The Seeing Eye Dog (Part 2)

"Look you guys made the mistake of saying I was blind. Can you just take that off my reservation?" I shouted to the Expedia US Rep.

"Sir I'm sorry that information has already been sent to the airline. There is nothing we can do at this point. You really need to contact Japan airlines for this." replied back the rep. "Call the airline and explain the situation to them."

"Fine" I sighed.

My flight leaves in a few hours. It was 5PM in Taiwan, 4AM in the US. There was no way I could get in contact with the US JAL office and with someone that actually spoke English. The JAL Taiwan office was already closed. If I was going to get rid of that "blind with seeing eye dog" status, it meant calling JAL in Japan again and speaking Japanese.

こんばんは、ジャル航空ご料いだたきますのでありがとございます. [Good evening, thank you for calling Japan Airlines. Press 1 for Japanese, Press 2 for English].

I press 2. I've had enough this evening. Let's just get this over with in English.

"Please wait a moment."

A couple minutes passed.

"ありがとうございます。エージェント441です。「Thank you for waiting. You are connected to agent 441」

Why is this still in Japanese? I wondered...

"Hello?" I asked.

"Yes. Can I help?" replied to women on the other line.

I had a bad feeling about her English ability.

"Do you speak English?" I asked.

A couple seconds passed.

"Yes I can speak English." she replied slowly.

"OK good. Because I really don't have a lot of patience at the moment. Can I give you my confirmation number in English right now?" I replied.

It was silent for a few seconds.

"Yes I can speak English." she replied again.

Oh FAEN.

"英語が話せますか？"　[Do you speak English], I asked again in Japanese.

There was silence for a few seconds again.

"話さない" [No I don't] she replied in Japanese.

Christ... I thought to myself.

"大丈夫です。日本語で話そう。"　[It's fine let's just take this in Japanese]

I asked her to lookup my reservation, which she did, I then asked here to see about my blind status. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to look up the Japanese word for "blind" before I called, so I just kept telling her I am not "BLINDO"..

’僕は[ブリンド]じゃない’.... but she had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

We went back forth like this for a few minutes, until I also mentioned I have no seeing eye dog. Suddenly she said she understood and she will make changes to the reservation immediately. She said a bunch of other stuff at that point which sounded like an apology, which I just said "ok" [うん。うん。うん。]

After that call I started packing to get ready for the flight. I needed to head to ZhongShan Station in the morning to catch the MRT to Taoyuan Airport. At midnight, I go to sleep.

At around 8AM, my Taiwan phone rings.

”喂“ [Hello] I asked.

“鍾先生嗎” [Is this John?]

"我是啊。什麼事？." [That's me, can I help you?]

"我是日本航空的司機。我是來接你到桃園機場." [I'm a driver from Japan Airlines. I'm here to take you to the airport.]

Gosh that's really nice of them. But why the hell are they doing that?

"謝謝你但是為什麼要來接我呢？" [Thank you, but why are you doing this?]

"他們說你導盲犬剛去世了所以你沒辦法自己到機場。" [They said your seeing eye dog just died so you couldn't get to the airport by yourself]

[to be concluded]