Trapped!

Kim and I are now officially criminals. For our trip to Vietnam we stocked up on plenty of presents for Kim's family, including a bread maker so I could introduce Vegemite sandwiches to the heathens (a universal thumbs down by the way Dave, they preferred Nuttella). In addition to this, we bought eight enormous tins of baby milk powder for Kim's friend who's baby has gone off breast milk. We were beginning to think we might be a tad over the aircraft's weight limit, but still we kept packing gallantly. As part of our continuing program of East-West cultural exchange, we decided also to take two of those collapsible foot scooters that were once all the rage during the dot-com boom. Now, we thought, we really ARE over the limit. Singapore airlines allows up to twenty kilograms of checked luggage, and seven kilograms of carry-on per person, or fifty four kilos between us, and we had the feeling we had shot way through that.
So we turned up to the airport, checked in, and sure enough, our checked luggage was ten kilos over. This turned out to be no big deal, Kim has a very sweet smile, and my dumb, naive first time traveller impersonation exhibits an approximation to sincerity that only reflexive relationships can. We were waved right through.
At this stage we thought the danger had passed. Upon passing through the customs X-ray
check however, our carry-on was treacherously weighed! From an allowable fourteen kilos we came in at a whopping forty! Of course, the Aussie customs guy was as unsmiling and cold as any Stalinist bureaucrat, and he wrote "Excess Weight twenty six kg*$30=$780" at the top of our boarding passes. The bastard wouldn't even let us go out of the departure lounge to dump our stuff and come back in. Well, I thought, that's our holiday gone. Kim however, is not to be trifled with. She made the rather insightful observation that the guy made no entries into his computer and that in fact, the only record of our crime was in our possession. Furthermore, we had printed out our own boarding passes from home (a relatively recent advance in e-ticketing for which all criminal opportunities have evidently, not yet been exposed). Who was to say then, that our boarding passes had to be an A4 page? What if, for example, they had a few inches at the top shaved off? Of course, my pocket-knife scissors were stowed away, but Kim, ever resourceful, used her laminated bakers delight rewards card as a makeshift paper knife, and calmly eviscerated our little problem. Not a very big change to the universe. The only difference was that instead of two sheets of paper we now had two sheets and two little strips. Now, at this point, I admit I was a little worried. I am pretty sure that the penalty for trying to avoid paying $780 is even more than $780, but we were committed now. Splitting up to avoid detection we lined up to board, Kim with 10 kilos, and me with 30, trying to look as though we were each carrying 7. My thinking though, was that the people checking our passes are bored, more worried about drugs than illicit Higgs boson surpluses, and, at 11:45pm, starting to get tired. Remembering my CIA days (or at least Jack Ryan's), I attempted with nonchalance to blend in with the all-Asian-Businessman crowd as much as possible.
Of course, you know how this ends. If we had gotten caught you would not now be reading this smug, self-congratulatory post. Of course we got through, without a further hassle, and I have to take my hat to my beautiful partner in crime. Kim is a genius at counter-counter-espionage. Perhaps the difference between her and me is that while I have grown up believing that surveillance bureaucracy is implacable, unreasonable, and omni-cognisant, Kim's experience is that they are implacable, unreasonable, dysfunctional, half-paralysed, and spasming. Thus, she is possibly better trained to spot loopholes in the system.
I'd like to end this post with a question posed to my readers (of which I'm sure there are none, given my appallingly long absence from this blog); Do you believe that Kim and I, weighing vastly less than the average passenger, should feel guilty about overloading the plane, even though our combined human-luggage weight is still less than normal? Should obese people be charged excess baggage? Has Sam read too many Tom Clancy novels? These are questions, I think, for us all to ponder as we go about our daily lives.
Until next time, Ye Hasera, and goodnight.