Lost and Found

In spite of best efforts from this Type A traveler, unexpected things still happen. But like the Chinese tale of the horse who ran away, do you ever think that something bad will ultimately turn into something good? A fortune-teller at a party house in Bogota looked at my palm and told me that there was a spirit (possibly of a dead male relative), who kept an eye on me in times of trouble. I’m sure that I kept him busy during those years abroad.

Stolen favorite purple jacket - Sydney Airport, Australia

In October 1998, while working in Tokyo, my colleagues and I decided to take a long weekend trip to Sydney. On our way back, I had stashed my plane ticket and bills in 3 currencies (US$, Aus$, HK$) in the pocket of my favorite purple jacket, which was tied to my carry-on luggage. After checking in and about 20 minutes before my flight, I realized it was no longer there. The jacket had been securely tied, so I was fairly certain someone took it when I wasn’t looking. I retraced my steps but there was no sign of it. I started to panic. Luckily I still had my passport and was able to get a replacement boarding pass.

About 30 minutes after take-off, a pretty Cathay Pacific flight attendant came by and quietly asked to see my boarding pass. “Why? That’s her seat” my French colleague Pierre said on my behalf. It turns out I had been randomly chosen to win a free flight back to Hong Kong from anywhere in the world, a Cathay Pacific promotion! They had drawn 6 seat numbers before reaching mine, but those had all been empty. Amazing!

Pickpocket - Stroget, Copenhagen Denmark

It was never in the third-world countries that things got stolen, only in the “safe” ones where you’d least expect. My brother Norman was also in Denmark on a business trip September 24-26, 1999 during my work assignment in Copenhagen. We decided to spend a Saturday afternoon walking around the city, including the lovely pedestrian street, Stroget. Danish people are so tall and good-looking that the street looked like a catwalk, Norman had commented at the time.

When we got back to the hotel, I realized in a fit that my wallet was missing, and proceeded to call AMEX to cancel my credit cards. While doing so, I missed a call from a local colleague at the office, which went to hotel voicemail box. Someone had found my wallet while shopping and turned it in to the shopkeeper on the Stroget. My wallet had contained some cash and two business cards: mine, and Frederick’s, and she had called to let him know. When we went back to the store on Monday, all of the cash was gone except for a 2 krone coin (enough for bus fare), but I got my wallet back! And more importantly, I spent time with the colleague everyone in the office had called Prince Charming. A few months after the audit was over, we spent a nice weekend together in Prague.

Left wallet, VAT counter, Johannesburg Airport

Over Valentine’s day in 2003, I flew to South Africa from New York City to spend a week sightseeing with friends/colleagues who were working there. After a bountiful shopping haul, I stopped by the VAT desk at the Jo’burg airport to file for a tax refund before my flight. Distracted, I didn’t even realize that I had left my wallet at the counter.

45 minutes before my flight was set to take off, I heard my name being called over the airport loudspeaker, telling me to go to a certain gate. That’s weird, it’s not boarding time yet, I thought. When I arrived there, out of breath, a large German man held up my driver’s license next to my face. He asked me my name and handed me my wallet. “Be more careful!” he grumbled, as I threw my arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. The Colombian fortune teller had said that that my guardian angel would manifest in real life in a male form when needed, and this was no exception. My lucky karma, perhaps?

There were other mishaps as well. Pretty much every traveler gets relieved of some of their belongings on the Paris Metro. My incident happened while I was backpacking with two girlfriends the summer after Senior year in college. Savvy me only kept my paper to-do list in my pocket (it was 1993, so no cell phones yet). So those two young women who boxed me in on the Paris subway only got a to-do list. “Did they complete the to-do’s for you?” Mike later asked.

In Madrid, Spain shortly after the turn of the century, I had sat down for breakfast buffet at the 5-Star Palace Hotel when a portly man in an apron came by and asked for my room number. As he was walking away, I noticed the paper he had “checked” my room number on was blank. Two minutes later, the real waiter came by with an actual checklist. When I looked down to where I had placed my laptop bag and “Prada” purse, the purse was missing. Luckily, my laptop bag was still there and I had put my passport in the hotel safe the night before. During that stay at the Palace hotel, I also shared an elevator ride with Justin Timberlake and his giant bodyguard (the elevators were tiny) and met Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who stopped to talk to me and a few colleagues on his way in.

During my last few days in Taiwan in the summer of 1994, I had mistakenly left a yellow Panasonic camera in a small town on the southern part of the island, hours away. A day before my flight back to the U.S., someone I didn’t even know brought it back to Taipei and my counselor handed it back to me.

Perhaps my guardian angel has retired, now that Mike is around. More recently, I’ve left my car/house keys at a restaurant in Manhattan Beach, only to have the manager call me shortly afterwards, since Mike had secretly signed me up for their e-mails that very day. I also left my purse at the Tin Roof Bistro and later became friends with the hostess, Christina. Hope my luck hasn’t run out yet!