Babies, First Flight Overseas

2:33
So here I am in the international departure lounge for my first international flight. I’m writing this about 2:33pm. My gate opens at 3:10, with the plane taking off around 3:40.

CJ and I did the duty free store – there was hardly anything. CJ tells me to wait till I see Sydney’s duty free area – much better a selection. That said, I’ve never seen such a big bottle of Baileys or such a big bar of Toblerone in my life.

I’m listening to the Daily Source Code on my iPod. I really like listening to podcasts – they fill time so well, and there is always something interesting to listen to. IT Conversations especially.

If you can’t tell, I’m rambling. I try to blog when I have something interesting to say, but today, I’m blogging for the sake of blogging. An almost-live thought-dump if you like, seeing as I’m not posting this till I get onto some sort of internet connection.

I’ve told a few people that I used to have this recurring dream that I’d be flying to somewhere in the world, and I’d get to the other country, get to customs and I’d forgotten my passport; I’d left it on my desk at home. Of course, that’s not possible, because you need to show your passport before you get into the international departure lounge, but I was pretty scared that I’d forget something pretty important by the time I got to Australia.

I’m pretty excited about getting to Sydney. The flight is just a necessary boredom between here and there, even though I’ve never left New Zealand before; yes, this is the first time in my life.

I hope I can get a bed at wakeup tonight. The place looks pretty trendy from the website, but if I get there about 8pm on a Wednesday night, I’m concerned that they won’t be able to put me up.

. . .

So here I am on the Airbus A320 to Sydney. I don’t know what time it is, because I don’t know what time zone I’m in right now, and I my cellphone is off. (EDIT: When I wrote this, I didn’t think to look at the time on my laptop.) I’m in row 5 behind, the 2nd row from the front of the main cabin, behind Business Class. I can’t recommend this seat, because the front row of business is equipped with bassinets for baby travel, and there’s three babies traveling with us today. After 3.25 hours of this I can imagine I’ll be all “Argh! SHUT IT OFF SHUT IT OFF!”

It’s lovely above the clouds. I wish I could tell you how high we are.

OK, on goes the podcasts – damn babies.

11:33
So I got into Sydney about 5:30. I say 5:30 because there was a HUGE line at customs. But once we got into Sydney proper, we drove off to the centre of town to the Mercure where CJ was staying. The bellhop at the Mercure gave me bum directions to Wake Up, and I ended up walking around nearly the entire railway station. Man they have some really long pedestrian subways in Sydney; so long infact that in this particular subway there were two buskers who weren’t within earshot of each other.

So eventually after asking some random people where this place was I found it. It’s a really nice place – trendy, and really busy. I’m in a six-share with five other girls.

So I went to wake up’s bar “Side Bar” – a fitting name for a guy who’s a web developer. I ordered the special of the day (Steak & Kidney Pie + a pint – WTF, I hate kidney!) and grabbed a seat with some randoms. Backpackers are friendly people, always ready to strike up a conversation – I guess this is of necessity, as people don’t know anyone, and are looking for people to hang out with. I met two people from the US, one from Denmark and one from France.

Right now I’m lying on my bed typing on the laptop. It’s hard to keep my head up, especially with all the beer I just consumed. I should save this and go to sleep. BTW, I’m typing all this into Word, as there’s no public wifi available from this room.

Actually, there is, but it’s pay wifi, so I went and hunted down a AUD$20 Telstra PhoneAway card. So I’ll post this now and hit the sack.

No photos as yet. Will take photos at the conference tomorrow