Now, where was I?

Ah yes, cancelled flights the day I was supposed to fly. Turns out I was altogether premature in anticipating an end to the excitement /:). It's late Sunday afternoon, and in my rather paranoid state of mind, I check my flights again, and guess what I find?! My flights cancelled, again!!!!!! I could hardly believe it X-(. More frantic phone calls. I don't really know why, some sort of premonition I guess, but I decided to finish up packing and get ready to leave, just in case. And I'm not kidding, at 5 pm I get a call from a rather distressed logistics coordinator asking me if it was possible for me to make it to a flight departing at 6 :|.

It turned out to be the only time I managed to give the traffic jams a slip. And of course it helped that I live 10 minutes form the airport (in the dead of the night when the rest of the city sleeps that is, realistic times stretch between 20 to 50 minutes :|). Bottom-line, I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. But hold on, I still didn't know where I was flying to!! All I had was a flight number and an e-ticket number :-S. Found out from the airlines desk that I was headed to Bombay instead of Delhi, and that I had barely enough time there to transit to the overseas flight :((.

Then this flight decided to hover above Bombay airport for a good half hour :|. Perfect Bollywood masala flick material I tell you /:). The thing that saved my skin there was Jet Airways finally growing up and allowing a proper through check-in of baggage. No check out and check back in, no identify your luggage at the counter bollocks.. check in your back at departure and pick it up at final destination! (I think I managed to irritate the airline staff at various points trying to make sure that there was indeed nothing that I had to do to make sure the bag travelled to the final destination :P.)

Oh well, then onwards it was pretty cool. Watched Stardust in the flight to Singapore and loved it. I though it was quite funny, though a tad overly dramatic in bits, but hey, it's fantasy :D. I had a massive 12 hour stopover in Changi, and was desperately looking for a socket to plug in my pc when the lady at the transit counter pointed out that I could just head to the business class lounge!! So I did. Only, on the way I walked into a book store and could not resist the temptation when I found all 5 GRRM books stacked neatly in a row :|. Thereafter of course, it was a struggle to try and fit 4 more books into my already filled-to-bursting bag :-<.

The rest of my stay I proceeded to spend in style :D. Watched the Ivanovich match on a massive flatscreen from an impressively deep couch. Thanked my lucky stars that I'd loaded a NFS Underground on the portable disk. Was amazed by the quality of food at the free buffet ;). Generally had a good time basically :D. What followed was obviously my best flying experience to date. And the best part of it was that it wasn't just me :D. Some six of us from the crew had managed to get ourselves seats in the business class on the same flight! Just trying to figure out how many ways you could move the bloody seat was hilarious :P.

Unfortunately, even here, sleep eluded me. So I proceeded to watch Rescue Dawn. Not the best of choices, I must say. Harrowing story that was :(. Thereafter I switched to less intense stuff. War was fun, mindless action, and well choreographed mindless action at that :D. By the time I got to Christchurch I was hanging on with barely 2 hours of sleep in 60.
Finally crew change on Wednesday, and we land up back in Lyttleton! Even went for a nice little walk around. The town is small enough to feel familiar after barely an afternoon that we'd spent here a month back. Walked up to the Time Ball Station and ran into this monstrosity of a cruise liner!!Oh well, now it's off to the south again. And the cold and bleak weather. The back-deck work's also started up in earnest. Looks like blogging will take a bit of a back seat. Only question is, for how long :-<.

Feeling: sleepy :(
Listening to: Dave Mathews Band - Crush