I think that it’s fair to say that the time I drink the most orange juice is during international flights; I find it very hard to get comfortable enough to sleep during the flight, so I’m exposed to most of the rounds of juice that go past. Not being able to sleep does mean that I get to browse the movie options — I finally got to watch The Adjustment Bureau, for example, and made a nod to my missed film festival by watching the somewhat depressing but good Bieutiful and the police thriller Dossier K (which I couldn’t remember the name of, and managed to find by looking for “Belgian police thriller Albanian mafia revenge”).
As a side note, I thought that The Green Hornet was interesting, not because it was a good movie (it was okay), but because of the central problem — how do you tell a story where a “supporting” character is basically more interesting, admirable and cooler than the main one? The character Kato is the hardworking orphan who knows martial arts, invents everything, and makes everything; the Green Hornet character is the rich spoiled kid with daddy issues, who decides that they should become vigilantes and bankrolls everything. I wonder whether exposure to the foibles of the wealthy makes “super-rich” a less acceptable super-power now than it was in, say, the ’50s? There was plenty to like in the script (how they handled the female lead, for example), but it felt a little underbaked.
Huh. I think that this blog makes me talk about films.
We were on Singapore Air for most of the flight, and I wondered whether the different colours of dress were based on personal preference, or indicated some sort of Star-Trek-esque hierarchy. As it turns out, it’s a hierarchy thing, though I didn’t notice the different coloured ties on the men.
We worked on finishing packing and tidying the house through the day, then arrived at the airport just after 6pm in order to catch a 8:30pm flight out. (C’s parents gave us a ride out, and stayed with us until it was time to go; Mum & Dad and my youngest sister turned up to say goodbye, and Cath & Dylan popped past on the way to their flight, but I’ve been overseas before, and my sister got restless, so they didn’t stay the whole time.) We then flew to Auckland, worried whether the baggage was checked through (a quick check of the claim tags showed that it was), and then flew 10 hours to Singapore.
We had a shower there, and still had six or seven hours to kill, so we did a bit of exploring, looking at the massive banks of orchids and butterfly room (pictures here, I’ll work out how to use Flickr properly later) and riding the sky train; and then we flew 13 hours to London. An hour in a queue to check our passports and answer questions about our intentions (“How do you know the person whose wedding you are attending?”) and a brief dither about whether we needed to declare two tins of reduced cream (someone asked for the makings of onion dip; we thought about asking, but there wasn’t anyone in the customs room anyway) and then we were disgorged into the main Heathrow terminal.
At this point, I had been up for more than 50 hours, so it was a relief to see C’s brother at the airport. He got us Oyster cards, guided us to the appropriate tube line, and got us to his flat, where we had a cup of tea and a Jammy Dodger (verdict: I prefer Shrewsburies at the moment, but could come around), and distributed the loot we’d been asked to bring across — peanut slabs, milk-bottle lollies, Rugby World Cup tops, etc. We then had a chat, a shower, and crashed on the sofa bed for the night.
So — the beginning of the trip. So far, so good.
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