Concours de Circonstances: combination of circumstances.
A week ago I was on my way to Soakarno-Hatta International for my spring break vacation. Easter day was my lucky day and happily made it to the airport in no time...that is 1h25 minutes.
It was 4.15 p.m., and still had about an hour and a half before my international flight (Singapore-> Tokyo-> Portland).
I checked in and walked to the immigration desks. After waiting in the slowest line of my entire life, I proudly presented my Kitas (Indonesian working permit), my U.S passport, a photocopy of my French passport, as well as other non-sense administrative documents they might ask...
Unfortunately the so-far pleasant airport experience quickly went back to a usual Indonesian nightmare. Indeed the immigration officer had made it clear that I was not going to go past his desk: my Kitas showed I was French, yet I was holding an American passport. Obviously the possibility of having dual citizenship and two passports was WAY too much for him to handle and he categorically refused to let me go. Without even looking at me he told me to go get my French passport and come back.
I managed to push back my original flight to 8.20 p.m., and quickly called up my friends.
The night before I had hosted a French "couchsurfer", Nicolas and had left him my keys and offered him to stay at my house an extra night until his flight to Bali the next day.
Couchsurfer - The CouchSurfing Project is the largest hospitality exchange network, with over 1.7 million members in 237 countries and territories. According to Alexa it is currently the most visited hospitality service on the Internet, averaging around 40 million daily page views July-December 2009.
Luckily and thank god for Smartphones, Nicolas emailed me right at that moment which allowed me to email him back to let him know that a friend of mine (Thank you Frederic!!) needed to get into the house to get my passport. Nicolas ran to the house, opened the door for Frederic, who in turn jumped in the first taxi he saw. Everything worked out perfectly and by 7 p.m. had gotten a hold of both my American and French passport.
Love C-.
