September 16, 2007

• Mozzy Coils

  The JAL flight to Brisbane was comfortable as always; I had a sneaking suspicion that it was more comfortable than anything Air Niugini had to offer, anyway (PS, I was right). I took some codine to knock me out and I slept most of the way there.

  The weather in Brisbane was lovely that morning; the perfect kind of temperature where any outfit is comfortable, blue skies and a light breeze. Still as I felt myself moving farther away from the plane and the politely bilingual stewardesses, I began to feel sick and uneasy. The posters were too bold and too easy to understand. The gift shop area was too brazen; I was accosted by buckets of honey-roasted peanuts and bricks of toblorone, all for low, low prices. I shrank inside myself. I wasn’t prepared for the realities of another English-speaking country. The cloak of Gaijin fell off  from around me and I was exposed. The secret power and pride of being able to speak Japanese when I don’t look it was replaced by the disorientation of being expected to know the language and culture in a country where I hadn’t even intended to go.

  Going through customs didn’t help any. My bag of liquids was too big; they gave me a much smaller one, one that assured me in big purple letters that it was OK to buy duty free in Brisbane. Goody. They confiscated my mosquito coils, saying it was a “dangerous good” which made sense to me, and my detergent for the same reason, which made no sense at all. They said my packet of moist towlettes counted as liquids, so that had to be thrown away as well- it wouldn’t fit in the bag. The mini- 8ball key chains I had brought as gifts turned out to be a bad idea as well; they counted as liquids and also wouldn’t fit in the bag which, while quite accommodating on the subject of purchasing inexpensive bottles of fine whiskey, was not quite accommodating enough for several tubes of lipstick, shampoo, conditioner, sunblock, and keychains to boot. In the end, it turned out that what had actually set off the x-ray was a pack of colored pencils. And, as the moist towlettes and detergent had all been in Japanese packaging, I probably could have lied about their contents. But, hindsight is 20/20, and my bag was certainly lighter as I continued my journey. I pictured myself on the plane to Honiara, bursting open 8-balls in an airplane bathroom and using the insidious blue liquid inside as the key ingredient for my lipstick detergent mosquito coil bomb. The infidels in the Solomon Islands will pay!

  • 1:05 pm
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