Murphy's Law

First time traveling so far away form home and it was a classic case of ‘whatever can go wrong, will go wrong’ It all started after the plane touched down in London for our transit flight to Oslo. Heathrow is so crowded that our plane had to hover in the air and wait for a ‘parking space’ before we got to get off. We are half an hour late and made a mad rush to our next gate. Thank god the flights were in the same terminal.

1hr 45 mins later, I am sitting in some small room with a police officer who wants to call bcc up. He was probably suspicious of me when I told him that I was going to be in Norway for such a long period of time. Much to the amusement of bcc, I had assumed that it was standard protocol for people staying in the country for so long. He was kinda polite whattttt.

The baggage came out late. We wait and we wait. To our horror, the belt stops moving and the guy says, ‘that’s all the luggage from Heathrow.’ Apparently our luggage didn’t move as fast as we did when we reached Heathrow, so we made it onto the flight to Oslo, but the bags didn’t. And so now I was hating myself for not buying the travel insurance. Coz PL’s gonna get $200 for every 8 hours delay. Dammit. We originally had 2 hours between our flight from Oslo to Bodo. But thanks to all the drama, we had only 30 minutes left. Checking in, the woman says ‘you better run to your gate’ and so we did.

Somehow the metal dectectors in Norway are darn sensitive. We reach the check in area and some uncle in front of us mysteriously keeps setting the metal dectector off. He takes off his belt, and he still set it off. And so he comes back to take off his shoes, but only decicdes to do so after he takes his time to put his belt back on. It was 20 minutes before our flight leaves and pl and I were getting kan jiong. Expectedly, both pl and I set the alarm at the metal dectectors off. Surprisingly for me it was my shoes. Who was to know that there were metal elements in the shoes?! I take off my shoes and walk through the metal detectors bare-footed. The lady offers me booties but too late, I was already through and ready to get my bags and dash towards gate 28.

Thank goodness the gate was near the check in area. They were already making the last call for passengers to board the flight. It was then I realized I had misplaced my boarding pass. Wow, like what else could possibly happen? I rush back to the check in area and apparently it had slipped between the x-ray machine. Well, better found than never. And so we were embarked on our 3rd flight of the journey.

1 hr 30 mins later, we reach Bodo. For the first time of the journey we get time off to sit down to catch our breath before the next flight. The next flight was a free seating one and so being the kiasu Singaporeans that we are, we checked in early, hoping to sit near the boarding gate so that we can be the first ones on the plane. The screen showing the departure information directs us to dutifully park our butts at gate 19. And so we wait. It was almost time when I heard an announcement (thank god I heard it, coz pl hadn’t), a last call for passengers going to Svolvaer to go to gate 16. Well done, they had changed the gate without us knowing. We were one of the last ones on the plane and for that we sat right beside the wing. So whatever view we got was one with a large propeller at the side. Lucky the views were breath-taking enough to make up for it.



So 4 flights and 25 hours after we leave Singapore, we finally make it to Svolvaer. We hadn’t bathed in a day, we had sucky aeroplane food, were jet lagged and had no luggage. Well at least it was good to see familiar faces waiting for us at the airport.