Sleeps 'til Shanta



Not prime realty.

It’s 6.30pm on a Thursday evening and I’m sitting on the floor of the Jetstar baggage collection area at Auckland Airport. My friend Gemma’s kind offer of a free ride to the airport was too good to refuse, but I’m now in the unusual position of being far too early for my 9.00pm flight home. In search of a humble power socket for my laptop, I drag my obscenely large suitcase through every cafe and seating area in the vicinity. I search high and low, looking like I’ve lost something (my mind, mostly) but evidently, power sockets in airports are not as commonplace as I imagined. I locate one, but – most inconveniently – it’s already in full employment, giving the Bluebird vending machine the lifeblood it needs to distribute little packets of chippies and chocolate bars to weary travellers day in, day out. Plus, it’s situated at the door of the men’s toilets – not exactly prime realty.

After another five minutes, my increasingly frantic search proves fruitful and I locate the only other power socket in the domestic terminal – hence why I’m parked up on the floor right here at Jetstar baggage collection. Classy. Two turbaned taxi drivers are talking animatedly in Hindi nearby, and the volume and pace at which they converse gets me excited about the thought of my impending travels to the taxi drivers’ motherland; the chaos of cars, cows and commuters of Delhi is just a matter of weeks away.

The worn, industrial carpet tiles glued to the concrete beneath me isn’t the most comfy seat in the house, but I’m roughing it in the name of training for the all-important Surviving Airports module of Intrepid Travel 101. I’ll be back here at Auckland Airport on Boxing Day, before venturing further afield for a self-commissioned study of the prevalence of power sockets in airports of Asia. In fact, the next few months see me hanging out at airports in Singapore, Bangkok, Koh Samui, Kuala Lumpur, Chennai, Delhi, Kathmandu, Lukla, Christchurch and Wellington.

Power socket: located.

Tonight’s flight is my 71st in the 18 months since June last year, so I’ve spent a lot of time in departure lounges of late. It would be fair to say that 2011 has kind of been The Year of the Airport for Miss Communicate – not that there's any complaining. Some people whine to no end about the whole waiting around fiasco of travel, but truth be told – I kind of like it. It often seems to be the only time I can legitimately do nothing but engage in the fine art of people-watching. With the advent of smartphones, it seems every spare minute I’m not sitting at my desk at work (train rides, walking to the supermarket, on the bike at the gym, and so on) is filled in by some form of iPhone-based activity – and hence, people-watching time is now a much more scarce commodity. Airports provide for the perfect setting for the discerning people-watcher: teary farewells, frenzied folk running late, foreigners, exhausted commuters, security staff, and turbaned taxi drivers – airports have it all. But let’s not beat around the bush; while airports are an essential part of travel, and a terrific place for people watching, they’re simply a means to an end. The real attractions are the cities, towns, villages, mountains and islands we’ll visit, and – most of all – the fascinating people we’ll meet.

One of these people we’re going to meet is called Shanta Kumar Baniya – known simply as Shanta.

While most of the population is counting down the sleeps 'til Santa (10, if you haven’t already worked it out), I’m on the official countdown of sleeps 'til Shanta (just 42 more to go). Shanta is the Nepalese Sherpa who’s got the enviable task of spending 14 days with me, Pete, Tim and Clare. For the princely sum of 1065 Euros each, it’s his job to make sure we get to Mt Everest Base Camp and back to Kathmandu, ideally in one piece. We were introduced to Shanta through Sarah, a friend of a friend (FOAF). Apparently Shanta has been trekking in the Himalayas for 13 years, and has taken a friend of Sarah’s (so, a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend – a FOAF-OAF?) on a number of successful trips. FOAF-OAF says, “Shanta knows where the safe food is. By taking his advice, you will avoid stomach ailments.” This is a good start. “He is excellent at managing the altitude gain to avoid getting altitude sickness.” Even better. Shanta’s name, we’re told, actually has a silent ‘h’ – meaning that it’s pronounced exactly the same way as the father of Christmas himself. Upon hearing this, I immediately envisage endless Santa Claus-themed practical jokes, puns and re-written lyrics to Christmas carols (“Shanta Claus is Coming to Town” – a classic) as we suffer cabin fever in each other’s company and become delirious at high altitude. Poor guy – he’s probably heard it all before, but this will not stop me from ho, ho, ho-ing my way through our travels with him.

