Monday 23 March -1600
As usual with long haul flights, my wife and the trusty old dog dropped me at Tullamarine with the usual undignified fight for a parking space outside the terminal - I win a number of these battles, probably due to the large bull bar on the front of my 05 patrol and my aggressive manner against people who don’t possess indicators in their cars. It surprises me that even 07 model Commodores have been sold without indicators – I would have thought there was a law against this…
Saying a quick goodbye, I raced into the terminal and joined the First Class check in behind most of the McLaren race team managers – if I was a F1 nut, I would have been in heaven at this point, however all I was concerned with was the economy class line extending to a vanishing point far on the horizon and thinking to myself there was little chance of a blocked seat next to me. My only hope at this point was that a malnourished jockey would be sitting next to me for the flight to Singapore.
As I handed over my passport, FF Card and paper ticket, I casually asked the wonderful Qantas lady – “what’s the chance of blocking the seat out next to me?” I did feel a certain level of concern for her at this point, no person could laugh that hard without risking some sort of internal hemorrhage. Forcing back the tears, she managed to string a coherent sentence together – “what do you think?” The joys of flying the day after a major international sporting event in town…
I wandered through immigration pausing only when the line was held up in front of me by a family of 5 with only 4 passports – Murphy’s law at work as the other lines 6 people deep were streaming through like there was a prize to be had on the other side. At this stage I should point out that at some time, most probably a red eye flight out of Perth, I must have passed out due to excessive water intake (I sometimes wish they would leave the water out of Bourbon and Coke to avoid this problem) and a biometric signaling device was surgically implanted in me. This device sets off a small alarm at the desk of the bomb squad naz_s at airports world wide and I am singled out of the crowd for inspection- this is the only plausible explanation I can find for being checked every time I go through security.
Funnily enough, the bomb squad naz_s (BSN) found no trace of explosives on me or in my trusty old laptop bag and let me pass. The look on the face of my personal BSN said it all though – “We’ll get youse catched if youse carry explodings on them plane. We nose that if youse goes on them holidays every week likes youse fullas do, youse must been up to no good”. I smiled and headed toward the Qantas club with a quick stop at the Virgin book shop to find a riveting novel to keep me amused on the flight. I chose one about a hijacking and eventual crash of a long haul flight…
Not wanting a repeat of the hysterics at check in, I asked the lovely Qantas lady if there was a chance of blocking the seat next to me on the Singapore to Frankfurt leg of my journey. This was done without a hitch – I was moved from the bulkhead window to the row behind with no one in the middle seat.
The Qantas club first class lounge was quiet which truly surprised me – there were F1 race team members in every nook and cranny – McLaren, Honda, Toyota – the one team that stood out not being there was Ferrari – maybe after their win the day before, the short hop up to Asia for the next F1 would be done in a G3 or similar – a red one with a horse painted on the tail…
I enjoyed a preflight drink or two – ice cold Heineken and enjoyed the ambience of the first class lounge…………………………………………..NOT (Borat joke). I shouldn’t complain, it doesn’t cost me anything except my loyalty to Qantas and it is far better than sitting out in the terminal. As a point of interest, I am presently sitting at a restaurant table opposite gate 3A at Arlanda Airport with a view of the nearly fogged in runway – see pictures – and the area is nice with a good view. There are no One World lounges in this part of the airport. I must research why Qantas went One World instead of Star Alliance and punch the person who made that decision in the nose…
Finally after a half hour delay (due to the late arrival of the outbound flight crew – yeah right) we boarded the aircraft. Just my luck a couple of young blokes the size of front row rugby players were sitting in the other two seats. Oh well, there was only eight or so hours of this so grin and bear the squish Mr! An uneventful flight, the boys next to me were courteous and quiet (nervous - neither had been out of OZ before and were heading to London to start their big OE). The flight crew managed to catch up twenty five minutes of the thirty minutes lost due to the inconsiderate late flight crew (!) and we landed in Singapore nearly on time.
A quick trot down the travelators took me to the duty free area at Changi, where I stocked up on my favorite deodorant Aramis. At less than quarter of the price of David Jones, it made for good buying. A word of caution for buyers here – be careful of allowances for carrying into Europe – I had to check the aerosol deodorants as luggage in Frankfurt as I was over the new EU limits. If you are tight between flights, you may not get this luxury and end up binning your duty free.
Armed with a bag of deodorant, a laptop bag trailing behind me and a boarding pass clenched firmly between my teeth, I headed up the escalator and into the Qantas first class lounge for an hour or so of checking emails and winding down after the flight from OZ. A friend mucked about with the power settings on my laptop a while ago and now my wireless internet seems more powerful than a beam from Captain Kirks Phazer Thanks to a wireless network my computer found and connected to (I think it was Malaysian Airlines lounge), I was quickly surfing the net a blinding speeds at no cost to me. I wonder why Qantas doesn’t go wireless in the lounges…
Fed, watered and relaxed, my flight was called and I wandered at a leisurely pace to my aircraft and boarded immediately. We pushed off on time and headed towards Frankfurt. For the first time in my life, I took a sleeping pill. It worked – it worked good – I awoke about 8 hours after leaving Singapore only due to my iPod headphones needed untangling from around my neck – these are Sennheiser active noise canceling headphones – I don’t know how they compare to the likes of BOSE for quality but these are light and very comfortable – I can lay on my side with the headphones on and not end up with a crook neck and a dead ear – they are also a $150 or so cheaper than the BOSE.
