BINTULU 1

BINTULU 1 – February 19th to March 23rd 2005

It is time to move on. We have scheduled to fly to Bintulu by Air Asia on February 19th and spend time with our son and his family. Mini is expecting their third child and is due for delivery on the 22nd which coincidentally is Ram’s birthday. (February is also the month when their other two elder sons were born).

Expecting to stay in Bintulu for a quite a while, until March 23rd precisely, we had packed quite an extensive amount of clothing, and also birthday presents and gifts for the grandchildren that Tessa had picked previously. In addition we had brought with us nine commemorative copies of a book titled “The Young Turks of PETRONAS” written by a friend, and former Senior Vice President of PETRONAS, to be distributed by Shaffik at his workplace. All these made our luggage overweight exceeding the standard allowance given by Air Asia, but were fortunate that we were not charged for the excess weight. If charged, we would have to pay RM50.00 for the excess weight, which is more than what we paid for the one way fare!!

Tessa sent us to the airport in her one week old Honda Jazz. A nice and cute blue colour job that is nippy in traffic. Nice registration number too. I was quite surprised to find, when sitting in the back seat, that the car felt quite spacious and that all our luggage could fit into the space behind the back seat and had yet a bit more room to spare. The classic smell of the interior, reminded me that it’s a new car, and I tend to watch all around the car while cruising along lest other vehicles came too close, and I wasn’t even driving!!

We arrived at KLIA timely enough for the check-in and boarding process, made innocent pleas, at time of check-in, for exemption of the luggage excess fee promising not to repeat in our future trips, and headed straight to the departure lounge. Boarded the aircraft on time, priority boarding as senior citizen too, and chose the second row seats. All went well so far. They wheeled the aircraft out of the parking apron to the tarmac and then there was no activity for a while…… I suspected something amiss. True enough, I felt a slight jolt of the tow truck connecting up to the aircraft again and I was sure then that something had gone wrong. They wheeled the aircraft back onto the parking apron, passengers looking at each other, all having that questioning look in their faces, while four busy looking men boarded the aircraft and headed straight into the cockpit, Aircraft Engineers no doubt. A little while later an announcement was made that they have a minor problem but requires about an hour to fix. We had to disembark and waited at the departure lounge. At this time, the lounge was already occupied by another batch of passengers heading for Bangkok. So, you can imagine the pandemonium and chaotic situation caused when they were boarding passengers for Bangkok. Either the passengers were not listening to the announcement made or they were too eager to board that you find a few Bintulu passengers boarding the Bangkok plane and some Bangkok passengers still waiting in the lounge. That reflected a lot on the quality and how well organized ‘they’ are!! Cant blame the passengers really, a high percentage of whom do not really wait for announcements before attempting to board, and this is true on all the flights I have taken in my whole life!! A good and systematic boarding ‘work process’ is needed to ensure orderly boarding. We finally got to board the aircraft and left KLIA bound for Bintulu almost an hour and a half delayed, part of which was waiting for a couple of passengers who had wandered away from the waiting lounge at time of boarding.

On arriving in Bintulu, Shaffik and his two sons were waiting for us. The kids were really excited. Both were shooting questions at us and both of them were talking at the same time, each trying to get our attention all the way home. Mini had prepared afternoon tea, and while chit-chatting over tea I pretended not to notice the kids playing and circling around me and their grandmother and also at the luggage that were kept at the side of the sitting hall. Each time they pass the luggage they would tap their hands on it. Patience got the better of them I thought, and Babang finally came up to me and asked:

Babang: Tok Bah Tok Bah, you are not going to open your bags?
Tok Bah: Not yet…
Babang: Tok Bah can open now?
Tok Bah: Why?
Babang: (long smile) obviously hiding his impatience to see what we brought for him…

Not wanting to heighten their excitement further, I opened the bag containing their gifts, birthday presents and goodies, with Babang and Dedek standing alongside. On opening the bag Babang had his palms on both cheeks and exclaimed, “there….. so many stuff”. They opened the gifts and boxes, all of which were identical except for one toy wooden fire truck and one forklift truck. Dedek impatiently tore open the wrappings of the forklift truck while Babang was carefully removing the tapes on the wrappings of the fire truck (very telling characters between the two brothers!!). Dedek had already started playing with the forklift truck while Babang was still struggling with his wrappings. The moment Babang got the fire truck out of the box and wrappings Dedek immediately dropped the forklift truck and got his hands onto the fire truck. Babang moved it away from the younger brother saying, “we share….ok?” Dedek said, “ok” but grabbed the fire truck anyway…. so much for diplomacy between brothers!! But Babang took control of the situation by telling the brother to let him fix all the attachments and peripherals to the truck and got his way. He pretended and dilly dallied fixing the truck while Dedek continued playing with the forklift, a silent strategy I suppose. At this time the other gifts of colouring books, colour pencils, chocolates and other goodies were forgotten. Concentrations were on the forklift and fire trucks!! Babang always displayed a picture of calculated patience while Dedek was the one who bulldoze into everything. And we, grandparents, look forward to the antics of these two little kids, the "apples of our eyes", during our stay in Bintulu.

MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Bintulu