Travelogue - Days 13-15 - Wednesday-Friday
A comfortable round of meetings and code-reviews, finishing
up with double-checking all those last-minute things I need
to double-check before walking out the door...Security card,
personal possessions, vpn info, all of that.
Next, off to a bar with Mark, Vasan and Danner. They have
interesting ideas about how to mix drinks in the USA. Heavy
on the spirits, and light on the mixer. I was getting served
what were effectively doubles.
Back to the hotel afterwards, where I totally failed to
pack, and watched TV instead. Eventually slept.
Travelogue - Days 16 and 17 - Saturday through
Monday
Woke up feeling great. Packed, and watched cartoons until
Mark and Anitra came to pick me up. Linked up with some
friends of theirs Paul and Luke (one from Melbourne, one
from NYC....but don't ask me to remember quite which is
which). A good lunch at the Courthouse on Broadway.
Back to SFO then, arriving there at 1:30pm. Said goodbyes to
Mark and Anitra, and got me checked in for the flight.
Waited for hours...the flight was at 5pm. One of the
advantages of checking in early, however, is that you get a
decent seat. With 27 hours of travel in front of me, I
definitely wanted one.
Waited. Flight was late, and there was a gate-change,
necessitating leaving the chair I was in and camping on the
floor by a pillar at the new gate for an hour. Finally we
further
boarded. An elderly Thai gentleman was in my seat, and the
seat next to him was vacant. I attempted to explain that he
was in my seat. Ah...he spoke no english. One of the
cabin-crew came and tried to move him, or get him to show
his boarding pass. He just hung onto the arms of his chair
and yelled and looked frightened (perhaps presuming that
they were going to throw him off the flight for some
reason). Eventually they gave up, and I took the seat beside
him. He then had to squeeze past me every five minutes to go
to the toilet. Joy.
We landed in LA in good order about 7pm. My Thai friend was
plastered against the window, so I didn't get to see
anything of it this time either. I waited until the aircraft
was mostly empty, grabbed my carry-ons and hustled to the
international. Parked myself there for the next 2 and a half
hours.
Boarding was late, but we got off on time. Got the window,
this time (my Thai friend was on this flight also...and went
through the same routine with someone else's seat somewhere
behind me) but the flight path afforded me more or less no
view of LA. I'm still wondering what the city looks like,
and I've now been there twice. Wound up seated next to a
fairly dour elderly couple from Florida. Proceeded to sleep
through all the in-flight films (including a couple I wanted
to see) and woke up just after the sixth and final film
finished.
Then the fun...About an hour before we were due in Aukland,
an emergency system triggered and we were informed that we
were going to require oxygen. By the start of the second
repetition of this message, the cabin crew were moving about
making reassuring hand-motions. The flight-crew cut the
message off before the third repeat. One crewmember filled a
couple of us in quietly. Seems one of the passengers had
tried to have a cigarette in the toilets during the flight.
The smoke detector had triggered and the emergency systems
treated it as 'smoke in cabin'. The crew decided to have him
put off in Aukland, and other airlines were informed of the
incident. (quote: He's going to have to swim
home...nobody will take him now)
A two-hour wait in Aukland, then reboarded about 7:30am,
localtime (Monday, now...we crossed the dateline). Several
hours of flight time got me back to Melbourne (with no
further incidents, thankfully).
The flight got in about a half-hour earlier than
anticipated. Since I have no checked baggage, I was able to
wait (again) until the flight was mostly clear, and still
hit customs and entry well before my fellow rats.
Whew. Home. California seems like some strange sort of
dream....