The Most Idiotic Thing I’ve Ever Done

I made us all miss our flight.

Of all the careless, dim-witted and DUMB act that I did in my life, this is by far the worst. How on earth could one read the time of a flight wrongly?? Well, I never thought that I would but sadly, I am actually capable of doing that. We arrived ten minutes before departure, where the check-in counter was over an hour closed and other responsible passengers were already on the runway.. Obviously, we weren’t allowed to get on board. That moment truly felt like a nightmare. I kept wishing that it was all not real, that this can’t be happening! But the more I looked around at my surroundings -the angry faces (which later turned into frustration and sadness), the amount of time, effort and money spent in planning this trip.. the more reality sank in.

If you’re reading this and snickering about how rotten I was, I don’t blame you. It was an awful thing to do, accidentally or not. I felt terrible in the next two days. I couldn’t sleep and could hardly eat that night waiting for the next day to come to try and amend my self-imposed problem. I was SO angry at myself, but to be honest, I was more disappointed. Like, WTH?! $@$^&**%^!!!!!!! You got a PhD for goodness sake, can’t you do this simple thing right?!

There was only two things for me to do then. I could either cancel going to the UK altogether, which was what I was prepared to do or, I could re-book our flight (since these were promotional tickets). I had to consider the latter because this trip meant quite  a lot to the others too, especially my sisters. So I decided to give it a go and purchased new tickets. Unfortunately, given my limited funds, I was only able to support myself and two other people to come with me. Hubby was first on the list but he declined politely saying that this graduation meant far more for my dad as he was expecting this for a long time. Though I was saddened by his argument, he did have a point. So with a heavy heart, I decided to go to my graduation without my husband 😦

Now, almost 20 hours later, I am in the UK. In our B&B in the mighty -1 degree cold, turning blue with sadness as tomorrow I shall graduate with a mixed feeling. On the one hand, I am happy and proud to be able to make it through such a strenuous doctorate process but on the other hand, I am sad that because of my stupidity (the irony of it), I will not be able to celebrate the event with my beloved other half.

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