The old scout and the lost podcasts
I flew from L.A. one day earlier than the other boys, and mr brown was kind enough to accompany me to the airport. And at the airport, several interesting things happened.
First, while waiting for me to check myself in at the SQ counter, the godfather of Singapore blogs decided to do what any consummate blogger would do - waste no time, record the moment. Whether or not there was anything interesting to photograph or video was irrelevant.
He took out his videocamera and started filming the check-in area of the Tom Bradley International terminal at LAX, even after I had remarked to him that, ‘hey look, we’re opposite the El Al check-in counters, so many policemen around’.
What happened next, or as mr brown described it, was a little harrowing. Guns were drawn and pointed, and the nation’s premier blogger frisked and questioned at length about why he was filming the check-in counters and the policemen.
‘I’m a tourist and I’m making holiday videos’ was never going to placate nervous airport policemen, who went through the videotape to see what other incriminating footage he had shot of the airport. One airport policeman even had to go as far as tell our mr brown that when a policeman raised a palm in his face, he was trying to tell him that he should stay where he was standing (and not move forward to try to assist them in operating the camera).
Later on, jangled nerves settled a little, we sat at the departure lounge’s food court talking, and I noticed a bunch of boy scouts (literal ok, not figurative) milling there. They were all Asian in appearance, and only upon examining their uniform did we realise that they were American boy scouts. I decided it was a good idea for us to chat with one of them, an elderly gentleman in his 70s, who was also dressed in full scout regalia.
And so, we found out from Mr Masanori Fujimoto that Troop 379 hailed from the Koyasan Buddhist Temple on Laconia Boulevard, and that they were going to a jamboree in Japan.
Mr Fujimoto then took out a commemorative book of the troop, pointing at photographs and telling us about his own experience as a scout, and then his own story about how he was raised in California, but was stranded in Japan during the war because while on a sea voyage back to California from Japan, his ship was turned around some time after December 7, 1941.
We turned on our FlashMic and Mr Fujimoto allowed us to record our little chat with him before we thanked him for his time, as it was time for me to go through the departure gates.
Twelve hours later, while in transit at Narita, I received an SMS from mr brown that the recording, along with two other podcasts, had been lost because the recording device’s memory had been corrupted.
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