Jetlag & Beaches

I’ve arrived!

 

What a day! I’m not too sure how I am feeling right now. The past few days, or should I say, the past very long day has been a totally surreal experience. My day started on Tuesday when I boarded flight QF2 to Sydney, via Bangkok. The flight itself was actually surprisingly pleasant considering. The journey down to Bangkok was only about half full. I had managed to get to Heathrow early enough to blag myself a seat on an emergency exit isle. This by the way is a very good plan for anyone travelling long distances. It is well worth turning up early and asking for an emergency exit isle. You have so much more legroom, plus the freedom to move about the cabin without having to ask the person you are sitting next to you to let you out. On the first half of the flight, the seat behind me was also completely empty, meaning I could lean back all I liked without feeling guilty about impeding on the poor guy behind me’s space.

 

Quantas are also an excellent airline entertainment-wise I had an ‘on demand’ video screen, something which was reserved for the business class section of my United Airlines flight to America in December last year. This meant I could pick and choose when I wanted to watch movies, as opposed to be forced to start watching a movie when it started or having to wait for the next one to start to enjoy one. I had 80 movies to choose from, plus loads of TV shows, documentaries and even a CD library. Excellent! Although with the help of some night nurse I didn’t need to watch too much telly, as I passed out for about 9 hours in total over the course of the flight.

 

Bangkok was really humid. I think it was 32 degrees outside but it was really heavy humidity and that was after they had filled the airport with aircon units. Thai customs and security were even more tight than in Heathrow, with them taking a few small bottles away from me that Heathrow security had let through without thinking twice about.

The second half of the flight was more packed out. On the first half the only other person in my row was an Irish girl called Emma. After Thailand a loud Australian called Dalas joined us. It turned out Dalas was also a sound engineer and so we got chatting a bit about the shows we had been working on. He gave me his email contacts so when I get a chance I shall drop him a line. The flight was fairly unremarkable. 

 

So finally we arrive over Sydney, half an hour early. Brilliant! Almost home and dry! Of course not! It turns out the wind direction is wrong which means the runway we want to land on has a cross wind and isn’t safe for landing. The only other runway that is big enough to carry our (quite frankly huge) Boeing 747-400 is right near residential houses, so it has a noise restriction, meaning we can’t come into land until 6am. Great. After 24 hours in the air we literarily have to make big circles around Sydney for an hour before we can touch down. Excellent.

 

So to cut a long story short, after queuing to go through customs, and then another line to check your baggage we finally made it, via a bus, back to out accommodation. Absolutely no complaints from here on in. I have a wonderful, spacious apartment all to myself. I will post some pictures in a few days but I really don’t have the energy right now. Davy and I just went for a walk down to Bondi Beach. I can’t explain how wonderful it is down there, especially after spending so long cooped up on a plane. Fortunately I don’t have too, as I took my camera down there so you can see for yourself. We walked along the coastal path for about 4 kilometres, then took a bus back to the harbour where The Sydney Opera House is. Or shall I say, where work is. How beautiful is this?

I just got home and I am in the middle of trying to activate possibly the most complicated mobile service in the world. Seriously! Here, you don’t just top up and get minutes, you get three different kinds of minutes, which all come with their own long and complicated T’s & C’s! I was on the phone to this guy for 15 minutes as he read them out to me. Maybe it is just because I am still 9 time zones to the left, and it feels like it should be 9:30am this morning, except I haven’t slept a wink for all the hours it was supposed to be nighttime. I don’t know, but I didn’t understand a word of it. Now it is activated I am desperately trying to setup my 100mb of data I get so I can check my email in my flat without having to pay $24 a day. I looked into getting a 3g card but it will cost me $200 to buy the card, plus $30 a month for 2 gig of data. Probably not worth it if I can get a bit of data working on my phone. It is infuriatingly complicated though.

 

Anyway. I am now off to locate some WIFI so I can post up this entry. I am hoping I wont feel quite so groggy tomorrow, seeing as I have a lot of work to do on this show.

 

Plan of action number one: Create a strategy to beat this jetlag!