Thursday and later

I was up fairly early and on my way. The taxi driver said it would not cost much more to go to the airport compared with going to the central station and catching the train. Obviously he had a vested interst in this but I decided that I didn't want the hassle of unloading, dragging my luggage around the station and waiting, even if only for 15 minutes or so.

It cost only about $5 more going direct and I only had a short distance to check in once we arrived.

Once through the formalities I wandered around the duty free shops. The first one that sold alcohol didn't have the drinks I wanted but I found a second one that did. I had just paid for my stuff when I noticed that passengers to Australia needed to be escorted to the plane (security reasons) and had to push them as I was running out of time. As it was there were still a dozen or so people in the Bridge when I joined the end of the queue but I was one of the last to board.

The flight home was uneventful. I watched the latest Pirates Movie, had a meal and so forth. There wasn't enough time after that to see another long movie (eg X men) so I watched a shorter animated film.

I have had only 11 days at home and am flying out on the second Mensa trip today. I have had 6 games of golf over this period so only 1 full week of work. I have not been too busy to be honest, other than a workshop on Tuesday.  It has been a bit hard to get back into "work mode".

On Friday I tried to select my seats for this trip and found that I could do so for the British Air operated flights (my Ticket is from  BA) but not for the Qantas legs. When I rang Qantas, I was asked why I was leaving at 11:55  when the 3-30 flight would connect in Singapore with 2 hours in transit. I was sure my original itinerary had this short transit but somewhere in the booking it got switched and I didn't check. There was a $88 fee to change flights but it was arranged yesterday.

My attitude is: If somebody offered to pay me $88 to sit in an airport for 3 1/2 hours, I wouldn't do it, so paying not to do it is logically equivalent.