The Purple Tux

With just enough education to perform.

Like I said before, we were going to stay in Surabaya for a few days with my dad’s cousins before flying on over to Makassar to see my mom’s side of the family. Actually, the main reason we went to Indonesia in the first place was to see my grandpa, my mom’s father. You see, my parents had planned a vacation in Indonesia to be taken later this year, in November. However, in the middle of April, my grandpa had a heart attack, and it was looking kinda serious. So we moved the timetable up and left America as fast as we could. I think we were finally able to leave around a week after getting a call from our relatives that my grandpa had a heart attack. And, like I mentioned, the flight to Indonesia takes a long time, factoring in all the waiting around in airports between transfer flights and such.

I guess sometime between our departure from San Francisco and our arrival in Surabaya, my grandpa’s condition took a turn for the worse. As soon as we saw my dad’s cousins, they told us that one of my mom’s brother-in-laws had called, and they got us same-day tickets for Makassar. From Surabaya to Makassar, it’s only about a one hour flight, but I was pretty spent after all the lack of sleep.

We were in Surabaya for around 8 hours or so before we left. During that time, we drove around the city- to the U.S. Embassy and to the bank to exchange some money. The banks there are more anal than my friend Sheynis, which is saying a lot. The banks there wouldn’t exchange money with us if our bills weren’t completely flat (as though they were just printed) and they wouldn’t exchange if the bills didn’t have a specific code printed on them (take a look at your dollar bills now and notice the code printed in green ink on it). That’s absolutely retarded, and I don’t say that to demean retards; it’s just a backwards policy, is all. As a result, we spent a frustratingly long time at a bank with very little turnover.

I was able to take the most satisfying and yet painfully short nap of my life at my dad’s cousin’s house. I might have napped for around 4 hours, but it wasn’t enough due to all the sleep I had missed over the flight. What I really wanted was just to crash on the bed and knock myself out for a good half day. But it was like that episode of Everybody Hates Chris, when Chris goes to bed, barely closes his eyes, and his mom turns off the light and immediately turns it back on, telling him it’s time to wake up and get ready for school. Was that a run-on sentence? I’m beyond caring. That’s how tired I was. Don’t you hate it when waking up hurts?

Fast-forward. We got on the plane to Makassar on this seemingly never-ending journey. I was still pretty tired. I wasn’t so tired that I didn’t notice the airplane stewardesses, though. In all of the planes I took, I noticed that most airplane stewardesses are pretty decent looking. Even if their faces aren’t too strikingly beautiful, it seems like the makeup they wear makes them at least presentable. Plus, I think they have to be proportionate to work for the airline, so I didn’t see any Big Berthas, if y’know what I mean.

Being able to look at pretty stewardesses is an important part of any flight, I think. Getting onto a vehicle that is potentially a flying deathtrap of doom isn’t a very logical course of action, but somehow, being served by attractive women puts me very much at ease. Plus, the outfits the Singapore Airlines (our international flight) stewardesses wear are pretty classy, as were the uniforms of the domestic Indonesian flight we took to get to Makassar. Tasteful batik designs that were pleasing to look at.

Only when we were on the plane to Makassar, still on the landing strip and preparing for takeoff, did I begin to realize the implications of our same-day trip. Leaving so quickly could only mean my grandpa was getting worse. Sadly, I must have been so exhausted that the idea hadn’t even occurred to me until we were on the plane. Sure enough, my parents, especially my mom, looked really worried. This, of course, worried me as well.

For the first time, it finally hit home that this trip wasn’t solely for pleasure; it was an emergency.

I don’t know how many times in my life I have accurately used the word “emergency” to describe a situation that directly affected me. It’s a powerful word, I think, one with a resonance that people don’t often recognize. But at that particular moment, I just about felt the weight of the word on my shoulders.

It’s like I said… Don’t you hate it when waking up hurts?

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