I went to bed the other night and suddenly realised that I hadn’t seen my iPad for a couple of days. It wasn’t in The Safe House, so I got out of bed, went to the garage and searched my car and my Vespa – nothing! It gradually dawned on me that I might not have seen my iPad since the Tuesday of that same week – on a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town (a Kulula flight, no less). Oh my good Lord, what had I done?

Gone, baby gone..

The nature of the iPad is that it fits very snugly with the other magazines in the magazine rack in front of you on the plane. I told La Muse of my dilemma and, interestingly enough, she asked why I took the iPad out on the plane in the first place. Hmm, yes, exactly why did I do that? After some thought, I assured her that the mere nature of the iPad, given it’s size (that of a magazine) and it’s function (consuming media including magazines, books, music, TV shows and movies) makes it probably the most desirable item for anyone in the world to have whilst traveling on a plane. In fact, if I had a choice between not having an iPad on a plane, and having an iPad on plane whilst someone shoots a staple gun up my ass once every half an hour for the duration of the flight, I would choose the latter.

The feeling of hopelessness and emptiness continued as I returned to the radio studio the next day and ran the story by the crew. Bruce Good, my Friday show co-host came up with a novel idea, which I went ahead with. It had to do with pure and utter confidence – and that is what I want to tell you about.

I was traveling home that Friday and I called 0861 KULULA. Surprisingly, someone answered. That’s when I went for this vibe:

“Hi there, I left my iPad on flight MN105 from Schweeberg to Cape Town on Tuesday arvee, and I need to know where I can pick it up.”

=>> Note how I didn’t use words like, “I think” and “can you check.” I told them that it was a FACT that I had left it on the plane and assumed they would have found it and have it locked up for me.

The woman on the other end asked me to hold and came back, telling me very matter-of-factly, “Yes Mr. Rotherham, the iPad is in the safe waiting for you at the airport – you can fetch it anytime.”

HOW RADICAL IS THAT?

I didn’t act surprised at all, pretending this was all quite normal. I said goodbye and promised to pop-in that weekend.

So on Sunday morning I rolled a light joint, put on my tartan trakkie pants and lumo mirror-shades, and headed off to the airport. And there it was, with 1% battery life left. Shame, the little beauty was clearly a bit shaken – so I took her home and put her on a nice slow charge.

So good to have her back.

Well done to you, Kulula – and to everyone else, I strongly urge you phone lost property when you lose things. The guy at the airport that helped me, confirmed that people leave SO much stuff, it is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the amount of people that phone to see if their stuff has been found. Hardly anyone apparently. And it all gets burnt after 6 months.

Ok, maybe not burnt – that was a bit elaborate – but they get rid of it after 6 months.

Naturally, this is all covered in The Secret.