06/12 The trouser fly has nothing to do with ideology.
Dave is…
In Johannesburg.
Sunday is the opening match of the 2009 Confederations Cup featuring South Africa vs Iraq. So with my Iraqi jersey in my backpack I set off from Cape Town to experience the excitement.
Perdi gave me a ride to the airport where after a flight delay and a airline terminal in a tent I was off on one of the best flights I have ever had. Ok, I was barely conscious for most of it but I was awake still for the safety demonstration. Now I have taken a fair number of flights over the years and have long since stopped listening to a recitation of safety features on this plane so set in stone they might as well be recited to me by Moses.
Not this time. It started off normal enough before abruptly veering into surreal asides and jokes, including a prolonged effort to convince everyone that one of the junior attendants placed third in African Idol which prompted a large segment of economy to burst into applause. But the one that killed me was the final joke of the riff, where while discussing the R5000 fine for tampering with the bathroom smoke detector, she observed, matter of factly, that for that price we could’ve just bought a ticket with SA (South African Airways) and smoked whatever their flight crews are dealing these days. It, and the ensuing debate over what exactly SA crews would sling, was delivered so dryly that it took a second to register what she was saying. Oh, man the whole cabin was dying. And they managed to have some routine worked into every announcement they made. Its like chief steward was a South African female Steven Wright.
Its just as well that I got my entertainment fix on the flight cause once landed I went straight to the hostel and straight into bed as the hostel was silent as a tomb and the high barbed walls and long dark solitary alley on a long dark block suggested that it wasn’t worth the effort to find something to do at 1230am.