I really don’t like fly­ing when that means hav­ing to sit for close to 24 hours in a plane! But let’s start at the begin­ning. Checked in at Heath­row and everything went smoothly. Abso­lutely no prob­lems. In the plane, a 747, I found out that I had four seats to myself. I then had a look at the movie selec­tion and there were loads of films I hadn’t seen so far, so things just couldn’t have been any bet­ter. I was well into “Blood Dia­mond”, just after the scene, when this old bloke stated that if they ever found oil in Sierra Leone they would all have real prob­lems (which is one of the fun­ni­est movie lines I’ve heard recently), when I real­ized that I had neither a phone num­ber nor an address of my friend in Mel­bourne with me.

That’s when I decided to have another glass of white wine, and believe it or not, things did look bet­ter after that. I watchd another movie and then thought that maybe I should try to get some sleep. If I would be able to kip on the leg to Hongkong, then I’d have to stay awake on the flight to Mel­bourne, where I then would arrive around 8 o’clock in the even­ing. I could just go to bed nor­mally there and I would hardly exper­i­ence any jet lag. Ready to explore the city the next day! It all sounds far too good in the­ory, because I was wide awake as soon as I closed my eyes!

So I watched more movies, while almost every­body around me was snor­ing already, and…had some more wine. When the plane touched down at the air­port in Hongkong I felt a bit hung over, but at least I man­aged to go online and find out where I had to go in Mel­bourne. By the time we were allowed to reboard the plane I was so tired out, that I fell asleep as soon as I hit my seat. I slept through take-off and the first meal, then woke up just in time for the second meal and slept again until we were only about an hour away from Melbourne.

Then it was all a breeze. Get on the shuttle to the city, change into another bus that brought me to just where I needed to go. Met my friend, went out for a couple beers, had a laugh and went to bed around 2 am. Today I haven’t even been out of the apart­ment. I slept for most of the day feel­ing extremely jet lagged, but I’m ready to ven­ture into town tomor­row. I think. I’ll keep you posted!