228, 2026, was meant to be the date Chris flies to Ireland to complete the final 9 weeks of his medicine degree (and 228 1947 was also a day of great disaster in Taiwan history, of an anti-government uprising by the native Taiwanese against the corruption and repression of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government, which had come over from China after Japan’s defeat by the Allied forces in 1945). A week earlier, Trump had been saying that they will attack Iran within 10 days. Chris had been saying all week that “what if Trump attacks on the day of my flight?” And it came true…..
Due to the fear of the children getting too traumatised about Chris flying off, we went off to the park straight after Chris got on the bus to go to the airport. The children seemed pretty alright.
Around 6pm, during dinner, a Facebook friend living in Israel posted that “the war has began”! I phoned Chris and there didn’t seem to be any indication of the flight being cancelled.
Then, close to 9pm, I called Chris to see if the children might be able to see him get on the airplane, and boarding was delayed. I hung up the phone and Chester cried like crazy. Both children thought they won’t see dad again until a long time later.
Then I slept with the children. I was exhausted because our 8 week old baby was only admitted into hospital for 3 days with meningitis, and I stayed in hospital with him because I am breastfeeding, so I didn’t have much sleep over the last week. Then I got a call from Chris at 10:30 saying flight has been cancelled, his phone is running out of battery, and they were all stuck in a queue.
I fell asleep again. Chris rang again close to 1am, and it didn’t wake me up until the second call, on the last ring. When I called back, Chris’ phone had already died. I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t know where he was. Turns out he arrived at the metro station at Macquarie Shopping Centre. So he had to walk home, because there were no more buses!
Then he attempted to call Qatar Airways, but the calls just automatically hangs up after 30minutes each time he tried.
Then on 1March the call went unanswered for 8 hours. I was discussing with him about booking the alternate route via North America. He wasn’t keen.
Then on 2March, I looked up the American Airline tickets, and prices have already jumped to $20,000-40,000 for a flight from Sydney to Dublin! But miraculously, Chris was able to click into a nonrefundable ticket costing $2600. He was about to book that, when the Qatar call suddenly got answered! So he asked the operator to change his flight to 3March. Since the American Airline ticket is nonrefundable, he chose not to book the flight. So there were no backup plans anymore. Need to pray that the airspace will open on 3March!
The airspace didn’t open on 3March and his flight got cancelled again. On 4March Chris finally decided to cancel his Qatar ticket and buy United Airlines, leaving 6March. Interestingly he was able to get a $2600 ticket. But he kept rambling about "what if the plane broke down"... And on late evening 5March, Chris received notice his plane broke down and they rescheduled his flight to 2pm 6March... And then he says "what if the plane fell into the ocean". When he arrived to the airport 6March they say he needs the ESTA... so he had to do it in the airport and they said if it’s not approved by 1pm he has to go home and take the flight tomorrow instead!
The ESTA didn’t get approved until 7past 1pm, and by then his seat had already been taken by someone else! But interestingly, because the original flight he booked was cancelled, so the airline has authority to book him onto different airlines. If the flight wasn’t a cancelled flight he would have to wait 24 hours for the next equivalent flight! So now he’s gotten rebooked onto a better itinerary that gives him much more ample time to transit, all thanks to the cancelled flight and him not knowing to apply for ESTA!
And despite being a week late for his classes, he was only allocated two days of class on his first week, so he missed out very little, and the school told him not to worry about that, as they can easily do a bit of swapping around for him to be able to attend the two missed classes.
I guess it’s “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28). I sure hope we are still walking in God’s purpose for us though.
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