My watch says 130 am.. The clock on the wall says 10:30pm. I am at LAX. I still have 15 hours of flying ahead of me. I am tired.
However, I do have to say that Quantas is awesome. My New York to LA flight was booked through Quantas but was run out of the American Airlines terminal. I don't know what the plane was labeled on the outside but on the inside it was 100% Quantas. It was almost like I stepped into a little flying piece of Australia right at JFK. The flight attendants all had Australian accents, the little individual tv screens with a large selection of free ondemand movies, tv shows, music and even video games all included a number of Australian produced options, AND the safety instructions (which by the way, were by-far the best and bluntest I have ever seen) referred to our mode of transportation as an "aeroplane". Adios New York.
I left New York at 7pm Wednesday (New York time) and will arrive in Melbourne at 7 am Friday (Melbourne time). I'm just skipping Thursday this week.
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According to the watch that is still set to EST it is 9:10 am... but I look out the window of the "aeroplane" and it is pitch black dark out. It's now been dark for almost 12 hours for me. And it will continue to be dark for at least another 5 or 6. Talk about a long night!
Speaking of looking out the window and night time... there are an enormous amount of stars visible out here in the middle of the pacific ocean. And since you can't see ocean below or anything but the stars for that matter, it feels like just maybe if I turn on my overactive imagination I could be flying around on a really crowded space shuttle in space.
I am still a big fan of Quantas but I happen to be in a seat where the little tv is not working. It is ironic that after so many months of being so busy preparing and packing and moving and buying and selling, that I am finally trapped for 14 hours in front of a device intended for movie and tv watching and it doesn't work. Oh well. I got one movie in on the first flight.
I am sitting next to an Australian couple who are probably in their early 60s. They are returning from a 2 month trip to the US and Canada. It was their first visit to North America. They mentioned having stopped in Toronto, New York, DC, the Florida Keys, Kennedy Space Center (this was their favorite), San Fransisco, San Diego, LA... That is a lot to do in 2 months. And its funny how in the US, we would think all those places are so far away from one another that they don't seem to fit together in one vacation. But they are probably thinking the same about my plans to traverse all over their continent. Because when you travel so far and the likelihood of coming back is low, you want to see as much as possible.
We get 2 full meals on this flight (which means I ate a 2nd dinner at what was to me 4am and will be eating breakfast when my EST set watch will say about 3 pm. To hold us over for 9 or 10 hours between these meals they have given us all a bag with several snacks and a bottle of water... i guess so that they don't have to keep pushing the cart down the isle and waking up all the sleeping passengers. Inside this bag is a little package of what I will describe as a dried fruit mix. There are raisins and dried bananas and several other unidentifiable chunks of orange and yellow with sugar on them. The Australian man next to me was eating these and held one out and said to me "It's a wichigrub." To which I answered, "huh?" He said, "The aborigines eat them. They pick them out of logs. I don't know what you call them in America but like a little grub." Sooo I am hoping he means his dried fruit was shaped like this "wichigrub". I have since inspected my little bag and have come to the conclusion that the fruit or candy (or grubs) that are inside are not intended to be shaped like any animal or bugs like an animal cracker or fruit snack might be so I am thoroughly confused as to what this conversation was all about. In any case, I am going to opt for the applesauce oatmeal cookies over this "wichigrub" snack.
By the end of flight my new friends had invited me to come visit them and the penguins that live near them on Philip Island -- about 2 hours southeast of Melbourne. Who knew there were penguins here!
Friday, August 8, 2008
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