Sayonara Baby #1

When you’re looking for things to write about you tend to notice oddities from the nuanced to the in-your-face, sticks out like dogs’ balls. Let’s enjoy ourselves and consider a few that became obvious including some before we even left New South Wales airspace.

When the Tokyo flight got underway, I plugged the tablet on which I am writing this into the power socket in the CB’s seat and was informed it would take 34 hours and 59 minutes to fully charge. It was half charged to start with. That’s Sydney/Tokyo/Sydney/Tokyo/Sydney and frankly, I don’t have that much available time. Oh yes, I had to plug it into her seat because my power outlet didn’t work. Hopefully, as this is an Airbus A330, everything else works and we won’t lose a door or a wheel as Boeing planes have tended to do recently.

Anyone who has travelled internationally even once will be aware that meals are served at the strangest of times. I’ve had lunch at 9.30am, a full dinner service at 2.00am and today we had lunch at 2.30pm. Now that’s not too bad you’d have to reckon and the food was okay (said no one ever while travelling in gorilla class). We were late leaving Sydney so the timing of lunch was impacted by their having to pump up the tyres or something so I guess they have an excuse. But the cutlery was made of wood. The peasants in Game of Thrones had more efficient eating implements than these. Imagine trying to saw through steak with the stick that was in your ice cream. The old anti-highjacking plastic ones were way better than these.

Here’s one that has zero nuance. We’re shuffling in an endless immigration queue trying to get through Haneda Airport and 4 out of 5 people including everyone under 40 is staring at their phones. Can’t these people wait until they clear the airport before checking their friggin’ Instagram. I guess being disconnected from the cyber world for 10 hours is too much for too many mush-brained sociozombies. I suspect I was better at interpersonal communication than these people even at the time I was having a stroke a year ago. Those of you with superior deductive powers will have concluded from this diatribe that the hotel bar closed just as we arrived. Not to worry. It’s free booze on Azamara and we’re boarding tomorrow. Arrrrgh!