Friday, September 11, 2009

The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sages steer by

The day started well enough. Woke up before the alarm, to warmth and hugs. Maybe the nervousness before an 11 hour flight stirred something in me, butterflies in the stomach and all that, and woke me, or maybe it was just the fact that I usually get up at 0545 and now I woke up at 0635. Some internal clock going off. "Wakey wakey! Rise and shine! I've got a nice cuttlefish for you when you wake up!"

I wasn't pushing up the daisies though, nor bereft of life. Not even tired, really. Excited. On the move. Being the control freak that I am, lists of what to pack and what to get done were completed weeks ago. Started laying stuff out in neat piles on the living room table during the weekend. Packed most things last night.

And then off to the airport. Mah Girl walked me to the train station, which is ten minutes from our apartment, and then I rode a train from there all the way to the airport. No changing at Centralen, no lugging of luggage from one end of the station to the other. Sweet.

Arrived at Arlanda with three hours to kill. Scratch that. Four hours. Why? My flight to Kuala Lumpur is delayed. Already. By an hour. Not a good start of the journey proper.

Then problems at check-in, something with the ticket that said I was going to KL and KL only. I spotted it when she tagged by back as "ARL to KLU", not "ARL to AKL via KLU". She looked a bit embarrased, and then spent ten minutes trying to convince whatever evil system she was working in that yes, I was supposed to go to Auckland. Airport voodoo was performed and the system acquiesced.

Now I'm at a café in the airport, having consumed a surprisingly moist piece of carrot cake (from a distance it looked like a brick, but it was still the most appetizing thing they had), tapping away. The wifi here is ridiculously expensive, so I'm writing everything I plan to post/send ahead of time.

A little more than two and a half hours to lift-off. The butterflies in my stomach have settled down. Or maybe they're just smothered under the carrot cake...

2 comments:

Joel said...

I'm sorry you're not having much luck getting started at the airport. Hope it clears up soon.

Although that is a brilliant idea; write out everything that's going to happen on the trip as if you've already done it and post it now. Then you write about what really happened after you get back.

It's like you will have become a Time Lord...or something.

beardonaut said...

It cleared up. Things are fine now that I've arrived. Suffering from jetlag though.

And I should do that. Hopefully I can find the energy today or tomorrow, if the jetlag doesn't keep me scatter-brained.