Those Who Wander Magazine January 2016 | Page 54

VHe never really established contact on his return but our lives did cross path once at a family wedding. After approximately 13 years of never seeing the guy you can imagine how fun that event was. After much avoiding, from both myself and my father, myself and my brother spoke with him. There were obviously polite exchanges before he asked if we could ?talk about it?. Being a wedding I wasn?t really wanting to bring that up and didn?t feel is was appropriate and knowing that I kindly declined and said another time. It was at this point my father decided to leave the wedding, not return for the remainder of the night and has not tried to contact me since. It does need to be known that I haven?t tried to contact him either. Fast forward 3 to 4 years and I am currently sitting on a Malaysia Airlines flight from Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur, with my amazing partner, embarking on our five week adventure of Asia, # ljojlodoesasia. Being the slight control freak I am we arrived at the airport 3 hours before our international flight, checked in, cleared security, had the token chai, made the important ?I love you and yes I promise to travel safe?phone calls, cleared international customs, obtained a refund from the tourist refund scheme and pre-ordered our duty free. My god we accomplished a lot in that time, don?t you think? Usually while going through these motions I am bound to run into someone I know, South Australia is a bloody small place. Unfortunately, no cigar on that this time. Without a second thought I boarded the airline and sneakily (I am not sure if I had to be sneaky) filmed it on time lapse mode on my GoPro, just in case we need it for the blog or we can put it together in a cool montage (I included it below). Finally, we obtained our seats after being devastated by the fact we weren?t in business class or had scored extra leg room. As I was quickly trying to sort out 54 THOSE WHO WANDER what I needed in the seat pocket and what could in fact go in the overhead lockers I noticed someone that looked familiar. I did the quick double take and realised it was in fact my amazing Nana and Pa from my dad?s side. I was instantly excited and there were hugs and kisses all around. It was after five seconds of elation my heart dropped and I thought f*&k, why are they travelling to Asia? I think dad got married to someone from Asia, where is dad? At this point my Nana & Pa quietly informed me that my father was in fact on this flight, with his new wife and they were all in fact travelling to Sri Lanka, the place we are spending the most amount of time on our trip. Holy Jesus what do I do? Unlike my grandparents who were sitting directly next to me my father was sitting a few rows back so I had time to gather my thoughts.