Saturday, April 7, 2012

How Far Would You Go (to travel)?

So, how do you respond to that question?

Suddenly I remember my trip about 2 years ago, to Vietnam and Cambodia. It really took a courage to write this, gotta admit. It's one of my dirty little secret that I'm not really proud of but on the other side it made me realized of who I am now. Heck, now I'm mumbling.
So, I'm just gonna start from very beginning. It all started when I was traveling around South East Asia in 2009, where my flight from Bangkok to Phuket was delayed for 3 or 4 hours and for that the airline (Air Asia) gave us voucher about IDR 500,000 which we can use to buy airline ticket. That amount is quite significant to buy flight ticket Air Asia. There is time limitation for using that voucher, so, I don't want to waste it, I use it to buy return ticket Jakarta-Saigon (HCMC) for a week journey where there is one public holiday on Thursday that week. I had to add about IDR 100,000 to buy the tickets. So, it's so cheap. At that time I don't have any travel mate yet but I was ready if the worst come and I have to travel by myself or even if I have to cancel this trip it's not so bad because the money I spent was not that much. Later on, my bff Astri also buy ticket to Saigon and we'll be traveling together.Yeaay.

The problem started to occured when I haven't asked permission to take annual leave and my boss informed me that on that particular week there would be some important meeting which involving some people outside Indonesia. I was shocked, how could it be possible? Why it has to be in that particular week? I was really in big dilemma. Should I tell my boss about my trip and still ask for leave permission? I really really want to go, at that time I was already so overwhelmed with the trip so to not going is not an option, I simply couldn't bear it. Yeah, that's how much I want to travel. Thus, if I asked my boss then he didn't give the permission, but I still gonna go anyway he will know that I am bailing out the meeting because of my trip. I don't want that to happen, I kind of like my job at that time. So, here comes the easiest solution I can think of at that time. I won't tell my boss about my trip ever then on that week I will take sick leave. Yes, sick leave is a very great excuse, I mean, who would have predicted that someone is gonna be sick? It came suddenly and nobody want to be sick for sure. So yeah, I decided that what I'm going to do. Nobody in my office has to know about this, not even my close friends. This has to be perfect, I need to be discreet and prudent.

Until now, I still feel guilty to my closest friends in the office that I didn't come clean to them until now, I didn't feel guilty to my boss though, huehehehe. So, how would I do my plan here? One day sick leave is still okay without doctor's certificate, but for a week? It would need more than a flu to do it, it has to be some rather serious disease. How will I provide the doctor's certificate if I'm not sick? After so much thinking and planning, finally about a week before my departure I made a a visit to the doctor near my house. I explain the situation to her (honestly) that I need a certification from a doctor that during that day I am sick and has to take a rest at home. However, she only can only give me 3 days, as more that 3 days a patient like me should be attending lab test etc and to get more that 3 days it has to be accompanied by testing result from the hospital. Well, I'll take it, 3 is okay than nothing, I thought, I will think about the rest later on.

Remember about one public holiday I mentioned before? It turned out to be so fruitful, it's the contributing factor to my success. Huehehe. The public holiday is on Thursday, which is so perfect because I have obtained permission for 3 days: Monday-Wednesday. For Thursday, I don't need permission because it's holiday, so back from the trip I visited the doctor one more time, I was bringing her some gift from my traveling, not as a bribe, but really for my gratitude of her kind heart and understanding. Then, I asked her to create one more letter that mentioned I need to rest for 1 day (on Friday). So, in the end I have all the supporting evidence for my absence on those 4 days. I know it may seems a bit weird as there are 2 doctor's certificate mentioning 3 days + 1 day. But, what the hell, it should be legal because on Thursday I dont need permission, right? Hohoho.

So, that's it, my story of how bad I really want to travel that I was willing to do anything, even something "unethical" like I mentioned above. So far, I guess that really the furtherst (worst) thing that I did for the sake of traveling. How about you?

4 comments:

rotyyu said...

I didn't have to do such a trick so far. Perhaps in the future :-)

Dee~Dee said...

Finally hahaha..waiting for this post since long ago..COngrats Nian ;)

Anonymous said...

So, what's yours dian? Hehehe, what's your dirty laundry? :p

Astiga said...

I'm impressed ;-) kalo gw pasti udah panas dingin selama perjalanan hahaha gw ngebayangin lo curhat ke bu dokter