Today: Thursday: 16 December 2010
Arrived in NZ: Monday 13 December 2010 (the plane landed at 23:30...so depends on how you want to see it...)
Racking my brain for the details that was our entire reality a few days ago - for over 24 hours; another world, another lifetime...
Experience is a marvelous teacher! As it turns out, the 100ml containers with LAGs (Liquids, Aerosols and Gels) are only for HAND luggage and one can pack other "normal" containers into checked-in luggage...that wasn't so hard, now was it...to write that out expicitely!? But now we KNOW...
The flight from Johannesburg to Singapore was between 9 and 10 hours...but with each seat (even in economy class) having an individual LCD screen with 80 movies to choose from, as well as series, sport, music and games...one could hardly complain of being bored...or rather complain of lack of entertainment...in terms of audio and visual...environmental, perhaps...since a plane is only that big.
Our stay-over in Singapore before our flight to Auckland was only about 3 hours (this included getting off the previous plane, checking in and boarding the next plane). Singapore airport is huge! or that was my perception at least...it has travelators (as did the airport in Johannesburg), but Singapore also had Skytrains! It was awesome! I felt like I was in an anime movie. The skytrains only travel between different terminals of the airport...it is possible to walk or ride/walk on a travelator, but if you could take the Skytrain...why would you do that!? The waiting area for the boarding gate for the plane only opens about 70 minutes before the plane is to lift-off. So we watched MythBusters on Discovery! How cool is that!? The couches we sat on had speakers on both sides of the arm rests (on the insides)...how very smart! thus the television need not be very hard and you can hear, regardless of whether you are sitting close to or far away from the television set.
The flight from Singapore to Auckland was about of the same duration: between 9 to 10 hours. This time the plane had a tail wind of over 100km/h and exceeded speeds of 1070km/h... :-) Brilliant!
I slept really well on this flight, read a bit (the book I'm reading at the moment is brilliant...We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver) and I met Max, he turned one (1) a couple of days before the flight. I had a lot of fun playing with Max...walking down the aisle, making him laugh and talking to his parents.
The airplanes fascinated me, I'm interested in the field of ergonomics and to "see it in action" and have appreciation for how many iterations and case studies must have gone into the design...The trays have a sort of "sticky" layer (it has to be the type of material, post possibly a type of plastic, it doesn't come off from washing or touching) to ensure that nothing moves - one's glass, plate etc, doesn't move AT ALL. The necessities fit into the tray...mostly made out of square or rectangular shaped items. There are footrests; the overhead compartments have a mirror at exactly the right place so that one can see if there is anything still left in the compartment and works with hydrolics (or from a certain point, one need only push the compartment to a certain point and then it closes "by itself"). The headrests can "fold" slightly, but enough that you can turn your head to the side and without having a spasm in your neck by the time you wake up from your nap. Then the trolley the airhostesses use...brilliant! The amount of food and drink that fit into that seemingly tiny vehicle is almost scary if it weren't so ingenious!
I decided that I'm not particularly fond of the words "Other Passports" at Auckland Airport (but I suppose there is such a queue at all airports, I just haven't experienced it yet...), as this constitutes the "whole world" except people with New Zealand or Australian passports. It was a moving queue, only problem is I only realised by the time we got to the front of the queue that I'd forgotten my ring in the bathroom (why did I take it off when I washed my hands?) and I tragically discovered that slippers (stokies) are not the ideal shoes to run in...yes, I did run, in the airport - to the bathroom...(chuckle). And got back to customs (with my ring) before my parents and brother were finished.
I hope the aircon wasn't working, because if it was, I cringe to think of the humidity and heat when it isn't working...or maybe it was only because I was because I was running? After a (longer) queue at the x-ray machines I got waved off after a question about my Wellingtons (gumboots)... - most of NZ's GDP comes from agriculture and they cannot risk disease coming in from foreign countries - whether they were used or not, answering that I used them at varsity and that they're pink...
And then finally...REUNION!
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