This is the further north I've ever been

On Wednesday, I got home from work and went out for dinner with Stephanie and Bennett aat DiCaprio's, not far from the airport. It was nice to spend some time with them before I went and even though Bennett was a little grizzly for the first few minutes because he'd just woken up from being asleep in the car, he soon came good. Afterwards, they dropped me off at the airport and Bennett was a hit with all the airport personnel. After having a bit of a look around the airport, we all gathered around for a bit of a cuddle and a cry. Bennett was really good about everything, and even though I will worry for him about how he's going without his Daddy for three weeks, I'm pretty sure he'll be fine. Maybe it was because I told him I'd bring a present home for him! I'm sure I'll find something somewhere.



I went through the hand-luggage screen and managed to set the metal detector off with the staples in my itinerary, which was a fair effort. Once through the security net at Tullamarine airport you basically find yourself in a large Duty Free shop. Very strange. Once finding Gate 9, I sat a read my new Donovan book and enjoyed some tunes until take off at around 11pm. The first leg of the flight was to Hong Kong and it was pretty uneventful. The seat next to me was free, and next to that there was a young lady who seemed quite nice. Unfortunately though, she's a heavier sleeper than me so I had to wake her up so I could get through to the toilet.



The Qantas inflight entertainment system is pretty good. There's movies (didn't watch any), TV shows (watched Simpsons and the Office), as well as tunes (listened to REM) and the Flight Path program which tracks your flight progress and some games. It's also got games and I spent a few hours playing chess and checkers, although they seriously need to revisit their settings because "hard" didn't quite live up the challenge it set.


Arriving at hong Kong I was pretty tired, with about only an hour's sleep under the belt. The staff seemed a little terse, but I suppose it was 5am or so their time and I wouldn't want to be working that early either. I liked seeing the bilingual signage, especially this one here from the travelator which I think makes a pretty good general principle whether you're on a travelator or not. More Donovan book, more iPod Shuffle, and back onto the plane for a second breakfast. I'd asked to be given vegetarian meals during the flight which was great, but for some reason they insisted on trying to give me soy milk at every turn. Soy milk?! It's not even milk is it? Somehow I don't think female soy beans created milk to feed their offspring. No way was a drinking that crap. During breakfast, one of the hostesses noticed I was tired and told me that because so many people had gotten off at Hong Kong there were a lot of spare seats further back in the plane and I could actually have a 3-seater to myself and lie down. After breakfast you can guess where I went! Although I probably only got an extra two hours sleep, just being able to lie down horizontally was enough to make me feel a lot better. A lot of the sleep I had was very faint sleep, not deep at all, and most bursts of sleep probably only lasted five minutes. The rest of the flight was long and arduous as we travelled over northern Asia and the former USSR. From about Moscow onwards it was a tad more interesting because I had at least heard of most of the places we were flying over. I wasn't too impatient about the flying, I was just tired. Finally, we flew over London and courtesy of a holding pattern due to conjestion at Heathrow I managed to get a few aerial photos even though I'm sure I could just as easily see pretty much the same thing by logging onto Google Maps! The sky around Heathrow Airport is amazing because there's pollution streak lines from all the planes and at any point in time there's usually about 10 or so different streak lines intersecting each other at different angles in the sky. That airport is disturbingly massive compared to any airports I'd been to before. Getting off the plane, you walk into Terminal 4, keep walking and then get bussed to Terminal 1 for the transfer. Then there's a very long line at the security check, and then the young woman from immigration hassle me (politely) about lots of things. What are you doing here? Who are you staying with? Why does this temporary residence address say Brixton, when you're going to Edinburgh? Plus a whole lot of questions about Carter USM which I would have been more than happy to answer if I wasn't dead tired and just wanted to get to Edinburgh. Then once through there, I got to the waiting area for British Airways domestic flights and had to kill time until they decide which gate you go to.

Then from the gate, they bus you again off to your actual plane! By this stage, I was in a real daze and was just hoping they'd bussed my luggage onto the plane too. The flight to Edinburgh was OK and I got this photo of a really interesting phenomenon which was like a circular rainbow in the clouds. Exactly how it works I don't know, but at one point the circular rainbow even had the shadow of the plane clearly emblazened upon it and it looked brilliant. It would have made a great logo for an international airline! Edinburgh Airport was a bit more relaxed than Heathrow, and without too much waiting (relative to the past 28 hours), I found my luggage, found young Scott and then off we went. I was probably too tired to be of much conversation, but we had a pleasant drive as we went off to our first destination... Tesco's! That place is brilliant. The highlight surely was seeing all these Scottish foods at such cheap prices. Normally if you try to buy any of it over here it's 2-4 times more expensive - no wonder the Scots have such sweet tooths. I also got some cash out so it was nice to actually have some local currency in the wallet again. From there we went to Gorebridge, which is where Scott and his family live. It's a cute little place they live in, and his Mum and brother Neil seem really nice. The dog's nice enough too, even though she's a bit wary of strangers. A cup of tea, a bit of a chat, then off for a shower and into bed at 9pm. I managed to sleep until 4am, but my cough woke me up a few times along the way. I feel so much better already! It's now 5:30am and I might try getting back to sleep again if I can, but I'm pretty confident the jet lag won't be too bad, because Bennett the jet lag simulator has had me well trained to be up at the most unusual hours over the past three and a half years.