Flight Tonight

Big week, lots of work, finished it off yesterday at a dodgy internet cafe in Brisbane after staying up until 4am that morning struggling to the finish line.

The most interesting part of my week thus far has centred on a number of relatives coming over for my cousin Alison's wedding. Mabs and Gav came up on Thursday night so I gave them my bed and slept on the couch.

On Friday my sister came up from Canberra and with my other cousins we all went to Safi for dinner and managed to get a private room down the back. I successfully managed to pay for the dinner, having owed a lot of them meals for a very long time.

My funky cousin Alex went to get booze from the nearest pub and was asked whether hew was off to an 80s party because he was wearing a biker style black jacket with tight jeans.

After that we went to Hotel Cremorne. Minskys wasn't open yet so we played a few games of pool. I was doing really well to my surprise (unlike other people, I get worse when I'm drunk) so much so that me sister asked how I got so good. I gave her a look and reminded her that our brother Damian taught us all those years ago.

Then Minskys opened and we spent quite a while there drinking and singing along to the piano man until he took a break. My cousin Dennis wanted to do Jager bombs but apparently they don't serve them up there any more so we went downstairs to the sports pub only to find out they were out of Jager. We ended up leaving at around 2am because we couldn't be bothered waiting until the piano man came back for his second set.

The next morning Mabs, Gav and I walked down to Kirribilli Markets for breakfast where we met Rach and Anton, who were staying at The Vibe Hotel in Milsons Point. Returned to get ready for the ceremony, which was at the Botanical Gardens.

Gav drove but we couldn't find a park nearby so we had to walk quite a convoluted route to Palm House, the venue. Palm House ended up being a heritage hothouse and not only were there not enough chairs, it was uncomfortably warm inside despite the two large fans inside. Most of the young folk hung around outside until the bride arrived, about 45 mins after the scheduled start, which meant poor Ryan was inside sweating for almost an hour!

It was a short ceremony, thankfully, made funny by the personal vows, Ali's being "I vow never to question why Ryan wants to be Lou Reed". Said congrats to the couple and then I headed off back home to attempt to finish work while the others hung around. Apparently I missed the extended family photos, which is really just my punishment for putting work over family.

Met back at WatersEdge for the reception, which was quite a fun affair. My uncle's father-of-the-bride speech was embarrassingly long and overdrawn, saying nothing, but Ryan's was quite entertaining, even though I believe he was pretty drunk by then.

It was a nice venue and Ali and Ryan are well-suited and everything looked pretty but I couldn't help feeling a lot of it was style over substance, like she had thrown a crapload of money at the wedding thinking that would make it awesome without actually thinking about how hot it might be in the Palm House, or how to control uncle Beng, who started the yum seng (Chinese cheers) at our table when things were a bit quiet, for example. My thoughts.

Yesterday morning Mabs and Gav left and I was finally able to finish packing for Japan, which took slightly longer than I thought it would and thus started a chain of events that cost me a lot of money.

I was supposed to leave the house at 10:30am (flight was at 12:05pm so it gave me 30 mins buffer in case the trains screwed up). Instead I left at 10:45am and that 15 mins meant I missed two trains and the connection. It brought me to Sydney Airport at 11:35am, cutting it very, very fine indeed. So I sprinted (yes, it has been known to happen) to the check-in kiosk but it wouldn't let me check-in so I had to line up for a counter and by the time I got to the front my flight was closed.

Got reprimanded by the counter supervisor "you should have come here earlier" but I must have given her a withering look, like WELL DUH, so she shut up and pointed me to the sales desk where I had to pay $44 to transfer to the next flight.

Having worked until 4am that morning (after coming home from the wedding) I was incredibly tired but I had an hour to kill before I could snooze on the plane so I bought myself a $9 juice with energy boosters in it and then wandered around the shops. I bought a new backpack (farewelling my black Jag, which I've had since Panama 2004), which was $60, then proceeded to spend the next 20 mins transferring all my stuff from the old to the new. I had to give the old bag to the attendant at the service desk for fear of looking suspicious by disposing of my old bag in the bin. I maintain I would not have bought the drink nor the bag had I boarded my original flight.

The WORST part was that as I was wandering around, Qantas keep calling for this guy who hadn't turned up on my original flight, which meant they would have left 15 mins late anyway. Argh! Why didn't they just let me on?!?!

So I reached Brisbane intact (I LOVE my new Bose noise-cancelling headphones - cuts out 99% of the flight's 'dull roar'). First stop, a dodgy internet cafe to finish my work, which was successful so I can relax for two weeks now. I was unable to secure a sitting at the Stamford Plaza's high tea so I went to T-licious at Southbank, which I remembered from my previous trip to Brisbane. The owner was shutting up (it was about 4:20pm and the store was supposed to close at 4pm) but must have seen how desperate I was for a cup of tea so said "one more".

Hung around Southbank untill Skippy got back from Toowoomba, then I met her new half, Markus, and we ate dinner at a Greek Restaurant in West End whose name escapes me.

This morning I headed into the city on the Citycat (ferry) to get some last minute things, like an electrical adaptor, and change money. I'm now waiting to see whether my coffee meeting will go ahead, having not heard from him yet...

Tonight I fly to Japan via Singapore. Not sure how often I will get internet access or whether I'll have the time to blog so it may be a long time between drinks. Until then, keep well.