That's when things started to look up a tad. I'd expected the usual barren, sterile-looking holding pen with its plastic seats designed to make it categorically impossible to find a comfortable position in them. The usual stained, institutional gray carpet. The usual boarding and departure announcements that might as well have been made in Urdu, for all the meaning they conveyed. The usual crush of (meta)humanity, where you try to avoid having your toes stepped on while you play the old game of "Spot the Hijacker."