The Snow White Fantasy

So my last minute hara-kiri before I leave for Switzerland has reinforced my belief in Murphy’s laws once again. Whatever could have gone wrong, HAS indeed gone wrong. What with all the planning and shopping and anxiously watching out for the volatile weather, I somehow forgot to account for the basic stuff: like checking my ticket or getting my pin for the corporate credit card. It is bad enough that I lost my personal credit card over the weekend, but then I realized that I also don’t have any means of withdrawing cash once I reach there. So after panicking for half the day, I somehow sorted that out, and went out for celebrating what I thought was my special Swiss send-off.

And there we were, getting really drunk, really happy about the really long happy hours, soaking it up till well past midnight until they politely threw us out. High and happy, I collapsed on my bed only to be woken up after fifteen minutes by some distressed airport staff asking me where the hell I was (in politer terms) since the flight was ready for departure! I wouldn’t have been more shocked if someone told me that Salman Khan was getting married!

Shaking and incoherent, I kept repeating, “What? But how? Is this a joke? It’s a business class ticket for over a lakh and it’s my first office trip! You can’t be serious!” They firmly informed me that they were leaving and since I wasn’t there, they were leaving without me. I stumbled across to the hall and pulled out my ticket and yes, there it was, in black and white: April 2, 2013! I had officially become a no-show for my first overseas company trip. What was worse is the fact that they couldn’t reach me all this while apparently since I was too busy getting drunk in a bad network zone. The rest of the night I spent alternating between making ranting phone calls to the travel desk and checking ticket prices for the next day, i.e. today. Even the cheap whisky wasn’t enough to drowse me off to sleep.

I almost ran to office as soon as it was dawn, making phone calls and writing threatening emails even though I knew that it was mostly my fault. But finally, they agreed to reissue my ticket for TONIGHT for a charge of five grand. So now that I AM going, I am all freaked out, scared of every step, afraid that I shall screw things up even more. After all, this IS my first solo trip anywhere. After all, this IS the first time I shall experience freezing weather. And after all, this IS my first chance to meet the who’s who of the company.

But more than anything, this IS my first chance to really let go in a new country and discover a new side to me.

This IS my snow white fantasy…