DOW' NUNDAH! – June 11, 2017 – Sominex and the Spirit of Australia

I meant to write all about my trip to Australia in this segment of my blog, my journey along with me mum to go pick up my youngest sibling, Malissa, from her 18-month LDS mission to Brisbane, but it turns out I’ll have to interrupt that tale right off the bat with a commercial break.

SOMINEX! Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO! (Catchy ditty.) 

Can you honestly tell me Sominex isn't making millions off this pic?

The stuff is magical! I slept for 8.5 hours on the plane thanks to those pills—and they’re not even habit forming!

But let me rewind a little.

Waiting in the LA airport for the flight that would take us down under (hereafter, dow’ nundah), I gushed to my mom about some magical blue gel pills Uncle Johnny had once given me before my study abroad to Jerusalem. Miraculously, they helped me sleep all the way across the Atlantic, allowing me to completely skip over the hours of waiting in cramped airline confines and to simply wake up relatively refreshed (but for some jet lag) as our plane was about to land in Austria (en route to Jeru). It was like in Jack and the Beanstalk, how he gets some wonderful, magical beans from a mysterious source but once he’s used them, they’re gone—he can never get them back again. 

This is a much cooler picture of gel capsules than I could find by googling "Jack and the Beanstalk."

I didn’t know how to get my pills again because Uncle Johnny had given them to me in an unlabeled bottle. I raised an eyebrow at the bottle but he insisted (like the vender of the beans) that they were magic, so I went for it, and it turned out that they were.

I guarded them jealously for years, hoarding them (he’d given me about 10) for a long flight now and then, alas, now they were gone. If only I could get them again. Mom sympathized, but what could she do? I continued rambling about their wondrous power, until after an hour or so Mom’s phone rang.

It was Uncle Johnny.

“Sominex,” he said, “Diphanol hydroxine.” (Actually, I can’t remember the generic name, so I just scrambled some sciency syllables together to sound convincing.) Within moments I found some at a kiosk in the LA airport—hallelujah!—and within hours I was zonked out on a plane.

Now I am left wondering about the magic of Sominex, but perhaps even more so about the magic of timeliness. I’m not sure what it was that prompted Uncle Johnny to call, but he did—right then, right as we were in need (or rather in genuine want, as my rambling showed). He doesn’t call that often either. He lives rather far away in rural Nevada, when he’s in the country.

Nevada's desert may be deserted by most, but never by Uncle Johnny.

Maybe he only comes or calls when he is called—when he senses his relatives are taking initiative to some far-off place or other. Maybe initiative has some sort of gravitational pull. Whatever the case, he’s 2 for 2 in my book. So here’s to you, Uncle Johnny, and here’s to Sominex!

(Sadly, no time today for anything except that word from our sponsors.)

(Please give me money, Sominex.)

*

This just in from Sominex: “No money for your commercial. Sorry.
PS – Please don't sing that ditty around our product."

Guess I’ll finish my post.

*

Mom and I actually might’ve saved even more money by booking with the ultimate discount airlines—Tigerair and Jetstar in the Australian neck of the world—but to avoid stressful distractions on such a meaningful trip for Malissa, we decided to go with Qantas Airlines—in Dad’s words, “The Delta Airlines of Australia,” in other words, a main player. Then the travel agency (Travel By Design) got us the same tickets for $950, so we had the best of both worlds—quality and savings.

Good thing we did, too, since once we flew on Delta from SLC to LA, we discovered we couldn’t check in to our Qantas flight. We eventually found a Qantas desk and a helpful Hispanic lady named Brenda. As we talked, she asked, “Do you have your electronic VISAs?” I always thought of VISA as a credit card, but VISA also refers to permission from a country to enter their country—an unfortunate coincidence, I think. But anyway, Mom and I looked at each other:

“Uh, no. We don’t have our VISAs. We sort of forgot those.”

Brenda exhaled slowly.

“So, you’re fortunate you booked with us, because at Qantas, we have access to a system that lets us get you VISAs right now, which is what I’m doing—but most airlines don’t have that. The other day, a lady came in without a VISA and couldn’t get one before her flight, so she missed it and had to buy another one. A VISA for Australia usually costs $50 but I can get you each one for free.”

In other words, “You were idiots, but I’m taking care of everything."

We exhaled in relief. Maybe too much, so Brenda began going on, trying to make sure we learned our lesson without having suffered any consequences.

Go on, Brenda. We're listening.

I can’t really remember what she said, because it didn’t really seem to matter—I’d just gotten off the hook without any consequences—but I do remember her sort of straining to say things as politely as she could despite how dumb people who needed them explained must be. “So, you can’t get into a foreign country without a VISA”—things like that.

And we knew all that, now that we thought of VISAs, but somehow amid our school years and planning the trip and finding cheap flights, somehow we’d both clean spaced getting VISA’s—it might’ve had something to do with being American too, how most countries are happy to trust and welcome you anyway, bless them.

At any rate, thanks to Qantas’s system and Brenda, we got our VISAs to Australia, and soon got on our way.

Qantas’s slogan is the Spirit of Australia, by the way, and if that’s the spirit of Australia, letting absent-minded but well-meaning people in, then it’s the place for me.

I smiled, and zonked out on Sominex.