Sunday 30 July 2006

AIKO - Seat 19C

Last Thursday I was on a flight from Miri to Kuala Lumpur. I checked-in with a colleague and she was given seat 19A while I got 19B. I was hoping that when we board the plane we will be at our seats before passenger 19C arrived. As the mentioned in an article in MAS's inflight magazine, most often than not, if you ever get the window seat during check-in, the passenger occupying the aisle seat would be there before you. The article claimed that 'the window passenger will arrive at the seat after the aisle passenger is comfortabaly seated' is a theory. And true enough it happened to me and my friend!!! Luckily, passenger 19C was a nice, young girl, may be about Siti Nurhaliza's age (that was what I had in mind when I saw her).
When we have settled down, I politely asked passenger 19C where was she from, if she is alone, etc.....

Passenger 19C's name is Aiko. She is a Japanese who is two years younger than SN. She is on holiday in Sarawak with her parents, an elder sister and her niece. For the whole of the 2 hours-plus journey, Aiko and I talked and talked and talked. (
My friend, Sleeping Beauty, was ofcourse sleeping most of the time). Aiko is an English teacher in Japan and showed great enthusiasm to learn Malay. During the Miri-KLIA flight, I managed to teach her satu, dua, tiga, empat, ...sepuluh, nasi goreng (she already knew ayam), ayam goreng, mee goreng. I gave her some general idea about the Malay language - it has no plural nouns and no tenses like in English, no gender forms like French and Arabic. I told her Malay is an easy language to learn, blah....blah....She was motivated and asked me if she can come to Malaysia to study, she asked me whether universities in Malaysia except foreigners, etc.

Aiko and I talked about so many things. Luckily I remembered to give her my professional card and she said that she would email me when she get back to Japan. Before we said goodbye, I gave Aiko's niece some sweets and in return she gave me an origami piece - a polygonal ball (it is something like a ball, but it is not rounded like a ball and it has many edges).

Well, that was my most enjoyable domestic flight on Malaysia's national carrier, MAS!!! Actually, there is something else which Aiko asked me that is worth sharing....I will try to include that in my next entry, insya Allah.

2 comments:

dith said...

Mama Chops,

Yes I read that very funny article by Lee Yu Kit in the Mas Inflight magazine about the law of perversity that you encounter when travelling...very funny!

So what were you doing in Miri? Not holidaying I'm sure! :p

Talking about Aiko. My daughter Aliah insyallah will be a host to 2 Jap girls who was invited by her Karate Organization. They'll be staying with us for few days. Hope everything goes well, :p

Madame A said...

I was in Miri for a conference.
My second daughter, Afifah, loves anything Jap(!). She was in Japan for 2 weeks in 2004 for a homestay programme and she love it so much.
OK, all the best for being host to the 2 Jap girls.