or: Selling ice to eskimos or watches to the Swiss

One of the 974 things I like about life is the randomness of conversations that I seem to find myself in that somehow link to other things or people in some way.

This is one of those tales.

As is usual when entering a country, I collected my luggage. Also as is usual, there was a duty free store before exiting this area. The person who was collecting me at the airport (a friend I made while in Madagascar) messaged to say they were caught in traffic and could I please buy some mint flavoured Fisherman’s Friends from the duty free store. He’d had a big night and nothing else was saving him.

I had no idea that store would sell this kind of thing. I also had no idea they came flavoured in anything else aside from disgusting. That’s a childhood memory so perhaps I’d like them now… I’m not sure I’ll bother finding out. There are plenty of other things I’d rather eat.

It was the least I could do under the circumstances and particularly since everyone who would be spending time with him over the next few hours would also benefit. A car is also a fairly confined space. I went to the store and I bought the Fisherman’s Friends.

Leaving the store I noticed I was one of the last to be going through customs. The plane had been unloaded very quickly. Yes, I had a look around in the store too since I knew I had plenty of time but that’s not really the point either. Anyway, as I was going through the Green Channel, since I had nothing to declare, a friendly looking customs guy asked me to step aside into the semi-secret room.

I’ve never been in a semi-secret room at the airport before.

It was nothing terribly alarming at this stage as he asked me to put my bags and things on the large x-tray machine. I thought it was a nice gesture to let my bags go through this in private. They’ve been through it in public before with countless other strangers. The semi-private room must be for more intimate moments.

He asked me some details about myself namely where I was traveling from and where I am from. I told him that I was traveling from Berlin and that I live in HK (I use this term very loosely at the moment but thought it wasn’t the time to be having that conversation as I’m still nervous with airport people given my experience entering England) and I travel on an Australian passport.

My luggage came through the other side and as I collected them, the customs guy said to me, “You have a watch in your bag?” It was a weird way of asking a question and caught me off guard since as far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Also similar to my thinking in England…

I agreed that I did have a watch in my bag. Then thought that I should clarify since I was with a customs guy and I didn’t want to be misunderstood and I am in Switzerland and he is asking me about a watch and my brain may have started to overthink all of this…

I said that it was actually a dive computer. He then asked me to remove it and show him. As far as dive computers go, mine does look remarkably like a watch which is one of the main reasons I like it. It also has all the usual dive computer features e.g. depth limits, nitrox used, surface interval times etc. Others are more reminiscent of something seen on the arm of The Predator.

I gave it to him to have a closer look at it and as he was inspecting it, he asked me if I was planning on diving in Switzerland. I said no since I thought it was too cold and told him that I had it with me from a recent trip to Madagascar. Apparently Switzerland lake diving is pretty good. I am more of a tropical / warm water diving person at the moment. I will make an allowance for this to dive between the continental plates in Iceland though.

I digress…

He asked me how long I was there and I replied that it was roughly six weeks. He asked me what the diving was like and where specifically I went. I told him it was fantastic and I was in an area called Andava (this is the abbreviated name). He then asked what I was doing there for that long so I told him about the volunteer program and I had been counting fish in this particular area.

He replied that he was aware of the program having pulled over a Swiss national a few weeks ago. She had also been a volunteer in Madagascar. He then regaled me with various stories she had told him. Our conversation went on for quite a bit longer as we discussed the program in more detail (he was interested to know that you could get your diving license there rather than needing to be fully qualified prior to attending) and the benefits to the local and scientific communities as well as how necessary it is to have people to be ambassadors of this kind of thing and spread the word.

My jaw then hit the floor when he announced that he would now be volunteering to do the same thing.

All this from looking like I was trying to bring a watch into Switzerland.

* Thanks to The Pretenders for the title to this post. They have a new album out on 27 October 2017.