Three hours of listening to a screaming infant aboard a cramped and dodgy plane, I arrived in London. Visibly stressed, but doing my best to hide it, I made my way to Passport Control, which in England always seems to be unnecessarily inefficient in terms of processing each passenger. As I approached the customs agent and handed her my passport, she looked at me with an incredulous glare and reluctantly took my passport between her thumb and forefinger, almost as if she were picking up a dirty diaper.
“What, may I ask, is…this?” she asked, a look of utter disgust washing over her face.
I once again explained the circumstances surrounding my damaged passport, and as she slowly peeled apart each page (many of them had dried together), I was forced to listen to a lengthy lecture on the proper care and treatment of government issued documents, and informed me that it was very unlikely that I would be allowed onto any flight leaving from England with a passport in this condition (she also openly criticized the Italians for their lack of diligence in letting me leave their country).
Once the customs agent reluctantly stamped my passport, I jumped into the nearest taxi (after first acquiring the 50 - 60 quid it would require for me to reach Heathrow). If you’ve never been in a taxi in London, I would highly recommend the experience, as it is certainly a gateway for cross-cultural understanding. My taxi driver was incredibly friendly and talkative. He was about my age, married, and spent most of his time on the clock (when not driving passengers) playing video games and watching movies on his portable on-board TV and entertainment system. In my hour-long ride, I learned a lot about Islam and the dangers of farting during prayer, as well as the proper place for women in society and how the downfall of the West can be attributed to the fact that women do not obey their men.
Arriving at Heathrow, I said a quick goodbye and paid my cabbie an extra tip for the lessons in culture and virtue, and ran to the British Airways check-in counter with just over an hour to spare. I had made it. I took a deep breath and allowed myself to feel a sense of relief now that I was so close to actually making the flight. Sadly, that feeling wasn’t to last long, as once I had made it to the check-in counter, the agent looked at my passport and then at me with a look of sincerest regret. Since there was no way for her to actually scan the passport, she was not legally permitted to allow me on the flight, which meant that I would have to book on the same flight the following day, and in that time, acquire a new passport.
Apart from getting some new passport photos taken, my most pressing concern was contacting my sister, who was planning on meeting me at Narita Airport in Tokyo. Obviously this wasn’t going to happen as planned, but without a phone number to reach her, I wasn’t sure how I was going to let her know of my circumstances. My parents were also vacationing in Ontario, making it impossible to contact them directly, however, after a couple of hours trying to remember my dad’s cell phone number, I left a message explaining that “I had made a very costly mistake and that I wouldn’t be arriving in Tokyo until the day after I was supposed to have arrived.” Seems pretty straightforward? Tip: always make sure the person on the other line is given the full details.
The next morning I made my way to Canada House shortly after the doors had opened, hoping against all odds that I would be able to secure an emergency passport and make it in time for my 2 o’clock flight. There is quite a lengthy paperwork process involved in applying for a temporary passport, and perhaps one of the most vital pieces of information you will need is the name and phone number of at least two people who can verify your identity. My mind immediately went blank. While I certainly knew lots of people, I could not remember a single digit of any phone number other than my own. For whatever reason, from the very depths of my subconscious, I was able to remember the number of our good friends from Milton, Suzanne and Ian, whose number I had probably last dialed when I was 14 years old. Baffled and sleep-deprived, Suzanne was gracious enough to confirm that I was who I claimed to be, and provided a couple of other numbers of people who could do the same. Within hours I had a new passport in hand (at a cost of another 100 quid), and I was bound for the East.
Was there a lesson to be learned from all of this? Perhaps. But I was happy to at least come through it all with this kick-ass T-Shirt:
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