mockoblog

Even the aircon at night in Sydney is musty.

Funny. They have free net in this airport so I can use a pc and post this. But the wireless networks available here, including Sydney Airoprt’s one, don’t seem to like my Nokia, though they apear to be free, thus I cannot sent white I wrote between NZ and Australia. I’ll try a bit more, but time is short due to a two hour delay, I’ll have to board soo and I’m not looking forward to another 15 hours in flight. Not funny was this: I saw my flight listed at gate 57 and I procedeed, then, when I got there, they changed it to gate 10 – this is miles away but I got there.

I’d better post this.

I didn’t think I’d be still in my lovely town. There is an ‘engineering’ issue with our craft and we are the only ones left in this terminal. The only but not the few. There are a few hundreds of us. Among them I think I recognized Ashika, a former work mate from Fiji. Since she doesn’t seem to recognize me, I might be wrong. So I don’t approach her. If she’s the real Ashika, just as well. A few years ago, when I was producing a TV ad for an a brand of icecream, I used her for the voice over and what had to be a inviting ‘icecream’ turned out to sound more like a languid ‘I scream’. So now I’m still at anchor. Long ago I exhausted all the duty free stores that are still open on a Sunday night when there’s only one plane to leave (this airport is pretty much in Christchurch itself, not miles away, so flights are not scheduled at night). With my last ten NZ bucks all I could by was an RTD. For those of you who may not be from this place, the abreviation means: Ready To Drink. It’s a pre-mixed alcohol and soft stuff, say vodka and coke or gin and tonic and it comes in bear-sized bottles. They terrible for young people, mainly for girls who get hooked into drinking by these sweet juice-like poison. I had one: Ice Smirnoff. We had another announcement that the delay is still unknown. People are calling home. A lady wearing gold with a golden laptop says to her golden Blackberry: ‘the cruise ship is having a bad day’. I check the toilets. Over used by now, they are getting drier and dirtier. The fact that they are few and far in between doesn’t help. We are nearly one and a half hours late and no news about any sort of boarding. I have about four hours in Sydney before my connecting flight to Dubai and soon I’ll be thinking that I have to cut it very finely. On the one hand, who wants to fly in a plane that had just been kind of broken? On the other hand, I assume if the captain says ‘yep!’ he knows all’s good to go. But that moment has not been announced yet. I’d better send this and give my phone battery a real. I forgot to mention that I have no travel insurance. But if it’s the airline’s fault, so they have to sort it out. Or have they?

Some kids saw they were trying to fix the front wheels

then a guy said they are waiting – drama! – for a part to arrive from Auckland in about three hours, than to be fitted in 15, minutes. In that case, we’ll leave here after I should depart from Sydney…

I speak with one of the Emirates staff and she can only guarantee that she doesn’t know much….

I try to make arrangements to leave tomorrow…

More drama: now we’re boarding in ten minutes! How did the wheel fix itself?

The 1st aircraft on my journey. I’m in Christchurch airport minutes from departure. I had checked in online all the way to Europe, so I didn’t have to wait at all. My main luggage is going, hopefully, straight to Vienna and I have all the boarding passes till there. After boarding this Emirates Boeing 777 I’ll be losing my cell and data connection, so I have to find ways of posting somehow wherever I am. Good luck and a safe trip to me!

This is the guy who’s writing this stuff, minutes from leaving New Zealand.

See you later and don’t forget to follow my trip with your mates!