mockoblog

I left the United Emirates in the morning and I am heading to an Europe covered in snow at a time when more snow is forecast, according to the international edition of the NY Times have. We’ll be flying over or close to countries like Qatar, Bahrein, Syria, Turkey, Romania (my final destination), Hungary and we’ll land in Austria. It’s another Boeing 777, the first plane with a flew empty seats I remember to have been in for many, many years. But let’s interrupt this boring narration and enjoy the 50 grams of my favourite scotch (not that I have many opportunities to drink it) – 12 years old, single malt, Glenfiddich. Let’s enjoy it with a snack of mini crackers, because economy class ain’t got breakfast during this flight. There will be lunch served before arriving in Vienna, though. I had pre-ordered sea food on the Emirates’ website, which is particularly good with their booking management, allowing you to chose your seats on the principle of ‘first in, first served’ – that’s how I managed to keep my feet relatively extended in my twenty hours of flying so far.
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I saw nothing of Dubai. Just a few tall buildings surrounded by mist, as I tried in vain to capture them from the terminal, through glass, with the minimal true zoom this cell phone camera has – needles to say, all the pictures from this trip are taken with my Nokia, a smartphone I came to love. And there is no sponsorship from that brand or, as a matter of fact, from anyone else for my travel or my mocko blog. The only lucrative aspect of it all is that if you, readers, go in the numbers you are scoring so far and read my stuff, AdSense, who have some cheap advertising on my page, may give the website 1 American cent a week. That’s no joke.
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A few hours later, before we start descending for Vienna and I’ll have to turn this mobile of: I’ve just passed places in Romania where I’m gonna be later today (Bucharest) or in a couple of days (Transilvania and the Carpathian Mountains). I’m listening to Dire Straights loud in the headphones. Romania used to be my country. I was born, educated and went to the army there, among other things. I didn’t see much snow, except for the mountains, but the forecast is not great for tonight, when I arrive, hopefully, from Vienna. Now we are in or rather over Hungary, approaching Budapest. This flight took me close to four capitals starting with the letter B. One of them was Baghdad.
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In Vienna my itinerary with Emirates finishes. I am quite curious to find out if some delays and other little events have not interfered with my suitcase’s itinerary. If all’s good, we should reunite some twenty thousand miles since we parted.
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The captain says it’s OK in Vienna now but there will be snow showers and gusts later in the day, when I’m flying a smaller jet. We’ll see. Bye for now, phone must be over.
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(pic boeing snow)
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Landed OK in Vienna but it,s snow and slit here, will turn in ice I guess later, when the sun sets. For the moment we’re taxing towards the terminal building. I’m back in Europe after seven years and I swapped my lovely Southern summer for this.

Huge airport and modern this Dubai one is. We landed after five I’m the morning and it took almost an hour to go through the security check. This is for passengers in transit, who had been checked at least somewhat at the origin. Yet late but safe is better than the opposite, I suppose. There is wireless net for free in here and notebook charging stations at every gate. I’m adding up some juice to my E71 as I’m writing this. I managed to find the only two restaurants that sell beer in here and it is amazing they have them. It makes good business sense. In a country where most don’t or shouldn’t do any sort of drinking, it seems ok (not to me) to pay USD11 for a pint of Heiniken. I didn’t. I bought a bottle of pretty good orange juice for USD1. I met a lady from NZ who was travelling to Cape Town and we almost browsed some duty free shops before she boarded for South Africa. There isn’t much to buy unless you are a smoker or a tight millionaire. And I presume many of the passengers who use this airport are a bit of both. I had a wee mishap with my gate, again. When I landed, the Vienna flight was listed at gate 210. I want there and it’s not close and there are very few departure displays. At that gate I saw that my flight had become the only one not listed with any gate at all.

For an hour or so, no gate, then 229, which is a few good minutes towards the Eastern end of this terminal. I gotta go now, I have a few Dirhams to spend and I don’ttp know on what.

Sydney. On the bridge between the terminal and the belly of the beast. Hot at 10 PM here.

