Wednesday 2:10 am - He starts chatting me up. He's not doing a very good job of it. He's hard of hearing, so he can't hear most of my answers. Also, he seems like a one-way conversationalist. Not to mention that he's naked, showering, and I've never met him before. I feel awkward, standing there in the pajamas they gave me. He asks me what I'm doing and where I'm from. The usual. Now would be a perfect time to mention how late it is and let him take things from there, but I feel that it's just not the right thing to do, so I decide that I'm just gonna stick with him and at least help him find a place to sleep.
Wednesday 2:30 am - He's slow. Really slow. He must be in his late 60s, or maybe his 70s. I'm not too sure. Also, he keeps mentioning how tired he is.
He's drying himself off, and so I go back to the main desk and get him a bottle of water. It's my last chance in Korea to use all the Korean I've been studying for the past 2 years, and it's kinda cool to be putting it to good use. I get an eyelash in my eye in the middle of talking to the lady at the desk and I say "Ah, an eyelash!" in Korean. It makes me feel cool to have just said that.
Wednesday 2:40 am - I come back, and he's still fooling around with who knows what. I guess old age and sleep deprivation can make fools of us all, so I try not to mind. I ask him if he got a sleeping pad from the front desk, but he didn't, so I hike on back there and get us both a pad and a padded block (these places always give you a padded block to sleep on...it'd be better if they just didn't give you anything, really).
Wednesday 3:00 am - We take our pads to the sleeping room, and lay them out. We say goodnight, and I consider my job done. I've gotta wake up early, about 3 or so hours from now, and I don't anticipate he'll be getting up anytime soon, considering how tired he seems.
Wednesday 5:15 am - I wake up. I hate sleeping on those pads and padded blocks, but if you gotta wake up early to catch a flight and you don't have any kind of alarm with you, then that setup works out just fine. It seems the old guy changed positions in the night, and is now soundly snoring in the middle of the room.
Wednesday 5:20 am - I walk to the front desk, hand in my pad and padded block, and start walking back to the locker rooms. "Hey, didn't expect to see you up this early!" the old guy exclaims. He's standing right in front of me, urine bag in hand. He must've woken up before me.
I want to run away. I've gotta check in with my flight in less than an hour, and at the pace this guy goes and the problems he's got on his hands, he could severely hamper any of my plans to get out of this country on time.
Wednesday 5:25 am - We're back in the locker room, and during the night, things got worse. The cord for the catheter is extremely long, and all of last night he must of been stepping on the bag and knocking it against stuff, because now the bag's leaking. There's urine on the floor of the locker room. He decides that he wants his luggage bag cause inside that is a previous catheter bag that he had, and he wants to switch out his current bag for that one. Before anything else, I get him to empty the urine bag. After that we get his luggage bag and I explain to the front desk that we're not checking out, he just needs some stuff. He starts telling them about what he wants to do with his catheter bag, and I seriously start wondering if he's a little bit off his rocker, or if he's just plain old. It's pretty obvious that they don't speak any English, but I guess in his mind they're pretty interested in what exactly is going on with that leaky bag he's holding.
Wednesday 5:30 am - Well, I've got about 30 minutes before I feel I should start checking in to my flight, because I know that I have to go to the check-in counter, get them to print me a confirmation ticket, and then head to immigration and get them to extend my visa for a day before I can actually check in.
The old guy (we'd exchanged names in the beginning, but it seems neither of us can remember the other one's name) pulls another catheter bag, but I tell him there's just no way we can switch that out with his current one, mainly because of the different size in tubes and our lack of tools.
I make a gut-wrenching decision to tell him that I'll just walk over with him to the medical clinic, which happens to be just down the hall. I say 'gut-wrenching' because of the time constraints, and because getting him geared up for something takes much longer than you could possibly imagine.
Wednesday 5:50 am - We get to the medical clinic, and he starts talking to the nurse. His accent places him from backwoods Texas, and the nurse there has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. He's holding up his leaky urine bag and getting urine all over the floor, and so I try to take over and explain stuff in Korean. I tell her that the bag is spilling (I know the word for 'spill' but not the word for 'leak') and that he wants to change bags (again, I know the word for "to change" but not for "to switch"). Also, I tell her that he wants a bag for his leg (this is the most difficult to explain, because I have no clue how to explain a bag that straps to your leg), and he wants it shorter. My vocabulary is facing it's limits, but it seems like she's kinda picking up what I'm laying down.
She goes and comes back and says that she can't do it; she doesn't have a bag. This is not good. I translate, and he makes me ask her again, and she says the same thing again. The old guy is a pretty good sport about the situation, as he has been the whole time. He's never once complained about anything, and so far he's taken everything in stride.
I'm feeling the time constraints though, and I'm not sure how long I can keep helping him before I start hurting myself.
I turn to the nurse and say, "What should we do?"
She looks, pauses, and then recommends that we go to a real hospital. I ask her how far away it is, and she says it's about an hour.
I think about it, and decide that it's the only option. The old guy just wants to head on a plane back home, but how is he gonna do that flight leaking the whole way back? I tell him that I really think he needs to go to a real hospital and get them to take care of it, and that at a real hospital they'll have a translator and at least a doctor or two that can speak some English.