We’re led to believe that Shanta is a bit of a legend, and his emails to the four of us have proved to be unwittingly hilarious. Communicating with foreigners is a beautiful thing, and Shanta’s emails are testament to this. He alternates between several different spellings of words (often in the same email), and likes to address Pete as ‘Petter’ (his most recent email beginning, “There Petter” – Dear Peter?). Shanta diligently tells us in one email, “I am going to Everest trekking for 20 days and will come back after 20 days so that I will be out of contact for 20 days.” Right – got the message: 20 days. Item number 8 on the list of services that he’s agreed to provide us with is “8) First aid kid box service”. Kid box? No idea. Items 6 and 11 on the gear list are also most intriguing: “6) Worm shocks four pairs” (warm socks – four pairs?) and “11) Long wonder wear” (presumably thermals or long underwear – unless of course he’s into granny pants/wonderbras/Wonder Woman outfits – none of which I would deem appropriate for the Himalayan climate, but all of which would provide for entertaining photo opps. Particularly if the wearer is Tim, Pete, or our man Shanta). 



Ahhh, no.

Hell no!



But for now, my Intrepid Travel 101 training session is complete, and my biggest challenge is to regain the feeling in my backside, which is now numb enough to have minor surgery performed on it, sans anaesthetic. The turbaned taxi drivers speaking at a ferocious pace have since been replaced by a group of Aryan-looking German tourists, and one of them is holding a Macbook, eyeing up my power socket. So, I’ll do the decent thing and share a bit of power socket love with my fellow airport-dwellers, and tend to my now growling stomach. All going to plan, I’ll soon be rid of the pins and needles that have amassed in my legs, and will be able to stand up to face my current Everest – bypassing the hardworking Bluebird vending machine and its deliciously salty snacks and sugary delights in favour of a more nutritious form of airport sustenance. I’ll also take a quick look at the travel shop to see if they can shed any light on kid boxes or on sourcing some worm shocks. As for the granny pants and wonderbras? I’ll keep you posted.



The same - but different

They say a picture tells a thousand words. Do you know what else tells a thousand words? People who work in communications. The ones with a tendency to be overly verbose. The ones who sit in the loud corner of the office (or, more correctly, the ones who are the loud corner of the office). Those who list The Chicago Manual of Style and The Oxford Guide to English Usage among their favourite books. People like me.

Linguistic utopia

After miraculously completing a BCom at Otago, despite changing my major every semester, I ended up in marketing and communications – ironically, just about the only two subjects I never took a single paper in at uni. I’d tried my hand at everything from bio, chem, and physics, to economics, stats, German, Asia-Pacific studies, and Chinese business management. It’s a wonder I didn’t end up running a 24-hour takeaway joint after that last one...

In fact, bar a brief sojourn in Europe in 2008, I've spent the best part of the past five years telling stories about other people's day-to-day lives and trying to talk journalists into printing press releases about big corporates’ new products. Back in the early days of PR agency work (when I wasn’t on the eternal hunt for Wellington’s moistest date scone or rehearsing for yet another mesmerising performance of The Final Countdown with the Capital’s most celebrated air-band), I honed my craft writing about young apprentice builders at the top of their game, architecturally-designed, award-winning homes, the latest and greatest MP3 players and plasma TVs, opera singers who received laureates, innovative new fuels, and everything you never wanted to know about cement and concrete. I even learnt how to spell Feilding (not a case of ‘i before e’) and Taumarunui – thanks, Pete. It was then on to the bright lights of marketing building qualifications (riveting, really), designing cool websites for school kids interested in the trades, and learning how to say Proprietary Plaster Cladding Systems without getting tongue-tied.

These days, it’s heart-warming tales of bankers who went above and beyond in Christchurch, and the gentleman who spent 54 years and 8 months working for the same company before retirement. There’s always a story to be told, from new customer offers and systems outages to the occasional excitement of a temporary store closure due to maggots falling from dead pigeons in the ceiling. True story.

As thrilling as these largely Wellington-based stories have been thus far, it’s high time I ventured further afield for some new material and pictures to tell another thousand words (alright, several thousand, if I’m being realistic).  And so, I’m ditching my desk with a harbour view in the loud corner of the office for two whole months in search of the same - but different.  I'll be on the hunt for fascinating people to talk to and to talk about. Enter: Miss Communicate – the home of short stories and tall tales of misadventure and miscommunication on the Subcontintent. More specifically, I'll be traversing India and trekking to Everest Base Camp in Nepal. But not before I've made it through a week over New Year on Koh Samui in Thailand, with more than 20 friends and friends-of-friends. And 30,000 strangers covered in fluorescent body paint. Ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin