Maj flies to Sydney

I was lucky enough to manage a super swap this month, thus ensuring me a STELLAR roster! I gave away a Bangalore (totally crappy turnaround) and a 3-day Jakarta (the source of my last belly bug) for an 8 day Bangkok/Sydney trip and the best part of all? My beautiful Mum (known to the family as Maj, as her middle name is Majella) flew down to see me for three days!

The last time I had this trip was February and we did the same thing, so it was lovely to get Mum all to myself for a few days and have some good mother/daughter time.



We flew into Sydney at about 7am and Mum met me at the airport and caught the bus with us to the hotel. She was met with a chorus of "hi Mum!" when she got on and everyone was very interested in our a-typical passenger! We had a different hotel from last time, due to a moth infestation at the Wentworth (and most of Sydney). When we pulled up at the Radisson and filed into a room to collect our room keys and allowances, many of the crew came over and introduced themselves to Mum and asked her how she was and what her plans were. It was lovely to have a good crew for once, capable of talking to people and forming coherent sentences!

So often we fly with people who are so plane-brain that they can't think of anything besides "would you like tea or coffee?" and "I need to replenish my lipstick". Very refreshing indeed.

We went shopping, had a lovely buffet brekky at the hotel (omelettes are AWESOME at this buffet!!), wandered around the Rocks and enjoyed a bit of people watching down at Circular Quay.



On my trip home to Brissie with Jon, Mum packed me up with all my birthday presents, making me promise I wouldn't open them early. A few days before my trip to Sydney, she instructed me to pack them, saying she'd let me open them a week early since she'd be there to supervise! Woo hoo! In they went, carefully packed and ready to be opened. We were into them within half an hour of getting into our room!

A highlight and surprise present that came out of Mum's bag were some paintings from beautiful Stella and Sienna on hard backed canvases. The girls are such little treasures, they're always doing paintings and drawings for me. My walls in Dubai are covered with them, anyone would think I've got children of my own.



We had a lovely dinner with Lauren (like we did in February). This time we ate at a beautiful Moroccan styled restaurant called The Victoria Room. The food was delicious, even though the portions were slightly skimpy! It was dimly lit, making for a very cosy, intimate dinner. We chatted for hours and were almost the last ones to leave.

The three days were over before we knew it and it was time to head to the airport. We posted our postcards across from the hotel and climbed into the school bus and off we went. At the airport, Mum was sent off with a chorus of "bye Mum, have a safe flight!!".

Next stop - Bangkok for a super cheap, super relaxing aromatherapy massage and a good sleep.

I flew back into Dubai and had a few days off to prepare for my next Sydney trip: aka MY BIRTHDAY WEEK!!!

It's been a while....is anyone still out there?

Hi everyone, my apologies for how long it's been since my last post. I've had many adventures and have many of them written and waiting to be posted, but I'm having serious trouble adding any pictures because of the super slowwwwwww internet connection happening here in the bloody desert!

I've put together a little slide show of some of my more recent adventures to tide you over...

Another brick in the wall

Well, after flying back in from Brissie and doing a London trip, it was off to Beijing for the first time for me. I was so excited about the prospect of seeing the Great Wall of China that I couldn't sleep before the flight!

Not to worry, we all rocked up and found out that there were NO PASSENGERS travelling in either first or business class! Right, so what exactly did that mean for me? I envisaged being shafted down to the hell dimension to help out, but our help wasn't needed. Due to some recent dramas with crew inappropriately resting publicly on board (thanks, you WANKERS) we had to stand around like shags on rocks for the next 7 hours. Finally we arrived, had our passports stamped and began the journey to the hotel. We were all absolutely stuffed, but again I was too excited to sleep when I found out that we had FREE 24-hour internet access! Woot woot! So, plugged in and propped up in bed with some yoghurt from Dubai that had almost popped in my cabin bag, I was ready for some serious facebooking time. Much to the fear of all cabin crew, facebook hasn't been working properly in Dubai for a while - some ABSOLUTE RUBBISH about it being illegal or some such crap. Same goes for myspace. Periodically they shut down but are up at the moment.

I finally slept and woke up to a rather gloomy, cold looking day and discovered I'd only packed shorts and a shirt. I really must learn to pack more accordingly. That reminded me of the time I took my half packed suitcase from a London trip (think sub-arctic, but with no snow) to Johannesburg because I was too lazy to unpack it between flights. Joburg has approximately the same climate as Brisbane, so you can only imagine what I had to wear on safari to the Lion Park. Jeans, shirt (thankfully I had jeans) and KNEE HIGH BEIGE SUEDE BOOTS!!! It'd been raining and we got bogged, so we had to get out and push.......not my finest moment pushing a battered van in my boots.

Never fear, it turned out to be quite muggy outside in Beijing and only looked cold due to the hideously high pollution levels. God knows how that city is planning to pull off the next Olympics, what with the pollution, filthy buildings and streets and locals who are under the impression it's socially acceptable to hack up and SPIT huge globs of phlegm all over the place. Charming.

After a rough and tumble hour long ride to the great wall, we finally arrived and got our first glimpse of the wonder snaking its way up and over the hills above us. It was still a little foggy up there, but what we could see was incredible. We eagerly fought our way through the hordes of locals selling everything from cameras to memory sticks and binoculars and lined up for tickets, which came with a mini disc (no doubt on the history of the wall). I must find it and watch it sometime.....

To get there we had to take an open-air chair lift and I was paired with a Lebanese girl who was deathly afraid of heights. I'm the type who used to enjoy rocking the chair lift at the Ekka as a kid, so was struggling to stay still while she hopped around and almost made me loose one of my thongs into the bush below.

After a brief collision as we got off the lift, we straightened ourselves out and waited for the rest of the crew. Blood had returned to fearful-of-height's face and off we went. It was major picture time and I was surprised that we had to really pay attention to our footing as we wandered along. I had heard that the steps were very uneven, ranging from 10cm high to about 60cm, but was stunned to see it was true. At some stages we felt we weren't moving at all, climbing up ridiculously tiny steps and at others felt our legs couldn't possibly lift that high AGAIN.

It was so stunningly beautiful up there with all the lookouts and turrets and canons I wanted to set up camp and stay in the cool breeze forever. We took some great happy snaps and then decided it was time to turn back after an hour of trekking. When we looked back at how far we'd walked (or not walked) we were surprised to see that where we started looked remarkable close to us. As the crow flies, we were very close, but with all the winding and arduous ups and downs we'd travelled quite a distance.

So, sweating like pigs, we turned back and made our way towards the lift and contemplated catching the toboggan down. That's right, TOBOGGANING on the Great Wall of China. While it looked fun, there appeared to be some traffic jams in the shute, so we all opted with the more sedate, longer and view-appreciative option of the chair lift. Needless to say, I sat with a different partner that time!

Once at the bottom, we were set upon by locals selling their wares at the makeshift market. My "one day house" popped into my head and I set about collecting a few things I'm SURE I'll really need one day...... like hand stitched butterfly and dragon hangings, a pink and white lace parasol and a few cute little traditionally dressed Chinese girl dolls. We dragged our sweaty selves back onto the bus and were hotel bound.

Darren from Malta and I decided to hit the Silk Market, a large building of about 5 floors full of the greatest stuff imaginable. I bought jewellery, fake Mac makeup, beautiful silk dressing gowns, a red Max Mara trench coat (I was then talked into buying a second coat with black and white polka dots!) and all sorts of goodies. I was carrying so many bags and they were so heavy that they were cutting into my arms by the time I staggered outside to find Darren calmly sucking down a cigarette as though his life depended on it.

We made our way back to the hotel, where I indulged in some more facebook time and then had a little snooze before our pickup. Once at the airport we were told that we had 8 passengers to entertain for the next 9 hours and that only THREE of them were eating, thanks to Ramadan (the fasting month for Muslims). Great, another trip to be spent trying not to fall asleep on containers in the galley. We found a surprising number of things to talk about, from parents who embark on international trips and forget to supervise their kids DURING the flight to the way some of the crew can be so culturally insensitive to AUSTRALIANS. Rather interesting to be able to vent about what ticks us whities off. I hope some mental notes were taken.

We flew over the heavily snow-capped Himalayas which were so incredibly beautiful I sat mesmerised by the window. We passed a mountain so massive that it arced up through the clouds and was almost at the height of the plane, but was off to the side about 1000-2000 feet away. From the sheer size of it, I thought it had to be Mt Everest, but it turned out to be the tallest part of K2, the second peak of the Karakoram range. Typically, I'd packed my camera in my suitcase, as I've got so much crap stored in my work handbag that there wasn't space for it. So, when the beautiful mountains came into view we all rushed for our phones and attempted to take pictures from the windows on our crappy little 2 mega pixel camera phones. They turned out ok, but I seem to lack the technical expertise to transfer them from my phone to the computer, so for illustrative purposes I've ripped some great pictures off Wikipedia.

After a what seemed like one of the longest flights in history, we finally landed and it was back to my apartment where I threw down my super heavy suitcase, laden with exciting goodies that I was too tired to even look at until after a serious nap.

Next stop: HOLIDAYS!!!

Ash, Jena and I have masterminded a fabulous girls only week-long trip to......none other than my favourite city in the world......

NEW YORK!!!

Jono & Lonnie in Brissie!!

After getting pretty pissy at Sevilles on our last night and being so incoherent at home that Jon had to work out how to set two alarms on my phone, they went off bright and early at about 4.30am. I staggered out of bed some time later, showered and proceeded to pack more inappropriate clothes into my suitcase. After dumping all our photos from part 1 of the holiday onto my external hard drive we were ready to go.



In the rush I forgot to pack a few vital things including my Aussie mobile! How was I supposed to call ANYONE when I got home? Oh well, after cursing myself for my stupidity for about 5 minutes I realised I couldn't do anything about it and before we knew it we were at the airport.



After check-in and getting our reserved aisle seats we headed to the gates to do a spot of shopping. Jon found the most gorgeous Armani watch that we'd seen in the mall, so we tried that on and generally played around in the camera shop and the book shop. We were both starving so we set out for Maccas for a greasy hangover cure and then it was time for boarding.

All aboard! We dragged my many bags onto the plane and found our seats. I've started the process of moving some of the things that I've bought in various countries home to pack away for my "one day house". We had bags of blankets and door knobs......sixteen pink & silver ones that I HAD to have. Don't ask!



The girl who was supposed to be at the window on our row decided she wanted my pre-booked aisle seat and tried to convince me to swap it. AS IF sweetheart!! So, on the aircraft with the crappy entertainment system it was "all ground staff please leave the aircraft, this aircraft is bound for BRISBANE!!!"

6 hours and 45 minutes later we landed in Singapore and had the chance to stretch our legs and peruse duty free and escape the general hell dimension that is stinky economy. We only had half an hour so before we knew it we were back in our sardine can and sleepy. I estimate I had about 4 hours sleep out of the 15 that we were travelling and was craving a nap by the time we landed.

My friend Dan, who's a trainer and fellow business class crew, was on the flight and came down the back for a visit during the dead of night. We chatted with the crew in the galley to pass the time and I couldn't help but think it would be great to have been a part of their team. Everyone was lovely and they couldn't stop raving about their plans for each of theirs stops. There's nothing worse than whinging, whining crew who pout at the "inconvenience" of having to be away from Dubai for 9 days and separated from their dogs, cats, boy/girlfriends, flatmates, showtime, bedroom, bed, pillows, cousins, aunts, uncles and all those non-specific not-even-worth-mentioning excuses for not wanting to be there. I say if you don't want it, GIVE IT TO SOMEONE WHO DOES!! Australian crew fight like cats and dogs for those trips and they're so bloody hard to get that the mere mention of 'I hate Australian trips because they're sooooo long' causes an involuntary clenching of the fists.



