Last evening was a long night. On Thursday towards the end of the shift we had learned at the office that a representative from the Philippines would be coming in to Cochin on Saturday night and that someone from our department would need to go and receive her at the airport and take her via a cab to her hotel. The cab and hotel room was already arranged, now just an escort had to be fixed. With a 4 day weekend looming the other two guys in my department had already made plans to go to their homes which were a few hours away and since I live here in the city, I offered to be the escort since I had no other plans. Even though I was new to the organization and I had never met this woman before but it was important that someone from our section does go.
So I spoke with the Admin department and the cab driver and arranged for the driver to come to my place by 9 pm and we’d go to the airport as the young lady was arriving on a 10:20 pm flight via Singapore. I took another shower (as I had been out for a few errands earlier in the day) and got ready and we left for the airport and reached ahead of time by 9:45 pm. I waited at the International Arrivals section as the driver went to get a placard ready with her name and the company logo. The plane arrived at 10:29 pm and we waited and waited and waited…….and waited some more. Everyone in that plane seemed to have come out and there were two flights from Kuala Lumpur that landed a few minutes apart from each other and everyone on those flights also came out. Where was my colleague?
A flight from Dubai also landed at 11pm and everyone it seemed to have gotten out and left. By 11:45pm I was getting worried – what if she had missed her flight? No one in Admin seemed to know. I called a couple of people and they finally got back to me by 12 am that she had arrived but was stuck in getting a visa on arrival as her previous visa had expired. She had a SIM card that she had bought when she had previously visited India in Chennai and I got that number texted to me and I called her on it to let her know that there was someone waiting outside and that we wouldn’t leave without dropping her at her hotel. A few minutes later she called me back as she was heading to the exit and I waved on spotting her (only woman talking on the phone) and I greeted her and helped her get her bags to the car. We chatted on the way to her hotel and after she got checked in I said goodnight and got back into the cab to come back home. By 1:20 am I was in my bed eating a cookie or 2 and watching a tv show.