Arrival
May 12 2005 12:14 AM | Australia
Arrival
Call me Mr. Jet Lag.
My journey to down under began Monday at 1 p.m. I flew from Indianapolis to Chicago to Los Angeles to Auckland to Brisbane. In total, I’ve spent 20 hours in a piece to tin cruising 500mph at 36,000 feet. Many people hate flying because of the fear of crashing. Me,I just hate the hassle. The hassle of boarding, waiting in lines, and being scrunched up like cattle. And I hate small restrooms. The domestic flights were American Airline cattle cars. At least the Qantas flights had more class. I scored three meals and saw several movies. They gave me a snack pack, and a comfort pack that include an eye mask, toothbruish and socks! I got very little sleep on the plane, though, because it was hard to find a comfy position. And ultimately, my luggage got misplaced.
Qantas was gracious, and gave me $100 clothing allowance. I wonder how much new underwear that can buy. The airline located my bag two hours later, but still let me keep the money. What a nice company. No worries, mate.
My first impressions of Australia: Friendly people, nice environment. In many respects, it’s like a mirror image of America. But it’s the positive image, not the evil Mr. Spock with goatee mirror image. Brisbane is a modern city (and a hell of a lot cleaner than Indianapolis) with lots of towering skyscrapers and nice pedestrian access. There’s a beach downtown! The main highway north to the Sunshine coast is a freeway dotted with exits, Shell stations and McDonald’s (although people are driving on the wrong side of the road). Australia has K-Marts and Targets. Since there was very little food in the pantry (grocery day is Thursday), I ordered a pizza (delivery) from Dominoes.
Weather was overcast and it rained a little on my trip from Brisbane.
The house I’m staying in is really nice – and it overlooks a river. It’s located in an upper-class neighborhood (think about a house along Geist Reservoir and you get the picture). I’ll post pictures soon. The windows are open, and all manners of exotic birds (parrots, kookaburros?) are squawking outside. Scoop and Gabby have nothing on these birds. Yowza! Other than that, it’s perfectly quiet out here. No railroad, no cars speeding past, and certainly no greyhounds yapping in the backyard. And the whole place smells like eucalyptus. Stephen tells me there are sharks in the river at dawn and dusk,
Internet access is dialup here at the house, so I gotta either using a WiFi hotspot or bum some bandwidth off the university where Stephen works.
There’s a Starbucks less than a half a mile away, so I might try there.
Call me Mr. Jet Lag.
My journey to down under began Monday at 1 p.m. I flew from Indianapolis to Chicago to Los Angeles to Auckland to Brisbane. In total, I’ve spent 20 hours in a piece to tin cruising 500mph at 36,000 feet. Many people hate flying because of the fear of crashing. Me,I just hate the hassle. The hassle of boarding, waiting in lines, and being scrunched up like cattle. And I hate small restrooms. The domestic flights were American Airline cattle cars. At least the Qantas flights had more class. I scored three meals and saw several movies. They gave me a snack pack, and a comfort pack that include an eye mask, toothbruish and socks! I got very little sleep on the plane, though, because it was hard to find a comfy position. And ultimately, my luggage got misplaced.
Qantas was gracious, and gave me $100 clothing allowance. I wonder how much new underwear that can buy. The airline located my bag two hours later, but still let me keep the money. What a nice company. No worries, mate.
My first impressions of Australia: Friendly people, nice environment. In many respects, it’s like a mirror image of America. But it’s the positive image, not the evil Mr. Spock with goatee mirror image. Brisbane is a modern city (and a hell of a lot cleaner than Indianapolis) with lots of towering skyscrapers and nice pedestrian access. There’s a beach downtown! The main highway north to the Sunshine coast is a freeway dotted with exits, Shell stations and McDonald’s (although people are driving on the wrong side of the road). Australia has K-Marts and Targets. Since there was very little food in the pantry (grocery day is Thursday), I ordered a pizza (delivery) from Dominoes.
Weather was overcast and it rained a little on my trip from Brisbane.
The house I’m staying in is really nice – and it overlooks a river. It’s located in an upper-class neighborhood (think about a house along Geist Reservoir and you get the picture). I’ll post pictures soon. The windows are open, and all manners of exotic birds (parrots, kookaburros?) are squawking outside. Scoop and Gabby have nothing on these birds. Yowza! Other than that, it’s perfectly quiet out here. No railroad, no cars speeding past, and certainly no greyhounds yapping in the backyard. And the whole place smells like eucalyptus. Stephen tells me there are sharks in the river at dawn and dusk,
Internet access is dialup here at the house, so I gotta either using a WiFi hotspot or bum some bandwidth off the university where Stephen works.
There’s a Starbucks less than a half a mile away, so I might try there.