At the airport

I was at the airport yesterday sending friends off. As we were there early, we had about 1 hour time to sit around and observed people. We saw a few interesting things.

First we heard two women talking about another friend of theirs who went back home to take her key lock for her luggage becasue she has forgotten to lock her bag and no one has spare key for her. One of them was saying that she should have just bought one at the airport. The other said that the friend who went back just did not want to waste money since she has one at home. Is this really going to save more than just buying one when she needs to rush home and return to airport by taxi again? We don't mean to be a peeping Tom but they were talking so loudy that everyone around them can hear. When the "fat aunty" (this is how the two ladies addressed her) arrived, she opened up her big luggage and began to start moving items out and put them into a smaller hand carry bag. She told them that she was afraid that it might get over weight. Her luggage was so messy with her clothes which were not packed properly and were all over the place. Guess what makes her luggage so heavy? She had so many detergents, soap powder and shampoo in bottle form in her luggage. Wonder where she is going? Maybe to do charity work somewhere. Then she proceed to do her check-in and came back with a smiling face and told her friends that the luggage weighed 26 kgs and was not overweight.

We sat nearby the weighing machine and saw a group of men who came in with big bags and alot of bulky boxes with electrical items. After weighing their items, they stood on the machine to weigh themselves. Are they including their weight too for check-in too? We tried to be mischeivous weigh ourselves after seeing so many of them doing the same. Haha, I am very happy that I have not put on weight. The most interesting part is we saw two men opening up a carton that weighed about 50 kgs with items like box fan, rice cooker, electric water flask, a small TV and some items that we could not see clearly. Both of them were trying to re-pack the carton by removing some items out. They managed to put a few items into a medium size backpack. However, they have nothing to put their box fan, rice cooker and electric water flask. We were wondering how they could bring these items with them. When they are done with the packing and strapping of their cartons and luggages, we were suprised that they just carry the three items in their hand and proceed to do their check-in. I have never seen people carrying items in this manner to fly and wonder if they are able to pass through. We guessed that they could be workers from village back in their hometown. On one hand, they are buying all these to provide their family with a better life but on the other hand, they do not want to pay for the access charge. Just cannot imagine how they would manage this throughout the whole journey.

The last one we saw was two men hugging each other. One of them was sobbing badly in the arm of the other man who was travelling. The man who was sobbing was so emotional that he just could not stopping crying and in the end it was kind of like a loud cry. He was holding on so tight to his "partner" that we wonder if they are lovers or maybe just received some bad news from home town.