Wednesday 6:00 am - I'm getting pretty worried. I should be upstairs, going through the check-in procedures by now. I finally convince him that going to a real hospital is in his best interests, mainly because they'll have the proper resources and materials to get him a new bag. Also, even though he doesn't have Korean medical insurance, I assure him that it can't cost that much.
He gets his stuff together, and puts on his pants and a shirt and some shoes. This takes excruciatingly long, and I remind him a couple times that we have to hurry up. At a few points he stops and starts talking about his mom and his sister and the VA hospital in Tucson, but I have to cut him off and keep him focused. There's no way I'm gonna miss my plane.
Wednesday 6:05 am - I'm in a rush, and as we're exiting the spa, my backpack that has my Xbox in it drops on the floor. I'm still unsure if it works or not.
Wednesday 6:10 am - We find an information booth, and I explain the guy's situation to the lady at information. I tell her that he needs a taxi to take him to the hospital, and perhaps some things written down in Korean so that the taxi drivers can understand what's going on. Although he could really use some more help, I feel like I've done my duty, and I tell the guy that I hope things work out and that I'll say a prayer for him. He thanks me for my help and I head off to the check-in counter. I'm sure I'll never see him again, but I can only hope that he somehow managed to work things out.
Wednesday 6:15 am - Check-in counter. On time. Confirmation ticket printed. Rush to immigration. They don't open till 6:30. Great.
Wednesday 6:30 am - The same immigration lady as last night. She sees me and asks, "Why didn't you come back last night?"
"They couldn't print my ticket for me," I reply. Sweet. She remembers me. This is good.
Wednesday 6:45 am - There were 9 people in front of me. I keep looking at the clock and looking at my ticket. Wait, what's this? My flight leaves at 8:10, not 8:00. Sweet, ten more minutes to work with. My number's called. I get to the counter, and it's the same lady that talked with me a little bit ago. Perfect. I explain my situation again, and she says it's not gonna be a problem. She's processing the paperwork, and things are looking up. There's a really nice office plant on the counter next to me. "I like that plant. That is a nice plant," I say, quoting one of my favorite Shrek lines. She smiles, and tells me the name of it and that the flower at the top is not a flower, but just a new leaf. "That's really cool," I say.
I'm feeling good as she hands me back my passport and tells me that I'm free to go.
Wednesday 7:00 am - Check-in. Good to go. Everything's cleared.
Wednesday 8:10 am - Take off. I'm tired, so I snooze off and on throughout the flight.
Wednesday 9:30 am (local time) - Beijing. 3 hour layover. Walk around, grab some food, get on the internet. Can't get on facebook, can't update my blog, can't look at much of anything. Wow, the Chinese internet is pathetic.
Wednesday 12:30 pm - Take off. Not many people on the airplane. I kill a mosquito, and the Chinese lady sitting next to me says, "Mosquito." I realize that, for the first time in a while, talking in Korean is not an option. So, in English, I just say, "Yeah, I really hate mosquitos." As the in-flight movie starts, I switch my seat to the middle row so I can stretch out and try to sleep a little. I wake up just in time to catch "The Blind Side," which turns out to be pretty good, as far as in-flight movies go.
Wednesday 5:45 pm (local time) - Dubai. Finally. I change out some of my American money for UAE dirhams. Realize that I shouldn't have changed my money out at the Seoul airport, because now I'm changing it for the second time. Dumb financial decision.
Wednesday 6:45 pm - Chatting up the taxi driver on the way to my girlfriend's place. Man, it's good to be in a country where I can chat with the taxi drivers.
Wednesday 7:15 pm - Because of the huge change in plans, my girlfriend isn't able to meet me, so she'd promised that there would be a key at security for me and all I would need to do is show up and check-in and then they'd give me the key. I show up, check-in, and before I even ask about the key, one of my girlfriend's friends walks in the building. She sees me and says, "Hi!" and I tell her that I just arrived. She stands with me at security as I wait for the key.
Soon enough though, the security guy tells me there is no key. Great.
This is when my girlfriend's friend takes over. Security refuses to help me out, so she lets me go up to her place and at least drop off my stuff and think over the situation. She offers to let me sleep on the couch, and I take her up on it. She starts texting my girlfriend, who's in Rome at the moment, and over the course of an hour or so they figure out that we can just walk down to security and make them open up my girlfriend's apartment. So, we head back down to talk to security again, and she finally gets them to let me in to my girlfriend's apartment.
"I guess this is the karma I get because I helped out an old guy last night," I tell her.
You know, it's pretty amazing that she'd walked by when she did, considering that in that whole apartment building she's one of the only 3 people I know there. Also, she's an airplane stewardess just like my girlfriend, so she's gone half the time anyways.
And, that's my story. My girlfriend came home the next day and brought me some pizza from Rome, and I told her about everything. It was pretty crazy. I have a lot of travel stories, but this whole situation was about as nerve-wrackingly odd as they get.
BTW: The food out here in Dubai is pretty cheap and varied, especially when it comes to produce. I made a little banana/pomegranate/grape/watermelon fort the second or third day I was here, and Song thought it was cool so I took a picture of it.
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