Shobhit's niece, Shivangi, has arrived! Actually she told us all her friends call her "Shivvy." I have a feeling Shobhit will continue calling her Shivangi (pronounced "shi-VON-gee," with a hard G like in "get") since that's what he's known her as for the past 22 years. I suppose I may call her Shivvy now though, as it seemed to be what she likes.
Shobhit worked a full shift yesterday, but left the store for an hour or two to go pick her up at the airport in the late morning. He then went back to work, for a shift ending at 5:30. I got home from work myself at right around 5:00, so I had about an hour with her before Shobhit got home. She came out of the guest room just moments after I came in the front door, broad smile, saying, "Hi! Nice to meet you!" The cats had come out to greet me, and she mentioned how they had not yet warmed up to her. I went to wash my hands as I always do when I return from anywhere after I leave home (even if it’s just, say, to the garbage chute around the corner in the 4th floor hall), and then we went to sit in the living room to chat as I said, "I'm really curious to hear about your experience at the airport."
I did get some new details about how she missed her flight on Saturday, which made the whole thing make a little more sense—especially how she wound up bumped off the flight even though her suitcase made it on. Apparently, the plane she was set to fly from LAX to SeaTac was coming from Seattle to begin with, and the flight
out of Seattle was "downgraded," as in: swapped out for a smaller aircraft. Air travel has been a wild clusterfuck all over the country for the past week, with other huge weather impacts especially all over the eastern U.S., but I'm sure this was still residual effects from SeaTac being closed to all outgoing and incoming flights all morning on Friday due to the ice storm. I can only assume there were massive cascading effects of countless flight cancelations, plus there's no telling where the original aircraft that was supposed to go first to L.A. from Seattle was coming from—for all I know, it was coming from some other part of the country with its own weather impacts. All I know is, the aircraft available to everyone booked on Shivvy's flight Saturday night was smaller than the one originally booked. I'm sort of assuming they went with that option, evidently having it available to them, rather than canceling the flight entirely.
I did get confirmation, though, that Shivvy was at the airport a solid two hours early. She told me she even had a seat assignment when she checked in, but when she got her boarding pass, it did not indicate a seat. She asked about it, and she was told that not only she, but
everyone on the flight had been "checked out" as they were reassigning seats, now with forty more people booked on the flight than there was space for. (This now explains the flight being overbooked by that many; it was not a proactive overbooking by that amount on Alaska's part.)
Most importantly, this was how her suitcase wound up on the plane but she did not: they loaded the suitcase before she realized she had been "checked out" and needed to find out whether she herself would even get on the plane.
I did ask her directly what I had asked Shobhit and he either didn't bother finding out or he just didn't know: what was her general attitude through all of this? Was she stressed? Angry? Just going with the flow?
"Going with the flow," she told me. It was clearly a comfort to her that if push came to shove, she could just continue staying with the friend she was visiting there, which was exactly what she did, spending Christmas with them and even taking a day trip with them to San Diego, apparently. The one thing she indicated was clearly a bit stressful for her was how both her dad (Shobhit's brother, in India) and Shobhit were much more concerned about it than she was, and she was trying to field calls and texts from them both at once while at the same time attempting to speak with airline agents. That said, to be fair to both Puneet and Shobhit, she was still a 22-year-old traveling alone and they would naturally want to be absolutely certain she was okay.
She did confirm that yes, just as I imagined, there were tons of people at the airport who were very upset or very angry. She noted how lucky she felt compared to some other people, including one woman who had cancer and half her medication was inaccessible in her checked luggage—in that case not already loaded on the plane to Seattle, but still stuck in the airport in Chicago! Jesus. I hope that lady was okay. I'm sure that was just one of countless scenarios airline agents were having to contend with, as best they possibly could under the circumstances. I can't imagine being at the airport under these conditions, and I bet Shivvy was just relieved to get the hell out of the airport Saturday night once it was clear she would have to stay in L.A. until Tuesday.
Apparently the airline will book one night at a hotel for you, paying for it up front. Any further nights you are stranded, they will not pay for up front, but—and this was another kicker I was glad to get clarification on—they will reimburse you later for any other nights you have to stay. Shivvy didn't want to have to deal with receipts and customer service and all of that, and so stayed with her friend until she took advantage of the one pre-paid hotel stay she could use, staying right by the airport Monday night to make it easier for her to catch her 8 a.m. flight yesterday morning.
She did have to buy herself new clothes. She told me she googled where would still be open Christmas Eve at 9:30 p.m., and Ross was the only place still open. She found some clothes there though, apparently. She should still send in receipts for clothes and toiletries she had to buy, though, to get reimbursed. Money's money.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ तैंतीस —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ तैंतीस —
That was hardly all we talked about, though, and we visited for a good solid hour before Shobhit got home from work. I learned several interesting things about her right off the bat:
*Shobhit had asked me to make chai, and I asked her if she wanted any. "No thank you, I don't drink tea," she said.
