What a day...I am just not meant to travel today.

Lesson learned - know how to read time properly and always double check your travel itinerary.

Fuck - what a crazy day. The executive summary of what happened to me was that I missed my flight for Taiwan and it was because I apparently cannot tell time. Here's what happened:

I spent most of the morning recovering from a mini-hangover from a great night out with my friends. I also did a massive cleaning of my house. I was a bit scared that I couldn't get everything done in time, but thought, hey, I should go stop at Starbucks to do online check in before coffee with a friend. Settling in to my seat with a green tea in my hand, I start the online checkin process and got an error message. Strange, I thought, and typed in my confirmation number again. ERROR. Okay, let me try my rewards card. ERROR. What about my first and last name? ERROR. Okay, WTF is going on.

I flipped to my flight details and looked at the first line. FEB 28 - 00:50am. Shit, why isn't this working. After typing in my number again, I suddenly sat right up in my seat. HOLY FUCK. MY FLIGHT WAS 12 HOURS AGO! There's no justification in the world for this kind of error - I clearly didn't pay enough attention to the flight details when I booked and there's no one to blame but my idiot self.

So after I picked my jaw off the floor for coming to the realization that I am an idiot, I emailed my friend Franky, who was supposed to drive me to the airport tonight. The subject line was: HOLY FUCK. Franky instantly replied and helped me start thinking about what I could do (thank you Franky - you're a great friend). After emailing my dad, who was supposed to pick me up at 6am (6pm our time), I ran to the payphone across the street to call my travel agent.

Thank the good Lord that payphones still exist. To add to my stress, I had no change on me. So I used my credit card (keep this detail in mind as it plays a role later). Betty, my travel agent, let out a combination exasperated sigh and "what are you stupid?" laugh when I explained to her the situation. Like the true professional she is, she switched me onto Friday's midnight flight (yes, another midnight flight - which I have to be at the airport on Thursday evening...thank you for the reminder). The good news was that I didn't lose out on my ticket or on business class and all I had to do was pay $75 CDN at the counter on Thursday.

Next step was to contact my dad as I realized, FUCK, IT'S 3AM IN TAIPEI RIGHT NOW AND HE'S NOT GOING TO CHECK HIS EMAIL. My friend Franky came to my rescue again by calling him. However, with my dad being his paranoid self, didn't recognize the number and hung up (both times). Thankfully, that did get him up and he did check his emails before he left for the airport. I can just imagine how much of a wreck he would have been if he had arrived and I did not get off that plane.

So thinking that now I'm in the clear, I go and meet up with my friend Michael for coffee. After laughing about the situation, we reached the Tim Horton's when I came to the painful 2nd AHA moment of the day - FUCK, I LEFT MY CREDIT CARD IN THE PAYPHONE. Mike was great and asked if I wanted to go run back. At that point, I was so tired, that I thought, what's the point? If it's there, it's there, if it's not, I'll cancel it. The good news is that I stayed and had a great chat to catch up with a hilarious friend.

I didn't even run back to the phone booth. Part of me thought - it'll definitely be there, who the fuck uses payphones anyways (except for out of work people who cancelled their cell phone plans)? As I walked up to the phone, the receiver was off the hook, but the card was still there. Fuck, I was in such a hurry, I ran away and knocked the receiver off. The #2 "phew" moment of the day.

So, with all of that adventure, I settled back into the Starbucks and pieced together my travel plans. I'm on a flight on Friday at midnight, which means I'll be leaving Thursday night for the airport (lesson learned). This works out really - I get two more days in the city (and to say goodbye to a few more people) and I've learned an incredibly important lesson that I will take with me throughout the rest of my travels - PAY ATTENTION TO DETAILS.

Everything happens for a reason - I was meant to miss this flight so that I could have a great goodbye with my Ivey friends last night, so that I could catch up with a great friend for dinner tomorrow and to have more time to clean up my place rather than rushing it like I did this morning. I was meant to miss this flight at the beginning of my journey (where at least I'm in a city that I know with people that can help) rather than being in a foreign country and being in a worse panic. And it's interesting how I dealt with the situation today. Terence of six months ago would have had a total meltdown. I was over it today in about 15 minutes and decided that all I can do is to laugh at my own stupidity.

I really want to thank all of the supportive messages from people and laughing along with me. I want to especially thank Franky Ng for helping me out - you're an amazing friend. Thanks too to Michael Bodsworth for being patient and postponing our coffee and laughing with me to help distract me from the fact my credit card was sitting in a payphone at King and Peter.

The only sad thing is that now I can't say I'm leaving the country on the exact same day as when my family first came here to Canada. Oh well, at least it's an interesting story to tell, right?