Sentience in a seed-pod

Alright, I am now back in Cape Town, and, to quote Antonio Banderas in the movie Assassins, you fucked up, I am still alive. It was a long hard way home. The reason? Well, let me explain it to you.

Here is a picture of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta:

It's a pretty massive affair. In short, it's not the kind of place a laid back, take it as it comes kind of guy like me wants to be. People rushing all over the place, and necessarily so. Let's follow Geoff's thought patterns as he arrives at one of 30 or so gates on "concourse B, concourse B".

1. I'm sleepy.
2. Where's my boarding pass?
3. And I'm hungry.
4. But I'll probably eat on the plane.
5. Ok, no boarding pass.
6. That means I have to go get my luggage and check it in again.
7. Shit.
8. Why didn't she check me through and give me both boarding passes like I'm used to?
9. Ok, well it's probably some crazy American security thing.

So Geoff toddles off to the train, which takes him to the baggage retrieving and ticketing area past concourse T. It is important to realise that Geoff is now outside the secure zone, which means he will have to go through about 45 minutes of standing in line and waiting to be scanned and possibly searched to get back in. Geoff goes to his duly appointed baggage carousel. His luggage does not appear. Geoff waits for some time, during which his thought process looks like:

1. The board says this is the right luggage carousel.
2. But the board on the carousel itself doesn't have my flight number.
3. Maybe it's not the right carousel!
4. Loop to thought 1.

After about twenty minutes of waiting like this, Geoff ventures over to ask the baggage authority where his stuff is. They tell him his luggage has been checked through to Cape Town. Geoff is happy. He heads on to ticketing to get his boarding pass. After standing in line for a while, he gets his chance at the counter. He becomes concerned when there is a clucking and a shaking of heads. "I'll phone them," the counter lady says. Then, "I'm sorry, it's too late. I'll put you on standby for tomorrow." We now return to Geoff's thought patterns for comment:

1. Shit!
2. Loop to thought 1.

So Geoff proceeds to sort out a hotel and settle in for the night. Geoff is on standby, which under normal circumstances means he has a small chance of getting on the next flight when people don't present for their seat. Under current circumstances, he later discovered, Geoff has a better chance of becoming president of the US while simultaneously receiving oral pleasure at the hands of Gwyneth Paltrow and winning the UK lottery.
As most of you probably know, airlines usually overbook a flight purposely, because a lot of people end up as no-shows. I've heard different figures quoted, but it may be as high as 25% on average. I haven't checked this, so don't hold me to it. The problem with the US to SA flights at the moment is that everyone is showing up. So there aren't enough seats even for the confirmed passengers, let alone the standbys. In this situation, the airline asks passengers who have seats to give them up in return for some incentive. In our case, it was for a free ticket anywhere SAA flies, hotel accommodation and meal vouchers, and a gauranteed seat on the next flight. This is not a good thing to hear as a standby passenger, because there's no way you're getting on.
So, Geoff spent the next few days waking up at 6am, dragging his carcass to the airport, getting a ticket, shunting through security and then waiting until 10:30 in case he got on. Less than fun.
However, the optimist in Geoff now presents you with the list of positive things about this whole debacle:

• I made lots of new friends who were also on standby.
• I got to see bits of Atlanta.
• I waited a lot less than some other standby people, many of whom got there before me and hadn't left when I did.

So that chapter is now closed. There's one more thing I must say though. The Delta employees who struggled with the masses and did their best were absolutely smashing. They helped out a lot. But there was one woman, an SAA employee, who was routinely rude, callous and obstructive. Her name is Phillipa, and she scared me so much I couldn't even take a good photograph. But here it is: the blurred face of evil itself: