mockoblog

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

…
In flight for nearly five hours about nine hours yet to go to Dubai. Nothing special.
…
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).
…
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.
…
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.
…
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.

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?