Lost luggage

Last time I left Seattle, it was for a trip to Vientiane (ວຽງຈັນ) to check out some Laotian Buddhist temples. As I was waiting for the bus to the airport in Seattle, I saw the software billionaires Dick Baites and Eve Palmer. I was sitting behind them in the waiting room, and inadvertently I picked up my parabolic microphone and directed it at their conversation.

They were going to a business meeting in Portland. To my surprise they were plotting how to get there as cheap as possible, but I could not hear the details. They left for a short moment with their large trunk. A few minutes later, ms. Palmer came back alone, with the trunk on a trolley. She checked it in at the counter and got a receipt for its transportation to Portland. Ten minutes later she boarded the bus and was gone.

My flight to Vientiane was not particularly interesting. I had brought a stack of DVDs to watch as we were crossing the Pacific, but the batteries of my laptop went empty after just ten minutes, so the rest of the time I watched out the window and counted clouds.

The passport formalities went surprisingly smoothly, with immigration officers an order of magnitude more polite than their American equivalents.

The only surprise came at the luggage belt, where a large trunk appeared - exactly the same size and colour as the one Eve Palmer had checked in at the bus station in Seattle. It even had her name label on it. From the inside I could hear desperate knocking.

I hesitated before opening the trunk. It definitely was not mine. But after the belt had rotated three times with just this knocking trunk left, I pulled it over and opened it.

Inside was a somewhat distressed Dick Baites. He had been watching films on his media player for hours, and he had realised that he was about to be late for the the meeting in Portland. He had, however, not realised that the transportation company mistakenly had delivered his trunk to the wrong side of the Pacific for the meeting, and he was perturbed by the news.

But you do not become CEO of one of the biggest software conglomerates for nothing. You have to be quick to adapt to new circumstances. Baites and I spent the week together walking between temples and sharing vegetarian meals with the monks.