Flights and connections are usually boring and pretty straightforward and would never deserve a post, but I experienced some strange coincidences during my return to Brazil that I thought worthwhile writing about.
First of all I left school during the morning break of our Final Presentations and got on a taxi towards YVR. I faced the broken Skytrain as a signal to not use public transit on my journey, and that proved a good thing a little later. We faced some traffic, sure, but got to the airport quickly and in time for me to realize my name was messed up on the boarding ticket and I had to fix that or my passport wouldn’t be of any use at all.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Titoguimaras Ferradans!”
That was quite easy and since I didn’t have much to do in the airport I went straight to the boarding gate. C42. This is the furthest gate from the point you enter YVR’s boarding area. I was feeling a little weak from being sick and not eating properly, plus my handbag was overly heavy. I dragged myself across the entire terminal at turtle speed, taking breaks in the process. I kept thinking “Why couldn’t I be lucky for once and have like… the closest boarding gate ever?”. Near the very end, when you’re almost at the gat, there’s ONE of those crawlers that carried me for about 15 meters. By the time I was getting out of it, the song ended on the iPod exactly in time for me to hear an Air Canada employee calling my name. The flight was supposed to leave at 2pm, and it was 11:45am. Using the strength I had left in me, I hurried there with my single lead-filled handbag.
The attendant was a very nice guy, who was able to transfer me to an earlier flight so I’d have more time to spare in Toronto, since my connection time was a little tight. The new flight was leaving at 1:15pm. Boarding gate? C50. THE VERY FIRST ONE WHEN YOU GET TO THE BOARDING AREA. So much for wishing to board in one of the first gates… And now I had way less time to get there and no crawlers at all. I considered jumping in one of those small carts that roll around with airport staff, but my landing would be very rough when taking the bags weight into account.
Let’s just say I got there in time and the place was hectic. Apparently there were many others transferred into this flight, so we had to hang around until they figured out our seats. I think I got the very last one.
The flight was fine, I tried watching Exodus, which turned out to be the most boring epic movie I’ve ever seen and about one hour in I started to doodle some ideas for VFX, since I’ll have a doubled Term 6 and wanted to do something other than Hovering Lights using assignments and older shots, as well as shooting a couple new plates while here in Brazil, where I know people with lots of gear and willing to have fun shooting. It was born – more like revamped – the Ultimate VFX Toolkit, which will be introduced here soon and requires very little work to be done – a lot of motion graphics, though.
Again, at Toronto, my boarding gate was E78, one of the furthest options from where we landed. Lots of crawlers on the way, this time. People went rushing through them while I enjoyed the ride and being free of overly heavy bags. The time I saved getting the earlier flight was well spent riding these things like there was nothing better in the entire trip. I still got to the gate with plenty of time until boarding and kept on reading my virtual books – “The 100”, which inspired the TV show, which is MUCH better than the books themselves, but I only realized that when finishing up the third book, rounding up 700 pages along the week.
The second flight was longer, 10 hours, and I slept a good part of it, read until the book was over and wrote some more ideas and thoughts. I should’ve brought another of these small notebooks…
We finally got to Sao Paulo, and I still had to hang around for another two hours before the third – and last – flight. During this time I brought my brazilian phone back to life, remembered 3g internet here doesn’t work at all, called my parents – neither of them picked up! hahaha – and got to the right boarding terminal. This time there were no surprises with my name in the ticket. No surprises either when I found out the boarding gate was – again – the furthest away from the entrance point. Stupid me, kept thinking “why do I always get this lucky?”. And, twenty minutes left to start boarding, the gate was changed too, to the second one closest to the entrance. By this point I could barely feel my left hand from carrying the goddamned bag, but I know bringing the camera and hard-drives will pay off quickly being here for a month.
On the plane, I was rewarded having free seats all around me. The only free seats on the plane, by the way. Then I could relax properly and write down some more plans for the UVK. Two and a half hours on the air and I was finally home.
God, it feels good to be home.
From the airport me and my mom went straight to the beach, to make some offerings to Yemanja and ask for her blessing upon my return and future departure. The sun was setting and it was not even 5pm. The water was warm and I almost plunged into it. “Almost” as “got 90% in”. Then we finally came home, met my dad and talked about what I just wrote up here. I went to bed no later than 9pm, which equals 5pm in Vancouver.