{"id":1097,"date":"2016-02-26T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2022-06-25T07:43:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-25T11:43:58","slug":"the-european-bluff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/the-european-bluff\/","title":{"rendered":"The European Bluff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Senior<\/a><\/p>\n

For the past week I\u2019ve been at the receiving end of sarcasm-tossed and mischievously-rolling-in-it jokes at work. And, now all thanks to social media, and with a little help of my colleagues \u2013 Round 2 has ensued on Facebook as we speak. They can\u2019t help but snicker over the fact that my European jaunt had Ostrich wings.<\/p>\n

So, to set the record straight, here is what really happened in between check-in, immigration and a bottle Jack.\u00a0Last month, I had scheduled a trip to Europe, to land in Barcelona and later celebrate New Year\u2019s Eve in Paris – a short vacation to get away from a life in media exile. Excited, I prepared myself for the end of December, daily crossing out dates on iCal \u2013 a calendar App for Mac.<\/p>\n

The thought of one week in Europe, in my language, was going to be nothing short of orgasmic. Boy, was I thrilled all month. I even had this uncanny smile pop along (like a jack in the box) on several occasions \u2013 even during serious client meetings, which I admit was kind of awkward.<\/p>\n

But somehow this scripted journey had a twisted plot. Even Sherlock Holmes would\u2019ve flinched on this one. All right, I made that last bit up.<\/p>\n

On \u201cthe\u201d day I was to board a flight for the Capital \u2013 from where I had a connecting flight later on in the night, there was a 3 hour delay due to heavy fog, which only left me enough time to grab a beer at a local shack before heading to Terminal 3.
\nI chartered an auto and on the way received a text from the airline informing me about the delay in schedule. At this point, unperturbed, I slipped the phone back into my jacket. Little had I known what was in store – for all of us flying out from T3 that night.<\/p>\n

On arrival, I found a sweet spot in a corner of Costa Coffee, and spent my time wrapping up pending work. Four hours later, around 3 am, I walked up to a queue that looked a lot like something you would see outside an Apple store when Steve is about to launch something magical.<\/p>\n

The airline crew was politely addressing passengers. It looked like we weren\u2019t flying out that night – the fog was playing peek-a-boo with the plane. However, we were taken to a hotel in Gurgaon on the pretext that we\u2019d be on board the next morning.
\nThe bus ride to the hotel \u2013 which should take 15 minutes on a sunny day \u2013 took 45 minutes, and this is when I crossed into Melinda, a British national, who was in India on vacation. We had hit-it off in the buss and later one of us had suggested the idea of getting drunk at the hotel and playing poker.<\/p>\n

To be honest, now that I look back, glass of Jack in hand, can\u2019t help but think how Melinda and I managed to play poker without a deck of cards that night. Two days later, after speaking with the airline, with only 4 days to go in Europe, I decided to drop out and return home to my colleagues and friends with a poker face.<\/p>\n

Published originally on GQ<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past week I\u2019ve been at the receiving end of sarcasm-tossed and mischievously-rolling-in-it jokes at work. And, now all thanks to social media, and with a little help of my colleagues \u2013 Round 2 has ensued on Facebook as we speak. They can\u2019t help but snicker over the fact that my European jaunt had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":""},"categories":[61,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gq","category-syng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}