The Hermès and the Have-nots

If there is one place on earth where economic inequality is most unabashedly in-you-face within the confinements of four walls and under one roof, this place would indubitably be the airplane.

This is nothing new. Air travel has always been about the haves and have-nots. If you've got the dough, you whizz pass check-in and security on a red carpet, sip on champagne in the exclusive airline lounge, then get pampered with caviar and premium service in the privacy and luxury of a First Class suite until you reach your destination waking up in silk. For the less well-off, air travel means claustrophobia, numb rumps, armrest wars, dog food, and long lines for the filthy loo. And for the even less moneyed? They don't travel at all.

The airplane is a replica of a highly stratified society in a nut shell - a perfect cross section of the socioeconomic pyramid constituting of the powerful Elite (the Top Crust), the Bourgeoisie (aka. Wannabes) and, underneath them all, an overwhelmingly large base of Proletarians (the mass working class). Take a stroll from nose to tail on any given flights dispatched between Hong Kong and Dubai, and no sooner will you see the economic divide between the haves and have-nots - with the front end taken up by loaded Arab families (probably with their hands on oil reserves), affluent Asian holidaymakers, and then - with merely a curtain in between, throngs of migrant workers and contract laborers at the rear trying to make ends meet.

What makes an airplane distinct from society is the extent of this socioeconomic disparity so shamelessly conspicuous that it verges on the offensive. As passengers traveling in coach straddle towards their cramped quarters in the back, they are forced to first marvel at the opulence of First and Business Class, only to gawk with lust and envy at something so close yet so distant and then silently lower their heads in submission to their humble destiny. Like a wide-eyed dreamer wandering in a Hermès boutique, you can touch, feel, and dream - but snap back into harsh reality once you find out the almighty price.

Sure enough, a city has readily distinguishable neighborhoods separating the rich and the poor, but few are as concretely demarcated and as boldly segregating as the curtains that erect tangible boundaries between the haves and the have-nots on an aeroplane.

A grandiose mosque in Surabaya

None is as illustrative as my recent flight operated from Surabaya, Indonesia. With only days until the Eid al-Fitr, an important Muslim holiday marking the end of the Ramadan, hordes of the powerful and the elite are fluxing out of the country for vacation overseas. The second-largest city in Indonesia, Surabaya boasts a population with an ever widening economic gap, where Indonesians of Chinese descent invariably make up the Top Crust.

Indonesian-Chinese in Surabaya can be very wealthy. And when I say wealthy, I mean seriously wealthy. Think fair-skinned tai-tais with characteristically high, puffy hairdos, heavy makeup, and branded handbags. Hence the reproduction of Surabaya society on the airplane takes on an extra racial dimension - where the darker masses (mostly migrant domestic helpers and some middle class) are filling the back, the fairness-obsessed Indonesian-Chinese occupy the front end.

So what is it exactly that makes this group of high-spending travelers so unforgettable? 

Their accessories. The universal Asian symbol of status.

Literally, I thought I have stepped into a private underground showroom of Hermès.

Kelly, Birkin, Kelly, oh, yet another Birkin. Okay, more like a Hermès “wonderland” - since in reality it will require serious charm and winning the lottery to even cajole a Herbag out of the staunch gatekeepers of this prestigious marque.

12 H - an exceptionally rare turquoise calf leather; 18 K - an equally coveted baby blue. Of course, Mrs. So-and-so seated in 12 H protects the lush leather handles by wrapping them with a signature Hermès silk scarf. And Mme. So-and-so in 18 K keeps her precious tote in a canvas bag before gently placing it into the overhead bin. But the real show-stopper really is 14 G - crafted from the most valuable saltwater crocodile hide - which Ms. So-and-so can care less about tossing into the overhead compartment. This epitome of a luxury, one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted bag instantly puts a neighboring Gucci to shame.

… And what about the lonesome Longchamp? Save it for the groceries.

Morning traffic in Surabaya, a city of extremes

"Check out that overhead compartment," my good friend and colleague snickers, his head motioning towards the treasure chest, "there's hundreds of thousands dollar worth of goods in there alone." It's true. Within a mere half hour during boarding, I have handled enough Hermès bags to pay off a mortgage.

Half of the passengers in this cabin are related one way or another, and as families they are traveling altogether on Business Class from Surabaya via Hong Kong for a holiday in New York and San Francisco. With each Business Class round-trip ticket between Indonesia and the US valuing at the fifth digit in US Dollar, it takes no genius to calculate the extent of damage a vacation as such causes to a family's savings.

For the Have-nots, it is beyond a lifetime's worth of slaving and savings. For the Haves, it might just be another Hermès in the closet.

[Any thought or comments? Share with me!]

A hands-free masterpiece

Less than an hour prior to our approach into Sydney's Interational Airport, the call light illuminates. I drop my task on hand and peer at the call light indicator. 11A. Mrs. Williams has finally risen after a night of rest. A tall brunette in her late-thirties, she stands with her hands up, her duvet disorderly crumpled along the side of her still-fully-deployed flat bed. Her hands are red, the color of a terrible rash; her seat tinted with a faint crimson against the teal color of the fabric; her face twisted in agony. That cannot be blood... can it? 

"How... may I help you Mrs. Williams?" I ask apprehensively as her previously friendly and courteous disposition seems to have faded in the face of distress. She spins around in her shapeless sweater and unflattering beige track pants. Well, at least they used to be beige.

"Oh..." I murmur as I take in the unsightly view of the derriere, furrowing my brows at the same time. Her whole backside is now smeared and covered in red streaks, strokes, and haphazard blotches.  

