greetings from Salvador International Airport,

greetings from Salvador International Airport, Bahia, Brazil

first of all here are a few limericks i was promted to write during this whistlestop business trip to salvador do bahia, brazil (explanations will follow):

There once was a traveller on his way to Brazil,
The trip it turned into a battle uphill,
When his laptop was bust,
And his luggage got lost,
The beautiful trip was much less of a thrill!

So here´s the story of a fateful weekend and a 3 day whistlestop tp brazil. sitting here at the salvador international airport with 4 hours til departure part of me wishes i had never bothered, while the other half seems to relish the fact that i can still keep my calm, and smile ironically at this type of murphyism incarnate.

The story I have chosen to write starts last sunday morning, but before i go on to the actual story, with the arrogance of hindsight i can safely say it should have started friday night, when my bicycle was stolen outside a friends apartment. I was practically 2 meters away in his basement livingroom, when some poor sod decided to relieve me of my primary means of transportation. Had i been of a more supersticious nature i would obviously have seen that this was only the beginning of a murphyish few days. a few days, that i really truly hope have ended already, because the thought of embarking on yet another cross planet plane-hopping with that kind of luck is not one i relish particularly.

well, enough already, here we go:

A Rough Couple of Days

or

O´Keefes vindication

A particularly pessimistic irishman named O´Keefe, after a particularly miserable day in the potato-fields, was heard during one of his rambles in the pub, to pronounce with uncharacteristic foresight and great severity, the now famous words "Murphy was an Optimist!" Although there is no indication that he was in a stae of mind that allowed for this sort of clarity, he was later assumed to have been referring to the Murphy of Murphy´s law fame. For anyone not familiar with the exact wording of this famous law, here it comes: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong"

Despite O´Keefes blatant intoxicationat the time of the outburst, the words have spread around the world, known simply as O´Keefes Comment. Their fame and widespread misuse are only surpassed by their rather obvious pessimism, and the fact that they all too often have an unfortunate ring of truth to them.

What follows here is a true story, that, if only to myself, proves the obvious, slightly paranoid, but at times highly comical truth of O´Keefes comment.

Some time, a few weeks ago, an opportunity arose for me to go to Salvador do Bahia in Brazil to spread the gospel of the mobile internet to an assembly of brazilian tv-stations. The glory of the tropics, the massiveness of a growing market, with little in terms of competition meant that despite the 20 hour trip each way, the chance was too good to pass up on.
Unfortunately for the possibilities of adding a well-deserved weekend in the tropics to my trip, the conference happened to fall (fate maybe?), on the monday and tuesday following my girlfriends only scheduled to visit from germany where she is currently holding a trainee position. But a little flexibility from the conference managers allowed me to leave on the sunday night, scheduled arrival at SSA in Salvador after 20 hours in transit was 11:45 a.m. local time. All was well and dandy until the dawning of the O´Keefe days.

Sunday morning, Sakskobing Hotel, approx. 1¹/² hours drive from my city apartment. It was time for farewells. After spending 2 short days together, and the saturday night at a family dinner until 3 a.m., Signe (my girlfriend) was leaving, i was exhausted, a little stressed out over my brazil trip that evening (still hadn´t prepared my presentation), and sad as hell that i had to say goodbye again.
but i was holding up quite well nevertheless.
Off she went, and i sat myself in the backk seat of her cousins car, ready for the drive home. uneventful trip as it was, the moment i got home i knew something was wrong. 6 hours from flight time, i hadn´t packed, hadn´t prepared my presentation, and really rather felt like just getting it over with. What struck me was something else entirely. Signe had my keys. It flashed in front of my eyes, how she´d locked up after us when we left the day before, and i suspect from old habit, had simnply pocketed the keys.
No keys to my apartment, no access to clothes, suitcase, laptop and passport, and almost as , no keys to the office, and no access to the material i´d be needing in brazil.

What with 4 hours of sleep and a bit of emotional stress to my name, i almost called it quits then and there (and looking back, maybe that would have been a wise decision).
The whole prospect of spending 40 hours travelling for a 45 min. presentation, quite frankly seemed entirely ludicruous at that particular moment in time.
I somehow pulled through by remindin myself that one cannot reasonably pull out of such an engagement without a much more plausible excuse than what I had to offer. I arranged for an extra key to the apartment and was lucky enough to find a hard working colleague to let me into the office. All it had cost me at the end was about an hour off an already tight-as-hell schedule and an extra couple of megatons of stress.

