Another An moment...

Why, why, why?

I knew something was very wrong when I had a look at my watch after my work-out at the gym. It indicated four o’clock. I still had time, I thought. The plane was scheduled at eleven past, I would come home, take a shower and get ready to head for the airport at around seven. I had left my phone at home, but there was nothing to worry about. I had printed out my e-ticket. Everything was in order. So I thought.

Once home, I found a message from Shu-Yi. Where was I? Perhaps on the way to the airport…? Why did she have to go so early to the airport? I replied that since the flight was only at eleven twenty, there was no reason to rush. Shu-Yi called me immediately. Could it have been a possibility that they were put on another plane than mine? Of course not. That sounded unlikely. Their plane was at six thirty and it was now five thirty… Did Huang Yi give me any document? No, I replied. We had had our last rehearsal in Taipei ten days before, but we barely spoke about the flight. I had already printed out the e-ticket by then. I didn’t remember anything else in particular. Meng-Yu, one of the managers of the National Theatre took matters in hand. It appeared that the flight information I had in hand was an old one. Didn’t I remember about the new itinerary? I did carefully check all the emails sent to everyone prior to the departure day, but didn’t find any new document to print out, beside maps and some information about the hotel in Düsseldorf. Then the important hidden detail came back to the surface of my memory. And it was then that I realized that another struck-by-the-lightning ‘An moment’ had occurred.  Meng-Yu did indeed call me as early as late June to talk about the change of schedule and now I remember how I even complained about the many transfers. It did strike me as odd when I read on the e-ticket that the flight was direct from Taipei to Düsseldorf. But I paid no heed. Too many things had kept my mind full and busy. If the paper said so, I had to trust it. But my intuition sent me a big warning sign when I looked at my watch at the gym.

Alas, the ticket was not refundable as I didn’t show up at the airport ‘in time’.

“I asked you if you had the ticket and you said you did.” Yi wrote to me. I did, but I didn’t realize it wasn’t the updated one. Huang Yi would have to buy a new ticket. I felt awful. Huang Yi didn’t find it a funny situation either, but he philosophically said that this was a lesson for him. They badly needed a company manager to take care of those matters.  Sending group emails to more than six people could only create confusion. That didn’t make me feel better, even if I knew I didn’t have to bear all the blame.

“You too need someone, an assistant to look after this kind of things” Emily kindly told me. “You’re the artist, the composer. You cannot have the mind for everything.”

I had always been taught to rely on myself and be responsible for everything. But true, my schedule has been sheer madness since the beginning of the year. It was a miracle that I was able to complete everything without any trouble. Maybe my mind was saturated…