notes on scraps from a july vacation

Was cleaning my house and found pieces of a pad of paper used to scribble a setting whilst enroute to France to meet up with my family this past July. Since I re-read them, I thought there was no harm done in re-creating this snapshot of a moment away. Here's what I wrote.

PARIS 1: Aeroports de Paris presente 27 graphistes pour l'Europe (hanging above where I sat)

The setting: Terminal 3 at the Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France. Arrivals area. Silver industrial bench. Poster banners hanging displaying modern graphic art from various European artists including the large blue white and yellow one over the arrivals entrance designed by Belgian based Tersa Sdralevich. The mood is overly caffeinated after two soul-warming espressos and a nicoise salda at a nearby restaurant. The airport hums and bustles with tired travellers.

I had three hours to kill upon arrival at this terminal before Han deplaned from Vancouver. I didn't count on somehow misplacing my phone in the flight seat pocket so my first task ended up being an eyelash batting with Mourad the luggage clerk. Initially enamored with my Charlotte Rampling-esque French accent, he feigned helping me but as luck would have it, I realized quickly I was going to have to continue standing there to ensure someone was even bothering to checking the pocket for my much beloved (and high market value) blackberry curve. I wasn't into a simple chat session without results.

After much persuasion I had Mourad calling flight crew on their cell phones which did seem to provoke action on what I was learning was a fairly unmotivated group of people. I was pretty sure that if I left that desk someone could be crank calling Adam Beach and George Stroumbolopoulous next week. I'm not claiming to be Paris Hilton here but there was a little too much information contained in the device for me to walk away.

Just then a miracle occured. They found AND RETURNED the phone. AMAZING. I hugged by new best friend Mourad who asked only for me to call him and leave him a message in my overwhelmingly cute French accent. That was it. Welcome to France and thank you Pierre Trudeau.

I didn't leave him the message in the end. I figure he should've saved the flirting and tried to do his job initially, not just once I discovered he hadn't bothered asking in the first place. Oh well.