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The eagle has landed

Tuesday 10 March 2009
Australia

On my way to Australia!

The rain in Singapore has had a lot of effects. As you can read from my previous post, it is not pleasant to go outside. But if the sun does not show, the temperature drops to a nice 20 – 25 degrees level.

Another interesting thing (and this is a worldwide effect): you will get traffic jams. And that’s not what you want to end up in when you are trying to get to your plane. Well I did… This nice 4 lane road from my Singapore hotel to the airport was packed, because of 2 stupid accidents (nobody got hurt, just a lot of bumps and scratches on the cars). I got to the check-in-desk just in time, but the pilots didn’t…. So there we were all waiting for our “drivers”. Delay: 45 minutes. But they were not the only pilots stuck in traffic, so several flights had severe delays because of these 2 small incidents.

We took off with a delay of just over 1 hour. The first 2 hours we had all sorts of bad weather in the area; the plane had to make several detours/route changes to stay away from the lightning. And we saw loads of flashes all around. Nice to look at, especially when you know you’re not even close to these bad boys. The captain tried to make up for the loss of time, but he couldn’t. So after a 7 hour flight, we arrived just over 1 hour later than planned in Brisbane.

But who cares? Well, not me! I am “on the island” of “no worries mate” and Kangaroos.

First impressions of Brisbane: the temperature is good (25 degrees), it’s very cloudy and windy and they expect rain for the next few days. We travelled from the airport to the hotel, which is in the center of town, in the timeframe that everybody goes to work. I expected a lot of traffic; but nothing like that.

The hotel is not very inspiring. When I look outside (I am on the 14th floor) I see…

The room itself is big and clean, so it will do for the next few days.

I have done my homework: informed CASA that I am now in Australia (So please get my flying license organized and give me my security card. A bit more on the frustration related to that in a future post.), I have browsed through the stack of hotel vouchers that were waiting for me when I arrived here and my blog is up to date again. Time to unpack my suitcase, take a short nap (my internal clock is totally messed up now…) and then explore the neighborhood.

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