“Kejutkan saya bila waktu makan,” I read the blue one. “You know what that one means?”
Going Places (in-flight magazine for Malaysia Airlines)
January 2003
“Jangan ganggu” I said slowly and turned to her but she only looked at me and waited.
“Excuse me?” she said finally.
“It means ?Do not disturb,?” I said as I looked down at the red sticker in both Malay and English. We were on the plane going to Malaysia. The other one was blue.
“?Kejutkan saya bila waktu makan,” I read the blue one. “You know what that one means?”
She waited, not extremely interested, but she clearly didn’t know.
“Wake me for meals,” I said. “Kejutkan saya bila waktu makan,” I repeated this time a little faster, a little louder. I rolled the foreign words through my head, then the English words. Saskia just looked at me and smiled as if to say ?That’s nice, honey.” but she never actually called me honey.
Poof! It hit me. It was magical. The scenes went through my head, the stickers spoke to me.
“Have you ever seen these stickers before? I?ve never had one of these, are these on every flight?” I stared at her, I needed to know. She flew a lot more than I did. She was barely paying attention to me, as if she were just an annoyed passenger next to me for the long haul pretending to read her book and trying to give off signals saying, ?Look, you seem nice and all ? ? But this was my wife?she knew me.
“Yeah, I?ve seen them before,” she said calmly, as if this was all no big deal. But it was quickly becoming a big deal to me.
“But ? ” I stopped. Obviously she did not see the deeper meaning.
“It must have started with royalty,” I whispered to myself, talking to myself as if I needed to figure something out, I looked down at the stickers. “The kings lounge around all day and sleep and give orders and sleep and are woken for meals. What luxury, what freedom from worry, from responsibility?what a dream!” Saskia looked over at me, but this was important. I continued, “They probably didn’t have to wear the stickers though, their servants just knew. The grapes, the carpets, the pillows, the lounging, the wine, the waking for meals, I saw it all so clearly and now I am living it too.”
The huge engines roared and I fell back into my seat as we sped down the runway. My insides rumbled like when you’re standing right next to the speakers at a concert?it felt good, soothing, relaxing. I closed my eyes and put the blue ?Wake me for meals? sticker on my forehead.
I whispered again, but this time to Saskia.
“They should pass these out on buses and trains, in the back seats of the car on long family trips, at boring business meetings, at conferences, at weddings. Can?t you see it? This is huge!” I thought about it, but kept talking. “It’s a time when you can peacefully sleep and know deep down, deep in your dreams, that you?ll be woken to food for your belly. This is when you are transformed into royalty, into someone special, into someone for whom food and sleep are central to their being?but food more so than sleep.” She rested her head back and closed her eyes.
I had nine or ten hours of luxurious leisure ahead of me. No other choice but reading, dreaming, talking, sleeping and eating, depending on the sticker I wore, but I?d always wear the blue one. It didn’t matter where we were going, just that we were going, that the vessel we were in was moving, that engines were humming, that I had a personal full-body massage for the next many hours, that I could read the articles in magazines I never got a chance to read, that I could make a dent in my book that has corners folded every twelve pages. I could talk to my wife about what we never got a chance to talk about, I could sit and stare out the window and dream and not worry that I should be doing something else, I was enjoying what I was doing and, in fact, that was exactly what I was supposed to do. Just wake me for meals.
It was a departure from the everyday world down below, a freedom from the life I knew. I stared out the window and saw it all before me?my new lifestyle, my new perspective, the new me.
“Honey,” I said just to kid her because I never called her honey, “Remember we were talking about getting tattoos?” I looked at her and she opened one eye to look at me.
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled, then frowned and focused and looked more closely at my forehead and she opened the other eye pretty wide. She looked at me, waiting, but a worried and curious stare.
“Well, remember that I didn’t know what to get?a little animal, maybe a gecko, or just a few words, and I didn’t know where to put it, but I didn’t know?well, I?ve been thinking quite a bit about it, I?ve really thought it through and I know what it needs to say, I know what my life needs to be like and I know the tattoo I want and I know right where I want to put it.”
Bradley Charbonneau is a branding consultant in San Francisco. He writes about travel, love, and the love of travel. Share your traveller’s tales by sending them to [email protected].
Lat, Malaysia’s most famous cartoonist, is the author of many book including Kampung Boy, Town Boy and Lots of Lat. His book are available at bookshops through Malaysia and Singapore and several have been translated into Japanese.