Not-So-Nice Airport Security & Luggage-Handling Story

Good day guys!

While you guys are busy getting pregnant, pregnant-ed or giving birth (CONGRATS TO MY DEAR FRIEND XT on the arrival of lil' Princeton!), which seems to be the only news running on my FB newsfeed and on blogs everywhere, I just came back from another work trip in Singapore (gosh I haven't even blog about my Taiwan trip yet, gaaaaahhhhh...)!

The trip was although tiring (not as bad as Taiwan trip though), was a great learning and eating trip. I mean, for the past few times, Singapore has been very kind to me. The food, the security, the convenience and also the catching-up with friends who are working over there.

There were however, two incidents that happened during my trip that forced me to be reminded of MH370. Touch wood, no disappearance and I'm still safely here typing this blog entry! Phew~!

Story 1:
My boss, colleague and I checked-in at KLIA and the moment I received my boarding pass I realised my name was misspelled. Fearing that I might be denied entrance at the boarding door, I inform the girl at the check-in counter and she said it's ok, I probably purchased the ticket with a spelling error. Since the tickets was booked by my boss's PA, I thought that was quite possible but I asked her 'are you sure' a few times and she waved and assured me to move on.
So that was the very day I know with a name on a boarding pass that does not tally with your passport, you can still go through and be on board smoothly.

And you think 'Shirlexia' is hard to spell, huh?

I was seated at my seat and a lady came and sat next to me. While both of us were busy filling in our immigration cards, a guy came and told one of us that we are sitting at his seat. The lady went: "I'm 7B!" I was looking at my boarding pass and had to check again to say: "No, I'm 7B!".

Turned out, the lady next to me was probably my long lost sister (like I haven't had enough of sisters, lol) as her name and mine are just two alphabet away and yes her name is Lee Pheng. That means, I have been checked-in as her and she has been checked-in as her too!

Two 100% same boarding passes found!

Sounds confusing? Well, to make it simpler, I wasn't checked-in at all (no wonder my boss and colleague were seated far away from me) so if anything happen to the flight, everyone will think I wasn't on board!

While Lee Pheng (she is a nice lady too by the way) and I were not as angry about the incident as the other guy sitting next to me (we even jokingly agreed that we would be the top suspects if the flight go missing since there are two persons with the same name on board), I do think that was quite a big glitch on the security at the airport. First of all, I don't think it's right at all that my boarding pass with a wrongly-spelled name can allow me to board the flight. Secondly, what kind of computer system are they using that is that dumb to print two boarding passes with the exact same name and seat number?

Story 2:
I'm very anal about my personal belongings when travelling ever since the infamous Schepelle Corby's case that happened when I was studying in Perth. As much as possible, I won't check-in any of my luggage without any lock. So as usual, I locked my luggage this time around too!
A day after arriving in KL, I reluctantly started to unpack my stuff and that's when I found the lock that was locking the front compartment of the luggage looking totally strange.

My green lock and the not-so-green lock.

Where is my cute green lock? I have the key with me but that's not the lock!!! And how am I supposed to unlock this new lock? We ended up cutting the zip off (luckily I was already planning to give the luggage away) to remove my stuff but I remain furious about this incident.

1) I love my cute green lock I bought from KK long time ago a lot so screw you whoever who either broke it or forced-opened the lock and totally stole it from me. 2) If somebody has opened my luggage, what was the intention? Was it for security check? Or was it to stuff illegal goods into my bag (touch wood, I checked, nothing suspicious...)? Till now, I still think this is really creepy! I might have gotten into trouble at the airport for something I didn't own!!!
Deardo said someone might have broken my lock while throwing transferring my luggage and out of courtesy decided to give me a new lock. So if this really is the case, thank you you kind person but you could have find a way to pass me the key isn't it?

I didn't and don't wanna be super angry over these incidents but I have, prior to this blog entry sent a feedback to the airline. My point of sending them the feedbacks and posting this entry isn't to complain (because I don't know too who is it to blame and really nothing bad happened to me because of the incidents), but to alert the airline and airport about the crazy security system and the handling of luggage they have and to look into this seriously. And to my readers who are travelling with flight, I hope you can be extra careful too. :)