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In flight for nearly five hours about nine hours yet to go to Dubai. Nothing special.
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Four and a half hours to Dubai. There must be a decent turbulence out there, this biggest passenger aircraft finds it bumpy enough and I’m seated in the middle, by the wings, where there should be less movement. Sometimes you can see how elastic this frame is: the ceiling of the lower cabin becomes wavy and it dances a couple of inches in relation to stand-alone structures like the toilet blocks. It is a big boat. Ten seats per row, like in a jumbo, but there’s another level on top. A fat and very round ship. In the cargo bay underneath people can walk without bending down and where I am the ceiling is at about seven feet. I might be wrong but I can’t be bother standing to measure in this rough. The navigation map is not working on our interactive displays and the three outside cameras can’t show much as it’s pitch dark, but fro, the minimal flight info I believe I’m highest in the sky I’ve ever been now at 39,788 feet. Ground speed is 587 mph, I guess we’re doing a mile in about 7 seconds. We must have crossed the Equator a while ago and are just a bit more than 2000 miles from Dubai. Shame the map is not working. And there have been a few other (minor) things not quite working to my liking. The beef stake advertised in the menu as ‘tender’ was certainly cooked by Bridgestone: it had the consistency and the qualities of Formula 1 tyre rubber and perhaps the same taste – I couldn’t tell because the knife would rather cut the plastic plate then the stake. On top of this, we were offered drinks only twice in the first ten hours of flight: water and juice, just a mouthful each. Of course, you can use the tiny paper cups in the lavatory, there’s no sign to warn the water there may be just for washing, but it is hard to get it to run cold only an it tastes like it’s been brewing in a tank for ages – luckily the A380 must be a new ship, so I’m cool with this. But not so cool am I with how scarce other drinks are. I don’t do a lot of drinking and flying but surely we could have been offered more that one shot at choosing alcohol. I do understand this aircraft is operated by a Muslim country and I respect anyone’s choice for abstinence. Yet alcohol is available on board, then why not offer it in moderation. Surely two shots of scotch the size of my thumb or even three mini glasses of wine won’t bankrupt Emirates Airlines and won’t agitate some passengers more than the lack of. Maybe I should go and ask, surely they will say ‘yes’. But I’m not this kind of guy. I’m the sort of passenger who won’t recline his seat further back so it doesn’t disturb the person behind. I may just compromise: if a young lady from the cabin crew pops around for any other reason, I will then consider asking for a wee scotch on the rocks. I can’t bloody sleep. It’s been night for over ten hours in this leg of my journey, the lights are off, only half a dozen kids are crying at times and a young Aussie next to me has been asleep since before we departed Sydney (about an hour late).
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Maybe I should mention that last time I travelled that far was seven years ago. I went Christchurch – Sydney (where I had a day) – Bangkok – London – Bucharest – London – Bangkok (where I stopped over) – Sydney – Christchurch. This time my schedule is much tighter. I don’t travel a lot. But the Alien who technically supports the Mockoblog went from NZ to Europe and back twice in the last 12 month: winter and summer.

Now I’m giving this phone’s battery a break because my seat doesn’t have a charger and I’m too shy to ask a neighbor if I could use his.
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Dubai OK, yet to go through customs with another million people, then I should be able to write.

So after all we did take off from Christchurch and we’re now travelling NW over that bit of the Pacific that’s called the Tasman Sea. Funny thing is Abel Tasman discovered the tiny New Zealand but left Australia to Captain Cook. Anyway, so far in this flight I find cool: the toilets, the outside cameras mounted on the craft and, mainly, the leg room in the economy class cabin. I find very un-cool that I yet don’t know, having left two hours late, if I’m gonna catch my next flight.
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One hour to Sydney now. I’m getting a bit optimistic about catching my fly to Dubai but I don’t contemplate rushing through the terminal with no bloody break and jumping straight into a 15, hour flight. What else is cool or not? They have laptop chargers in all seats except for the one in front of me (that’s both cool and un-cool, of course), the fruit basket I had pre-ordered was good, I’m no vegetarian, but at times it’s ok to have a break from fatty meats and rich sauces. Not so good is that the flight attendants, of which Emirates seem to have plenty (and of plenty nationalities), don’t show up unless they must, seem forgetful and there is no spirit of real customer service, as if they are your boss and the do the job just for the money. I guess that’s right anyway. I think there may just be these two in my sector. The plane itself seems ok, as it was to be expected. We now cruise at 36000 feet, which seems damn high and I expect to start descending soon. And if you read this in the near future, that means I have landed in Sydney and found internet there.