In-between places

A part of this I should have put in last Wednesday. The rest, surely sometime on Friday. Yet here we are, and it's Monday. What can I say? I am getting lazy :-<. Better late than never though, I suppose. As far as crew changes in Angola go, this one was a dream :). Well, close enough to the good kind anyway :D. As I might have mentioned at some point, I'd started out being totally fascinated by air travel (I know, I know, I was young and stupid :P). But these days, while I'm not entirely mortified by it, it's a close thing :|. Making my way from CCU to Luanda was therefore a welcome surprise!

For one thing, the Kolkata - Delhi flight was the first leg of an international flight, so I ended up bypassing the domestic thing entirely! Since this meant I didn't have to go through the terminal transfer ordeal at Delhi, I was pretty happy :D. Even managed to catch a movie on that flight!! Had been meaning to watch Yes Man for a while. Sounded like an interesting premise for a film. Plus, I love Zooey Deschanel :D. Not necessarily because of this film, but just.. in general. Oh, just to avoid any misunderstanding, this is not exactly a masterpiece, but I found it quite happily watch-able.

Turns out they've extended Wi-Fi coverage in IGI, so that was another bonus. With a bunch of hours to kill, I was quite happily shocked to see how well the battery lasted on my laptop! You don't usually figure Dells for longevity really :). Anyway, a little bit of catching up goes a long way sometimes. And before I knew it, my flight was boarding!! By the time I managed to get to my seat, all the overhead space was gone :|. But I had an aisle seat, so I managed to sleep through the night without too much trouble.

Addis actually has a pretty neat airstrip! The area is quite hilly, and the airport is on a little plateau sort of a thing. So as you land and take off, the ground falls away at either end of the runway quite steeply. Sort of accentuates the feeling of ascent or descent somewhat alarmingly, if one were so inclined :P. It also has one of the smallest and most compact international terminals I've ever seen, which is perfect for layovers, if you ask me!
Finally at Luanda, we got through the whole immigration and visa thing in barely an hour and a half! And then we were dropped off at one of the really nice hotels! Doesn't get much better than that, I can tell you! My room even had a view of the beach!
I don't particularly like the way a lot of movies these days flout the standard beginning credits protocol, so to speak. No title. So I catch this one film on the telly, right from the start, decent cast, but like nothing I've ever seen before! The plot sort of catches my attention though, so I keep watching, postponing the much needed shower :|. Somewhere down the line the interest fades a little and the need for the shower takes precedence. But then I'm back, and the ending's getting really interesting! I'm left wondering if I'll ever manage to see what I missed! I barely get to the end and catch the title before it's time for dinner.

The next day we manage to catch the supply boat that's to take us to the Trident. Once everyone's settled in, we start rummaging through the DVDs, and there it is! Stranger Than Fiction :). This time I watched all the way. I must say I quite liked it! Especially Emma Thompson's slightly neurotic author character :).
So yeah, it was definitely one of the better crew changes in recent times, all in all. As an added plus, for the first couple of days I was quite happily left to watch rather than do anything much :). But now things have gotten back more or less to normal. And I have my regular PC back :P. Don't have the pics at hand right now though. I guess I'll get around to those later...
In the mean time I'm trying to figure if I want to try and settle in quietly for the five weeks or give in to the temptation of throwing a tantrum. For no particular reason :D.

Currently: trying to find my stride
Listening to: Tricky - Over me