wait.

A few hours later I exited the Taj Mahal to find the same guy waiting for me. I told him I did not want to take his rickshaw, but it was no use. It was very hot and a restaurant across the road had tables put outside - I went there for a drink, the guy sat across from me and watched me the whole time. Afterwards I walked down the road and he followed, I kept saying that I did not want his services. Eventually I almost had to run away before he gave up.

Later that day I found myself wondering if I should have been quite so stubborn, especially when I needed a rickshaw in a more deserted part of town and could find none!

*wallah is a word derived from a Hindi word and, in India, is attached to almost any occupation to denote someone who performs this job, eg. taxi-wallah, rickshaw-wallah

Missing the train in Delhi

I had bought tickets from New Delhi to Dehra Dun in northern India, and I arrived at the station with, what I thought, was plenty of time to board the train. However the train station turned out to be enormous and I couldn't work out what platform I should be taking. I can't remember now how I eventually worked it out, whether it was through understanding the train station layout or frantically asking many people for help, but I arrived on the platform, only to see, as I approached, the train starting to pull away.

I stood, completely disheartened, staring at the departing train. What would I do now? This would really mess up my trip, I didn't even know when the next possible train I could take would be.

Suddenly I realised that some of the train guards who where standing in the doorway of the train were calling me and motioning that I should run. I realised the train was still moving very slowly so I ran towards the train, and they helped me lift my luggage into the carriage and jump on board!