I need to take a moment to send positive vibes to my gal pal, Natalie, who is now in the 30th hour of a trip that was supposed to take 24 hours and is currently in an hotel somewhere near the São Paulo Guarulhos Airport.
She left yesterday morning on a business trip to Salvador da Bahia, and the entire experience thus far has been a comedy of errors. Her first flight was delayed out of Austin, so she missed her connection to Miami, so they put her on the next flight to Miami which should have gotten her there in time to make her connection to São Paulo. But that flight had a problem with the emergency door sticking, so they were delayed for 45 minutes and landed in Miami 5 minutes after the flight to São Paulo had departed, so they put her on the later flight to São Paulo, and even went ahead and confirmed her on a later flight to Salvador just in case she missed her original connection. Then the late flight to São Paulo sat on the tarmac for an extra hour while they loaded cargo on board and by the time they arrived in Brazil, she had missed both her original connection to Salvador as well as the second flight she had been booked on.
So after spending half of the day running between the American Airlines and TAM counters at Guarulhos Airport, she got rebooked on the next available flight to Salvador, which leaves at 3:30 am tomorrow. Someone from American Airlines took pity on her and put her in a hotel for the day so that she can get some sleep.
I know all of this because she called me here at the office and asked me to call the woman she was supposed to be traveling with, who made all of her connections just fine (she was coming from San Francisco) and was wondering what the heck happened. (For some reason, even though the woman’s American cell phone works in Brazil, Natalie wasn’t able to get the call to go through from her hotel room.)
Afterwards, I called her back just to let her know that she was expected and that someone will be meeting her when she arrives in Salvador at 5 am. It wasn’t until the moment that the hotel operator picked up the phone that I suddenly thought, “I wonder how to ask for someone’s room in Portuguese?” It’s weird – the more languages that I have learned, the more I’ve noticed that I freeze up completely when confronted with a situation where I can’t communicate. So, I pulled out my most eloquent Portuguese, as follows: “Bom dia. May I be connected to room 303, please?”
When I told this to Natalie, she pointed out, “You could have just spoken Spanish, you know. Trescientos y tres would have gotten the point across quiet nicely.”
This is why I need people like Natalie in my life: even jet-lagged and exhausted, she’s still more logical than me.
So send positive vibes toward São Paulo. I’m hoping that the next time I hear from Natalie, it’s so she can tell me about all the beautiful men she’s rubbing shoulders with in the streets …
