Singapore to Brisbane - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 87

Chapter Eight
Singapore to Brisbane
I 'M still catching my breath on the main deck of the Van Gogh —with Phil, the cruise ship's operations man-
ager, huff-puffing beside me—when my cell phone rings. It can only be Rebecca, who is no doubt back at
our hotel room packing up our bags. I hit the answer button and say, “Hello?”
The phone immediately dies. Out of battery charge.
This is a problem. As far as Rebecca knows, either I didn't get on the ship at all or she'll soon be joining
me on board, having retrieved our luggage from the hotel and brought it back to the pier. I smack the back
of the cell phone hard against my palm and try to power it back up. As it blinks to life, it immediately rings
again.
“Where's our next stop?” I ask Phil, calculating quickly.
“Bali,” he says. “Three days from now.”
I press to answer the phone and, with not a moment to waste on greetings, yell: “Meet me in Bali!”
“What? I can't hear you!” shouts Rebecca over the scratchy connection. The phone dies again before I can
say another word.
“Here, give me your SIM card,” says my new best friend Phil. As he pries the back off his phone and subs
in my card, he warns, “ You don't have a lot of time before you'll lose all signal.” I look around. The Van
Gogh is pulling steadily out to sea.
Phil repowers his phone, my SIM card in place, and there's yet another ring. “I have good news and bad
news,” I tell Rebecca, once we've established that we can hear each other. “The good news is, they let me
aboard the ship.”
“I can't believe it,” Rebecca says excitedly. “I thought there was no chance! I'm almost done packing our
bags—I'll catch a taxi to the terminal now!”
“See, this is the bad news part,” I say, watching the docks slowly recede into the distance, an expanse of
water filling the space between.
Reader, you may think me a terrible person for abandoning Rebecca alone in Singapore. With all our lug-
gage. (Particularly since it was her sharp eyes that spotted the Van Gogh , and her dogged research that de-
termined it was bound for Australia.) I admit I feel twinges of guilt, even now.
But for her part, Rebecca bears no ill will. She considers this a team effort. If one of us makes it around
on the ground, we've both succeeded.
As the cell phone signal begins to fade, I wish her a safe flight to Bali and arrange to meet her on the
docks there when the Van Gogh arrives. It will be three days at sea for me, three hours in the air for her.
ONCE we've caught our breath, Phil takes me to the ship's administrative desk to get me squared away as an
official cruise passenger. Several crew members who'd witnessed our chaotic sprint across the gangway now
scurry over, eager for an explanation. Phil and I recount our adventure. Though we met but six minutes ago,
we already have the makings of a fine comedy duo—trading riffs, interjecting asides, prodding each other
into increasingly animated tale telling. As more crew members gather, we start over from the beginning. My
audience is gobstopped by the fact that I've boarded the ship with nothing but the clothes on my back, my
wallet, my passport, and the cell phone.