Hes waving his stamp like a rodeo clown, brandishing his wares as if he was holding the fate of 6 helpless ex-pats in the palm of his hands. Whats that you say? He was??
The gate agent spied him from the cabin door, and realized that the Force was with us that day. He bounded down the aluminum stairs to meet the All-Powerful, egg-shaped, stamp-bearing buffoon to exchange imprints for cash (yep, til the very last flippin minute, they managed to extort $$ from us). The whole exchange took less than 30 seconds, plane door to plane door. For once, I thanked God for teensy-weensy, bass-ackwards airports in the middle of nowhere on the wide open steppe.
Unable to contain my exhilaration, I unbuckled (as if a buckle is really going to help anyone going down), and dashed to the front of the plane to meet my newest Mr. Wonderful. Im pretty sure everyone on the plane knew what was going on, so I lifted them in the air and gave a great big, Yippee! No one did the happy dance with me, but I so totally didnt care, I wasnt going to be seeing any Kazakh jail time any time soon!!!