What? She must be the first Indian person I've ever met who had a distaste for chai. She said she loves coffee, though, and when I told her I can't stand coffee she was just as surprised as I had been about her and tea.
*She also can't stand spicy food. Like, at all. Shobhit had a leftover eggplant dish which he and I used tortillas and some added cheese to turn into burritos after he got home, but she declined any. When we had the eggplant with naan on Monday night, it was honestly almost too spicy even for me, and he has actually gotten me used to far more spicy food over the years than I ever used to be able to eat—still nowhere near what Shobhit can eat, though. Shivvy said she'd already had ice cream and pizza when she had gone out walking (she actually walked all the way to Pike Place Market and then to Seattle Center and back) and didn't need any dinner. I think she might have had some if not for how spicy it was, though. While Shobhit and I were eating he quipped, "You're a disgrace to your family!" and Shivvy replied, "I'm a disgrace to all Indian people!" and covered her face with her hands.
*She loves rural towns, and hates huge cities. This is literally the inverse of both Shobhit and me. She was like, "I love being in corn fields!" Yuck. Boring! But, it turns out, she doesn't just go to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana because her dad chose it for her (which he did), but she loves living in this Midwestern town of roughly 45,000 people—all of 18% smaller than the size of Olympia (even its metro population: 182,821 vs 298,000 for metropolitan Olympia, although in that case it's 38.5% smaller). I know enough about Delhi (population 28 million; worst pollution in the world) though, to see how someone might grow to hate it. "I hate Delhi, there's too many people!" she said. "And I hate people!" Well, I guess small town living would suit her then. (To be fair, by American standards, even a metro population of 182,000 is a far cry from "rural"; it's still a legitimate city. Shobhit loves to say a place like that would be called "a village" in India, but bear in mind where my mom lived and my brother still does: Wallace, Idaho has a population of 782. Now
that is small. Shivvy would probably love it though.
*While first impressions usually evolve to something a lot more nuanced, I did like her right away. And her general demeanor and relative politeness actually gave me a somewhat clearer impression of Shobhit's brother, along with the way Shivvy referred to Puneet a few times. Granted her mother likely had a more active role in her upbringing, but either way, they seem to have brought up a great kid. Plus, after we presented her with the Christmas stocking we had filled for her—at which she got
very excited at all the chocolate in it—she told us she had gifts for us too. It didn't even occur to me that she might, although it's pretty customary among South Asians, now that I think about it. She got Shobhit and me each a pair of
Barnes & Noble "Cozy Socks", and the thing that made an even more positive impression: she brought
toys for the cats. To my genuine surprise, Guru in particular spent a good amount of time playing with them. Shanti, on the other hand, kind of ignored them.
*Finally, she does have a more noticeable accent than I realized after being so struck by how American she sounded the time I spoke to her over FaceTime a few weeks ago. I've been telling people all over the place that if I didn't know any better I'd think she were born in the U.S., but after speaking to her in person, that's not quite the case. (Another factor here is the way she uses slightly different words for certain things than regular Americans would, the same way Shobhit often does. For instance, even when referencing just a visit, she would say "I lived in L.A." rather than "I stayed in L.A." And when you say "I lived there," in American English that means you literally moved there, got a job, etc.) Still, it remains true that her accent is
far less pronounced than Shobhit's, and no one will have any problem understanding her. Which to this day is not always the case with Shobhit.
Shivvy hung out for us for a bit while Shobhit and I ate dinner and watched some TV, and she played with the cats for a bit or browsed on her phone. She said she was tired and would likely go to bed early though, and she did indeed, having gone to her room and turned out the lights by 9 p.m. In the meantime I spent some time in the bedroom working on my year-end Top 10 and Worst 5 movies list, which I hope to post tomorrow. I am very behind. I haven't even started my "2022 in Ten Minutes" video and this may be the first year ever in which I don't make the December 31 deadline for that, mostly because of the distraction of a house guest all this week. That won't be the end of the world, though.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ तैंतीस —
In mostly unrelated news, I want to shift now from Shobhit's niece to one of
my nieces—or to be more specific, my eldest grandniece, Jacyee, who now has an
established history of deeply touching and charming, colorful drawings on the envelopes for holiday cards. The shot below is of the one she made for us this year; Brandi, her mom and my niece, handed it to me on Christmas Day. I really, really love this incredibly adorable picture, and am especially impressed with the visual details on this otherwise simple picture made by a girl who is now thirteen years old. Whenever these envelopes stop coming, I am seriously going to miss them. Apparently Shobhit and I are the only people she does this for.
[posted 12:28 pm]
