It was one of those flights I took from Singapore to Shanghai. I was in the queue to check in and noticed that it was a rather long queue, and for a while, the queue did not seem to be moving at all.
It was soon I realised, there was there was a uni student caught in an excess luggage weight situtation. Apparently, she was on her way back to Shanghai with all her books and it grossly exceeded her allowance. She tried to reason, I think, to get a waiver of the excess baggage fees, without any avail. The counter staff remained adamant.
She began to unpack all her books from the bags. In one last attempt, she went down the line and asked if any one would be kind enough to help her by "sharing" the baggage allowance. No one helped. She got to the family in front of me and they replied they could not help too as they would be transiting Shanghai to Harbin.
Then she came to me.
I have been a uni student before and I know how that feels, to pay grossly unreasonable excess baggage fees. Also, I had only with me a gym bag which did not weigh more than 10 kg.
I agreed to help her.
I spoke to the counter staff on giving up some of my excess allowance, as my bag is only about 9 kg. They gave me a stern look, implictly suggesting to me that I should not help that lady and proceeded to warn me that if the lady is carry anything illegal, I would be fully liable as the excess contents would be tag under my name. She even told me that the untagging would be impossible.I felt they are not making sense as the stuff would not be even in my bag. All I did was to allow some of my baggage allowance to be given to her.
As I have already seen that the items that are of excess weight are only books, I told the couter staff that they are only books only anyway and asked her to proceed.
Reluctantly, they agreed. The uni student proceeded to ask for her bag back to repack the books. This cause even bigger delays and the people in the queue were starting to get agitated.
Anyway, this was soon resolved and when it came to my turn to finish the check-in procedures, the counter staff told me they did not tag her baggage under my name and I should not have any worries should there be any contraband items. I remebered thinking that I knew that from the on set and their attempts to "smoke" their way to deter me from helping the student would not work.
Behind that stern look, I could sense that she was impressed that I was persistent in doing a good deed to help a student.
When I was done, I turned to realise that the lady whom I helped was waiting for me. She passed me a chit of paper and when off. When I got to the waiting lounge, I opened that note and found that it was her telephone number in Singapore.
Well, I did not help her to receive anything recipocral from her. Before I boarded, I chucked that piece of paper into the dustbin.
I thought it would be a good idea to share what camera gear I use. I use a Canon EOS500D with EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens and EF 50mm f/1.8II. 
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