geekyOn Friday, August 27th, I left work to head for Kate's house, since she (and her wonderful car) was going to get me to the airport. My flight, I said, left at eight, so I needed to be there at six. I was quite confident on this point. There will be more on this later.
Even after driving to Concord, packing the last of my things, brushing the cats in a guilty "please don't hate me for leaving you" manner, and stopping at Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, we got me to the airport by four. Being the sort of person who'd rather be horrifyingly early than five minutes late, I was cool with this, hugged Kate, and went to check in with the calm serenity of one who is four hours early for their flight. Everything went without a hitch, including security, which was a glorious wasteland, free of congestion. Things were looking up.
Jeanne was already at the gate when I got there. "Wow, you're early," I said. She gave me a funny look.
"I'm two hours early for our flight," she replied.
"...what?" Apparently, I had been basing my internal flight time off the time we would be arriving in LAX for our transfer. Because sometimes, yes, I am very, very blonde. Coyote was clearly already getting involved in the trip; that's the first time I have ever made a mistake like that about flight times.
The first flight was relatively painless (I slept the whole way, which always helps), and our luggage was checked all the way through to Melbourne. So we located our gate, confirmed that there was no way for Qantas to shuffle things to seat us together, and then adjourned to the airport bar to make offerings to Coyote in the form of overpriced cocktails. Hooray for an excellent Mai Tai!
On the plane (a new Air Bus the size of an entire wing at my high school), we were seated literally sixty rows apart, so we bid each other a fond farewell and went to our respective homes for the next seventeen hours. Now, the nice thing about the Qantas Air Bus is the self-serve mini-bar between each section of the plane. They don't contain alcohol, thankfully, as an entire plane of drunk tourists would suck, but they do contain a nigh-infinite supply of Diet Coke. I drank a lot of Diet Coke. I also slept, a lot, and watched several movies, including Iron Man 2, which no one had been willing to see with me in the theater. Hooray for trans-Pacific flights!
Blah blah blah, time passes, blah blah blah, airplane food, blah blah, landing! In...Sydney. Because, see, Melbourne? Was enshrouded with fog, preventing us from landing, and after flying from California, we didn't have the fuel to circle. So we had to divert to another city altogether, which delighted the flight crew to no end. (It actually did delight the rest of my row, as they'd been going to Sydney, and were allowed to deplane. With their luggage. Lucky bastards.)
Eventually, we got back into the air, and were able to fly, finally, to Melbourne, where we had to go through Customs. First question on the card they make you fill out, no shit, was, "Are you carrying any weapons, illegal drugs, or prescription medications?" So the first question I was asked by the Australian Customs Agent was which of these things I had. I replied that I had legal medications. Also food. She sent me to Quarantine, while Jeanne went off to not be Quarantined.
At Quarantine, I was asked, "What kind of food are you carrying?"
Honesty is the best policy with Customs: "A pound of chocolates and five pounds of candy corn."
Blink. "What's candy corn?"
"Honey, mallow, and canuba wax."
"How much is five pounds?"
"I don't know. Two and a half kilos?"
She blinked again, and then waved to the door. "Just go."
Jeanne, meanwhile, was being poked and prodded to confirm that she wasn't secretly smuggling strawberries in her pants. The moral of our story is? Carry confusing candy.
Australia!
On confusing customs
September 15 2010, 19:08:24 UTC 6 years ago
I have managed to elicit this sort of confusion from Canadian customs on no less then three occasions. Twice this caused the "just go" reaction. The other time it caused the customs agent to fob me and my friend (we were being processed together as we had a shared receipt for the clothing purchase that had put us over the exemption limit) off on another agent.
Just go #1: My first World Fantasy Con. In Minneapolis. I went nuts at Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's before the convention, and then got the convention goody bag and hit the dealers room. I also had a suitcase already half full of books that I had brought with me to the con to get signed. I ended up grabbing a box from the reg table to take all my extra books home. However, because many of the books I had purchased were used, all this booty did not push me much over the customs limit. So when going through, the customs officer looks at me, looks at my box, and asks me if my "$225 in new and used books" are in the box - obvious he's under the impression that I'm a book merchant. So I say yes ... and in my suitcase ... and probably some in my carry-on. At which point his eyes glazed and he waved me through as I was clearly The Paper rather than a book dealer.
Just go #2: Flying in from NYC to Ottawa, after having spent a night visiting Merav after a trip through Northern Europe. At the time the US/Canada exchange was abysmal (1.50 CDN to 1.00 US) and a common attempted trick to avoid duties was to declare what one had spent in US dollars and fail to mention the currency (thus implying $CDN). Thus "and how much in US$" was a normal question asked by customs. The agent looks at my form (where I declared the max CDN exemption allowed, and asks me how much I spent in US$. I blinked (yes the question caught me off guard), and stated that I had no idea, as I hadnt bought anything in the US. "So where did you buy things" she asks. I think a moment (slightly sleep deprived) and start listing: "Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, maybe Den-" at which point she rolled her eyes, stopped me and waved me through.
Confusing customs #3: NOT MY FAULT - it was after Arisia AND a blizzard! (well just a little my fault) - when a customs agent looks at the form on which you have written $250 clothing, asks you what the clothing was, and then asks you what a corset is after you reply, sensible non-sleep-deprived people reach into their luggage to show the officer what a corset is. I was not the sensible non-sleep-deprived person. That was my friend who was stuck with me as our corsets were on the same receipt. Instead, I was the person who looked baffled, and then tried to describe what a corset was by miming it's effects on the female silhouette with my hands. Until the customs officer looked perturbed, told me to stop talking, and fobbed us off on another agent to process the money we owed for being over the limit. And lo, now I never get to look down the fact that I once scared a customs agent.
Re: On confusing customs
October 19 2010, 22:31:01 UTC 6 years ago
This rocks.