Antipodal Adventures
Here
Saturday 30th November 2013
Yes! We made it! We are actually here! At this point I was going to include a cheesy upside down picture of us for giggles, but frankly our jet-lagged faces would have caused serious emotional and physical damage to you, not to mention the camera.
So, after we took refuge in the safe haven of Singapore Air, we hunkered down for our first 12 hour flight. Several films and thousands of bags of peanuts later we arrived, bleary-eyed, into a ridiculously sunny morning in Singapore. We met a friend of Jan's there who was on holiday and kindly took a day out of his own sightseeing to escort us around town. We caught the train into town and walked around the harbour area where there is a giant three-tower hotel with what looks like a large boat atop of it.
Leaving #2
Thursday 28th November 2013
I am not a fan of flying. I used to be terrified. Now I am more relaxed and can get on a plane without practicing a bunch of rituals in my head to prevent the plane going down, or checking I have a working lifejacket. But after our last week in England was over, I was positively running on to the plane and begging it to take off. Read on to discover why...
At the end of the last post, we were innocently heading into our last week here. We saw off Jan's mum and dad on Monday morning (sob-fest as previously predicted) and Tuesday saw me running around London amending, cancelling and updating accounts and such. Wednesday was my last day of work and on Thursday I went down to my parents' house to spend a few days with them. On Saturday my dad sang in his male voice choir with a military charity, so I was happy to see him perform for one last time before heading off.
On Sunday I brought my parents back to London - something they will no doubt regret forever, as it was less a poignant-last-few-days-with-beloved-daughter and more a last-few-days-with-a-screaming-harpy-ball-of-stress-and-insanity. We started well enough with a lovely Sunday lunch with some friends. Then we trotted back home and realised we essentially had a whole house to go through and split into "container", "suitcase", "parents" and "dump" categories. Simple, when in your head you don't have that much stuff. Not so simple when stuff keeps bloody appearing out of drawers and cupboards and goodness only knows where and you are still in the first room you started on hours ago. After eons of sorting, compiling and dumping crap on innocent friends we retired, dusty and forlorn, to bed.
Leaving #1
Sunday 17th November 2013
It's been a while since the last post, because FINALLY things are happening here*! But given that I had to spend several hundred pounds on repairs to my work machine after I accidentally poured a glass of liquid** over it, I figured I'd better stay away from the laptop until I got my uncontrollable sobbing outbursts in order, to protect it from snot-related damage.
So, first things first, to drag the previous analogy kicking and screaming into this post, Australia has decided it will date us! Yay! Now we just have to decide what to wear and how to have our hair! (Only I have no summer clothes and Jan is in the middle of Movember, so we will definitely NOT be making a good impression.)
Hot on the heels of our visa approval, we were finally able to book our flights. Normal people of course would book flights based on sensible things like timing and cost and luggage allowance. We booked ours on the basis that Jan wanted a go on the new double decker planes that have just come out, which we since discovered have a crappy luggage allowance, so now we have some serious packing decisions to make (Jan refuses to wear his parachute rig on the plane, so it looks like I will have to wear all my clothes at once Joey-from-Friends-style to make room for it). But hey ho, our official leaving date is 26 November, when we take to the skies for the day, then stop at Singapore on the Wednesday, arriving in Sydney on the Thursday morning. We also have details for our fancy serviced apartment - in Waterloo, nonetheless! It is paid for by the company for one month, after which it is highly possible we will be sleeping on the beach.
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Teenage Kicks
Friday 1st November 2013
If you have ever idly dreamed about how much simpler things were when you were a teenager, or how how simple and innocent your first love was, and wished you were back there - DON'T. Going through the visa process has been somewhat like that unrequited, head-over-heels, crazy first love we all went through. You spend ages dreaming about what it would be like if it came true, you start planning in your head for the eventual realisation of said love, you start bargaining with your chosen deity* that if only - if only - this happens you will do whatever is required of you. Then you spend a lot of time and effort concocting just the right form of words that must surely sway the mind of your True Love (to be sent in a letter/text/Valentine's/voice message/dating website/whatever teens do these days) and send it off and hold your breath. And wait. And wait and wait and wait. And sneakily check whatever medium you have used to send the message (is your phone still connected? Still receiving calls/texts? Has your email suddenly broken/started putting all emails in the spam folder? WHY IS IT ALL WORKING FINE, DAMMIT!). And still nothing arrives. And now you are desperate! Why, oh why, haven't you heard anything? What does it mean? Did they get the message? Read it? Are thinking about just the right response? Do they hate you and have dedicated themselves to ignoring you for the rest of their lives? WHAT?!?!
So every day, we keep on checking our emails (including the spam folder), we keep on checking the immigration website and we keep on keeping our fingers crossed that sooner or later a message will come to say ... Australia loves us! And we can go on our first date! <3 <3 <3
*or fate, destiny and chemical chance, if you don't have a deity to call God.