- "I woke up and then I noticed this..." still dumbfounded, she shrieks, "there must be a crayon or something in my seat!"

Kids at play in Darling Quarter's new playground

So through the many hours of twists and turns in the warmth of her duvet, a stray red crayon left over by a faceless kid on a previous flight that eschewed the aircraft cleaners has been diligently working a masterpiece right on the contours of her arse.

It reminds me of Charlotte of Sex and the City 2, who melts down after her daughter playfully smacks two huge wet red handprints on her buttocks (a white, probably Valentino, pencil skirt that she sashays in around the kitchen, baking cupcakes). So it's not Valentino that Mrs. Williams is concerned of here. It is the prospects of her humiliation sashaying around the baggage claim area and the city with a red Down Under that appears as though her own child has taken revenge on her in her sleep.

Sure enough, I find chunks of red crayon in the seams of Mrs. Williams' seat. 

- "Do you guys have sleeper suits or something that I can change into?!" She grumbles. We unfortunately do not. Apologies given, we offer to wipe her track pants down with soda water as best as we can while she hides in the lavatory and offer laundry compensation.

Fresh ideas for a kiddie prank anyone?

[Any thought or comments? Share with me!] 

How far can the "extra mile" go?

A decently dressed Caucasian woman stands inside the lavatory with the door wide open, gazing blankly at the toilet bowl. At the busiest peak of our meal service, a colleague of mine nominates me to go check up on her. What can it be, and how is it that a guy assists a woman in the loo? 

- "I... dropped my phone into the toilet," the lady utters. She almost seems too composed for a tragedy of this sort.
-"Oh no," I immediately react empathetically, "I hope it's not an iPhone!" I later thought that was one of the most stupid remarks I have ever made. Any mobile phone dropped in a john deems a tragedy, albeit a comical one.
I peek into the gaping black hole for any signs of her device. Wow... that is a huge serving of urine, lady. A gallon, maybe. But no phone is in sight. Embarrassed, we both stare helplessly at the pool of still liquid, she still in disbelief of her loss and I wondering to what extent "going the extra mile" extends.

Truth is, the phone has already slipped through the throat of abyss, and chances of retrieval is near zero. In situations like this, is my role one to put up a heroic show of rescue, or one to provide emotional support while delivering the bad news? Failing to think of anything more comforting to say, I choose to be the bearer of bad news, like surgeons who could not resuscitate a dying patient. "I'm afraid it's not very likely that we could fish the phone out as it's a huge vaccuum tank underneath..." The lady grimaces at the image of her cellular buried in a pit of feces.

-"Do you think that the phone will still work even if I get it back?" Good call, and we all know the answer. "Is there anything that we can use to see if it's in there? Something... long? " Well, for reassurance purposes it doesn't hurt to at least try. I dash to the galley to fetch a foot-long plastic stick - but here's the catch - will I have to get down and dirty, or is this completely out of my scope of responsibility?

I gingerly hand over the stick, and the lady seems reluctant to take it. Uhh... Just at this state of limbo, my colleague comes into rescue. She passes her a pair of plastic gloves along with the stick, "I'm sorry we can't help you to dig in the toilet as we are handling food." Simple and straightforward, and my colleague rushes off the scene back to her task.

I linger uneasily as the woman pokes at the black hole flooding with her own urine. Learning something new each day, I think to myself, phew. In efforts of not seeming apathetic before disappearing, I add, "I'm really sorry that this happened." And off I go, lamenting over the hundreds of contacts and messages and photos now interred in a pile of inflight crap.

[Any thought or comments? Share with me!] 

Blood, sweat, and tears

[This is an unpublished entry from Feb 2011 that is now finally finished and published, May 2011] 

I wake up to my morning call last week sensing that a system crash is imminent. It is the second day in a row I get up before dawn, put on my hospitality face, and go to work anticipating another day that consists of rushing from the second I board to the moment I haul my body out the aircraft. Before this day were countless similar days and weeks that, in reminiscence, seem to merge and compile into a vertical slide down an infinite chute where the only sound of time ticking came from my body's time bomb.

This downward slip was rarely interrupted by sufficient proper rest, made worse by poor quality sleep. The last few months saw two seasonal peaks, where Christmas and Chinese New Year arrived practically unseparated this year. Coincidentally, I flew record hours during this period of time, with my total number of flying hours well above the monthly average. Looking back, I see a nebulous mosiac of thousands upon thousands of faces I have come across within the matter of weeks - holiday makers, boisterous tour groups, overseas students, all too many children and infants, and hordes of mainland Chinese. Somewhere in this mosaic I vaguely see myself, eye circles deepening.

And crash I did.

I collapse in bed after a 12-hour flight, jolting awake after only three hours to a missed call thinking it was an alarm for my next flight. Sometimes I see myself at work in my sleep. I see the onset of depression. The stress of this race against time inflight every day - of handling full-load passengers, of exceeding duty free sales target, of winning our supervisors' fancy - has all but little by little wringed me into a tight rope so tense and thin it finally snapped. My dwindling physical health, as indicated by insomnia, a frequently upset stomach, confused body clock and perpetual fatigue, along with my crippled sanity, have reached its threshold - I could no longer go on like this.

Yes, I have bumped up my bank savings during this period; I have achieved record sales and reached new heights in my career as a Elite Sales Team member. But this did not come without buckets of blood, sweat, and tears. And how many passengers - sitting in their seat receiving their meals and drinks from a graceful flight attendant - ever think of us as more than just waiters and waitresses going on holiday?

Hong Kong welcoming the new decade

[Any thought or comments? Share with me!]