Prepare for your vacation, and enjoy your flight

By E. Effendi

BANDUNG, West Java (JP): We are now getting closer and closer to December, the month that is known as the holiday season, the month when people begin preparing their New Year's resolutions, and the month when you spend more money than usual to make all your family and your friends, but not yourself, happy, especially when you receive your credit card bills.

This is also the time to plan your year-end vacation, including finding any excuse to leave your children at your parents' houses while you and your wife spend a nice holiday together. No, wait, I was being ridiculous, of course you have to leave your wife there too.

To plan your vacation, first you have to decide what kind of vacation that you want to have. According to the Association of Tour Leaders Who Get Paid For Traveling Everyday While You're Stuck At Your Office Cubicle, there are two types of vacations. The first one is when your objective is to experience and see other places, like visiting Bali, Singapore, or Zimbabwe.

The second type is when you want to have a dangerous and adventurous trip, like bungee jumping, snorkeling with sharks or shopping with your wife.

Deciding what kind of vacation you want and the place that you want to visit can be the most important part of your whole vacation, and you have to consider it very carefully, unless you want your trip to be like the movie The Haunting, which stars many of Hollywood's leading movie stars, such as Catherine Zeta- Jones, Catherine Zeta-Jones' breasts and Catherine Zeta-Jones' butt. In the movie, a doctor (played by a male Catherine Zeta- Jones) invited a group of people to spend their days in a beautiful mansion.

Days that were supposed to be a beautiful time were ruined when those people were disturbed by a ghost who was mad because he could not see Catherine Zeta-Jones naked in the whole movie. Although, in the end, they finally could eliminate the ghost by throwing Lily Taylor at him, the whole group was terrified because what they thought to be a beautiful, quiet and happy time turned out to be a scary adventure which caused the death of a man who, coincidentally, was the only star in the movie whose name we had never heard of before.

I know that this example is unlikely to happen to you, unless you are Catherine Zeta-Jones. But my point is that if you don't prepare your vacation really well, then there will be very little chance that you can see Catherine Zeta-Jones naked. No, that is not what I mean.

What I mean is, deciding your kind of vacation can make your whole trip easy; like if you are planning to spend your vacation in a haunted house, then you should not worry too much about sun block.

I realize that deciding your kind of vacation can be quite complicated. That is why I give you this piece of advice: Drink a lot of beer and sign every travel package that is offered to you.

Trust me, considering the number of travel packages available today, that is the easiest way. You should also think about the transportation. The most popular one, if you want to go abroad, is the airplane. So let me ask you this question: This holiday, why not take an airplane flight to anywhere you want to go?

Because you are insane, that is why. Air travel has become less and less pleasant whereas more and more passengers are getting tired of delayed schedules. Of course, there may be exceptions, like Korean Airlines, which has kindly opted to take out some advertising space in this publication to show how it is different from the rest of the cattle carriers.

Airlines always make sure that you arrive at the airport approximately three days before takeoff time. During that period, you have to wait for the check-in counter to open, in a hall where you all you can do is watch what everybody else does while they are waiting. Needless to say, that what everybody else is doing is watching you back.

After you are bored to death waiting, finally you are allowed to check in. Feeling relieved, you are now moved to a smaller room, where you can do what everybody else is doing in that room: waiting some more.

Then you are moved again, to yet another smaller room, with smaller aisles and smaller seats, so small that you have to leave some of your body organs outside. After some more waiting, you begin to realize that the room is actually the airplane cabin.

You can see the cabin crew and the pilot standing at the door and smiling at every passenger. It is advisable that you smile back at them, considering the fact that the crew is allowed to bang the food trolleys into your chair every time you almost fall asleep, and the pilot has every right to fly the plane at a tall building, while all you can do is steal their fake silverware.

The cabin crew -- who have trained for months to do things that normal people (the passengers) cannot do, such as speak French with lips smiling -- are responsible for serving you, the passengers, all the way, from the moment you get in, to the moment they finish serving you airline food.

After that, you will have a hard time finding any of the cabin crew, who, I suspect, have jumped out the plane using parachutes.

The food served on your flight is usually divided into three categories: beef, chicken and fish, which all have different kinds of desserts but, confusingly, have the same nonmeat taste. I want to give you some advice on what to choose when the cabin crew offers you the food: mumble. It is no use thinking about what you feel you want to have.

You won't be able to taste the difference anyway. It is crucial that when the cabin crew asks you to pick your food, you mumble right away and eat whatever she thinks you said. Thinking too long, however, may cause you to eat food that is not completely dead, especially when you are in a Japanese airplane.

While on board, you can watch the in-flight movie, read the in-flight magazines or get stuck in the in-flight bathroom because it is designed only for the use of Barbie dolls. But don't worry, after four weeks in the plane, you will finally reach your destination.

And, believe me, when you get out of the plane, and place your feet on land that you have never visited before, you and all the other passengers will be sharing the feeling of something new, the feeling of not feeling your legs and butt.

I have run out room here, so I want to wish you the best of luck in your travel arrangements.

And let me give a last piece of advice: Remember to tell your family that if they do not hear from you in more than a week, tell them to check the in-flight bathroom.