With my last bit of calm and composure, not to mention energy securely reigned in, I hwent  to the airport where a very helpful VARIG employee had promised me I could pick up my ticket at the SAS ticket counter. I should have known. Apparently VARIG had other ideas, forcing me onto a little chase across the airport followed by about half an hours worth of queing at the ticket counter. Hell, despite the fact that that it stole my 30 mins. in the Business class lounge relaxing with a cool drink, worse could have happened. Less fortunately it also became the harbinger of a truth i did not want to face, the truth that this trip was brandished by O´Keefes luck.

At least that first 11 hour leg of the journey was business class, so i had time and opportunity to relax a little. i ate and slept well, landing in london, but staying on the plane. my plan was to sleep as much as possible, and then spend the following morning working on the plane. because of the previous problems with apartment keys and the time it stole, i had decided (in my aparent naivety) to copy as much material on to my lap-top as possible and then finish the presentation on the plane.
the plan was working fine, i was feeling infinitely better, and almost attempted a smile at one point. that is, until i woke up in the morning, brushed my teeth, had breakfast, and did all those morning type things that are only possible on a plane when your in business class. I grabbed my bag, got out the lap-top, placed it neatly on my seat table and switched on the power. this is where i almost let out a furious yelp, or brutal tirade of swear-words, into the plane. the screen on that damned thing had died. the liquid crystals had run out over mosst of the bottom half of the screen, leaving large black inkish marks where i was supposed to see the presentation. That accursed luck.

This was going to make working on the presentation (effectively shifting everything to the top half of the screen) a little bit of a nightmare, but i had come that far, and as long as the lap-top worked marginally, i wasn´t going to call it quits.
I worked for a while, severely hampered by my new 4 inch screen, packed it up and prepared for landing in Sao Paolo. I had about 2 hours for transfer so I was convinced i would be fine. unfortunately for me, the passport control at Gaurulhos International Airport in Sao Paolo was of a different mind. The queue was horrendous, filling the entire room, and well up the stairs, and the moment i saw it i knew it would be a long wait and another tight fit.
patiently i wound myself through the masses, emerging after a problem-free passport control with about 30 minutes until flight time and not a decent sign in the entire airport. having asked, first at the copenhagen check-in counter and later in sao paolo i was safely assuming that mu luggage was checked through to salvador. only when i realized that i had to pay airport tax, and they obviously weren´t interested in my abundance of credit-cards did the stress return. i ran for the cash-dispenser, and with only 3 tries got out the required sum plus a little extra for future unforeseen problems.
having paid my tax the only problem now was to find my way through the chaos of domestic departures and get on to the right plane.
Sao Paulo airport seemingly leads the world in research work regarding using the same gate for multiple departures, resulting in a confusing portuguese chaos of flight-calls to the same gate. as the departure time neared with alarming rate, i asked the personnel at the gate and was politely pointed in the right direction. however the unease at this latin american extravaganza remained in the back of my head, so i asked again once on board the plane. thank god for that, as i might have ended in belo horizonte in stead. i rushed back off the plane, bumped in to another friendly VARIG staff memeber and was given the evil eye for being so late for the plane. OK, so i made it onto the plane and the problems seemingly stopped there. At least until i got to Salvador. standing there in another chaos of bad signs, and ridiculous portuguese speaker calls (why they call them international aiports i have no idea), amongst 400 people looking for bags, the severity of this new challenge (for by then i had simply stopped taking it seriously enough to call it a problem) dawned on me when practically everyone else had left, and my beautifull new samsonite suitcase still wasn´t showing itself.

This new challenge meant that not only didn´t i have a proper screen on my lap-top, but every option of transferring the presentation to another computer disappeared with the cd-rom, floppy drive and power cable stored safely inside my miising suitcase. Also the prospect of even such a short stay in Salvador (30 degrees C) in the same clothes i had worn for the past 30 hours was a little daunting.
Fortunately the people arranging the conference have been hugely helpful, taking me to Salvadors equivalent to H&M for a quick 10 minutes clothes buying spree. For the rest of my stay they involved themselves fully in my problems, alternately ensuring me that all was well and my suitcase would be sent to Salvador on the next available plane, and an hour later profusely apologizing on behalf of all brazilians for the problems caused by their (usually amazing) national airline.

Well, enough said, not quite enough done, here i am at SSA International airport in Salvador, waiting for a flight to Sao Paulo, where i can hopefully pick up my much missed suitcase, before I attack the final leg of the journey to Copenhagen via Frankfurt.

Long live O´Keefe, Murphy was an optimist!