Go Away, Stalker

I am very early for the return plane home, so I wander around the check-in area trying to find a place to sit. My flight is not showing where I can check in yet, so I buy a hot popiah snack – a sickly sweet stodgy pancake that had a very synthetic ham and cheese filling with what I think was salad cream – which was repulsively delicious. 

I hunt out the Fire Fly check in area, and was going to ask the chances of getting on the earlier flight, but the guy in front of me in the queue clearly had never been on an aeroplane before and was actually thinking about the check-in questions too much, in particular the one that goes “have you left your bag unattended?”

Twenty minutes later, after he had unpacked and repacked his cases, as he’s clearly forgotten if he’d packed any sharp objects, the desk next to him opens and they beckon me over. Unfortunately, it’s now too late to get onto an earlier flight, so I check in and now need to wait about an hour before I go.

I browse in various shops and then spy the one remaining seat in The Coffee Bean where I could sit until my flight gate is shown. I have the advantage of speed here, as I don’t shuffle my feet as I walk, so I make a dash for the seat and get there just before this other person and plonk myself down, ordering a coffee and a cake too. Lovely.

This guy behind me pipes up as I start to use my Mac, striking up a conversation asking if my laptop was a MacBook Pro, and then goes on to tell me about his work as a VW car fitter, asking if I thought VW cars were good (I told him I had a VW in the UK, and he was really impressed). So we chat for a bit, but then he stops the conversation abruptly in mid sentence and changes the subject completely and I am asking him to repeat what he said, being a bit confused and all, and I realise that he’s actually taken a phone call and is now chatting to someone else on the phone!

Loudly.

I mouth “bye” and wave him goodbye and move through customs and security to the departure area, as my flight gate is showing. The departures area is actually a whole load better than where I was just now, less crowded, fewer hoards of families etc and after buying some sweets and biscuits for the team (including some durian sweets as a joke – which no doubt are horrible) I wait for the flight. The loud talking VW fitter walks through and sits right next to me, and says “so, Chris, what time is your flight?”

How did he know my name? I never told him…

Then I realised that he must have been looking over my shoulder whilst we were in the Coffee Bean at what I was doing on the laptop – Facebook, blog etc: he must have super powered eyesight, being able to read my screen from the seat behind me. I felt a bit weird as he started to talk about some of the photos that were on my Facebook profile – and I was quite glad to get in line for my flight and leave the VW fitter / stalker behind.