So, we flew into Brissie bright and early on a slightly-chillier-than-Dubai morning and were greeted by the sight of a MASSIVE customs line and all the stupid people who can't read the signs and line up in the wrong lines. They do however provide great entertainment for the rest of us when the tired and fed-up-with-idiots customs officers get cranky at them. Gold. I swear being in airports for the majority of the past two years hasn't made me any smarter or given me a greater ability to read a sign.....some people are just dumb.

Making our way to the Quarantine desks we were asked to open our bags, as we expected. Jon had declared a leather/pleather (not quite sure) elephant with an up-trunk and it turns out that they were suspicious of it's filling. It might have been cork, it might have been sawdust or it might have been HOSPITAL BANDAGES......righteo. Clearly Dubai (referred to as "one of those countries" by the quarantine officer) is a front runner in quality souvenirs. Amused by the possibly bandage filled elephant, we were informed of our "options" - submit it for quarantine procedures, which can take up to 6 weeks and consist of gamma raying the creature. What?!?! You read right, GAMMA RAYS. So, for the pleasure of keeping our cheap $2.00 bandage filled up-trunk elephant we had to pay something like $100 for it to be zapped and then we STILL might not get it back after 6 weeks? Right......we surrendered the creature and then walked though the big double frosted glass doors to be hugged by our waiting families.



My Mum, Dad and brother were there, as well as Jon's Mum, sister, brother and his brother's girlfriend. We all had hugs and there were a few tears (Jon's been away for almost 4 months) and then it was time to sleeeeeep. My brother Patrick turned 18 at the end of September, so as an early present I lugged home a gorgeous sheesha pipe and then dropped it when a very rude man pushed in front of me while I was attempting to get my trolley full of enormous bags into the lift. Luckily it was ok, as I don't think superglue would have done the trick!

My family took me home, and I chattered (somewhat incoherently) during the journey and after handing out some pressies and discovering I HAD packed my mobile, I passed out, waking much later that afternoon. I spoke to Jon on the phone, who could only emit a strange groaning, very jet lagged noise - so I hopped in the car and went to drag him from sleep that would have messed him up for weeks.



I promptly came down with a ripper of a sinus infection (STELLAR timing) and was out of action for a few days. Feeling like an incubus of human plague, I spent that time wallowing in bed and trying to find something in my suitcase to wear on the few outings I had before I felt well enough to go and BUY things to wear.

It was great to be home, catching up with family and some friends and just enjoying early September in Brissie. The weather was lovely, still a little cool at night, but gorgeous during the day. We went to the beach for fish & chip picnics, played on the swings with my cousins, watched telly and just had fun. On my last night we went out for drinks and I was a complete write-off the next day. Lucky the flight out of Brissie is a night time take off, otherwise there's no way I'd have made it. "Not fit to fly" would have been my label.



We went to The Normanby for lunch and drinks with Jon's friend Anton and his girlfriend Jocelyn. All I can say is that they serve a lovely steak (which made a reappearance later that night) and that smirnoff black's are DEADLY. I ran into Madonna, who I'd lunched with the day before and we were joined later by Jon's uni friend Hanka and her fiance Shane. As the "it's such a small world" saying goes, Shane (who's doing his honours in psychology) and I worked out that we were in some of the same undergraduate psych classes back in the days when I WENT to uni. We were reminiscing about a lecturer who made us laugh by imitating the noise a synapse makes when it goes off......until we realised the others thought we were nuts making a funny "put-put" noise in public.

It was heaps of fun to do the mammoth Dubai-Brisbane trip with someone who had a great shoulder to lean on when I was sleepy, wonderful to be home in Australia and even better to spend two weeks with my family and mates.



A big belated happy birthday to my brother Patrick, who's coming of drinking age we celebrated at The Vietnamese in the valley. Dinner was so scrummy I wanted to lick the plate after we'd vacuumed up all the curry and I must say that after scoffing at the idea of a deep fried banana with ice cream and caramel sauce, I wish I'd tried one and next time I'm home I'm going to have one......ALL TO MYSELF.

What a greedy piggy!