A Very Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone and wishing you all a happy 2007!

We spent the Christmas weekend over in Kent with Johnny's Granny, and had a fantastic time. All four of us housemates were invited, so we picked up Anthony from Heathrow on the way through, and arrived on the afternoon of the 23rd. Upon arrival, we were put to work by John's Auntie Lizzie, who got us to decorate the christmas tree:

Not bad eh?


The pressure was on Johnny who had put in a big "sell" about spending Christmas at Granny's, as no-one else in our group had ever had a Proper English Christmas before. Although the weather wasn't able to oblige us with a white Christmas, everything else was just about greeting-card perfect, with the open fire roaring, good food and conversation, and of course plenty of "Christmas Spirit" getting consumed. Anth's freshly-imported Absolut Ruby Red (vodka infused with red grapefruit) was a big hit, and fuelled Johnny to a big win at the poker table - although being unemployed, he has been getting a lot of practice online these days!




Christmas Eve night saw us stringing up our stockings from the mantelpiece, prompting another photo session. That's Anthony curled up on the couch on the left, and Bec doing her nails on the right. Yep, it's all action at Granny's place! :-)

Finally the big day arrived, and Santa had managed to not only find us, but also get down the chimney with a still-smouldering fire at the bottom! Clever man. Only "Santa presents" could be opened prior to lunch however, as there were more guests to arrive for the feast. "Team Australia" was put to work again, this time laying the table for the ten Christmas Dinner guests. Attending would be Granny, Auntie Lizzie, Team Australia, John's Auntie Aly, Uncle Jeremy and cousin James, plus Jeremy's mother Audrey. All catering (including the quail-egg-and-caviar entree visible in the picture) was brilliantly done by Lizzie, with excellent centrepiece construction by Bec and Amanda.

We all enjoyed a fantastic Christmas dinner, with the first-timers gaining a real appreciation for how nice a roast turkey can be when it's only 6 degrees outside. Much drinking, chatting, laughing and pudding later, we retired to the music room for present-opening, with lots more merriment, to the accompaniment of Johnny on the piano (although possibly that was the source of the merriment).

Christmas night was spent in the traditional manner: by the fireside with eyes glazed, stomach distended, making occasional groaning noises and feeling a little sick when someone mentions food.

So all-in-all, an excellent English Christmas! :-)

Bruges Christmas Markets

Yes, here at last is my promised post to tell you about my trip to Bruges (pronounced "Brooj") with Amanda and Kathryn. For those Austin Powers fans among you, you may recall Bruges is in fact Dr Evil's birthplace (I kept hearing Fi's voice in my head quoting "that's where Daddy's from" in her best Dr Evil impersonation...) but strangely enough we saw no signs of this on our visit. Instead we found an absolutely gorgeous, medieval little town with colourful old buildings and a huge, open market square filled with Christmas stalls, an ice skating rink, and lots of people.We took the ferry across from Dover to Calais, with Kath's car on board. The trip takes around an hour fifteen and was fairly uneventful, except for the rainy weather which resulted in a choppy English channel and a queasy Bec and Kath. The drive through France to Belgium was very straightforward, especially with the assistance of Kath's new Sat Nav which constantly told us where to go in a very pleasant and polite English accent.

After checking in to our hostel we walked into the old town centre, huddling under umbrellas as it was still raining. The rain was not heavy but was annoying, more so as we only had two umbrellas between the three of us, which is never a good idea. To avoid a fight breaking out, we took shelter in one of the many restaurants in the square for some lunch. French onion soup and chips warmed us up nicely, and when we emerged an hour later the weather had thankfully cleared up and there was a beautiful clear blue sky which made everything look that much better!

So, three girls on their own in a European city just before Christmas could mean only one thing... shopping!!!! To be honest the Christmas markets themselves were actually a little disappointing. There weren't all that many stalls set up, mainly due to the large ice skating rink taking up most of the square, and about 75% of the stalls were food and drink related (not that we complained too much about that!) But we were after presenty items and little cutesy Christmas souvenirs, the kind that would later seem absolutely pointless but would nevertheless be excellent mementos of our weekend in Bruges. So we hit the main shopping strips instead and were soon laden down with bags of goodies, most of them consisting of beer or chocolate in true Belgian style.

Back to the hostel to drop off our plunder, then it was out for a yummy dinner washed down with the obligatory glass of local beer (actually I was the only one of the three who felt beer was obligatory... and I don't even drink beer!) Bruges was even more magical at night, the Christmas lights combining with the illuminated buildings to spectacular effect.



Next morning began with Belgian waffles and ended with a horse drawn carriage ride through the city. In short, the perfect weekend!

Toy Time: Castle Combe Circuit

Bec was away last weekend (and she has promised to blog about it soon!) with Amanda, and Anthony is working in the States, so I was all on my own. So I thought I'd go and have a look at one of the UK's most famous car racing tracks, Castle Combe Circuit, which is only about 15 minutes from our house. It turned out to be a great drive through Wiltshire along twisty rural roads, passing through nice little villages, etc. etc. Check out the website for the village of Castle Combe, "The Prettiest Village In England".

Right, that should have got rid of all the girls. Castle Combe is a 3km circuit that has been a UK racing staple since 1950, only recently losing a round of the British Touring Car Championship due to complaints about noise levels. Bloody villagers! :-) The lap record is under one minute (i.e. averaging 180+ km/h) in a Formula 3 car, so you can probably tell it's a very quick track, in a sort-of mini-Monza, Hokkenheim style - long straights and sweeping corners, with the occasional chicane to keep the speeds down.

Unfortunately there was no motorsport action when I went, just a few people with nice cars lapping. The first was a 2-year old Lamborghini Gallardo, which was either borrowed or had a very nervous owner. He was perhaps touching 100km/h before braking about 3-4 weeks earlier than necessary for the chicanes. Never mind, I'm sure he had fun, and it sounded great.


There was a very angry-sounding Caterham SV track-day car circulating at about Mach 5, he was all opposite lock, flames out of the side-exhausts aggression but I don't like those Caterhams, they look like Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang on steroids, so no pictures for him.

I did like the next car to whip round, a brand-spanking Porsche 911 GT3, being driven with increasing enthusiasm and confidence with every lap. Great to watch.



And no, as tempting as it was, I didn't take Beatrice out for a lap of Castle Combe Circuit.

I don't have a crash helmet ;-)

Employment!

Well ... for one of us at least!

Yes, Rebecca has a job! After a gruelling week of interviews, last Friday Lloyd's TSB, one of the biggest high-street banks here in the UK, offered her a position in their finance team. And no, that doesn't mean she chooses whether people can get mortgages or not! She started on Tuesday, working in central Bristol, and so far things are looking pretty good. It's a 6-month contract position and there should be some good potential to move around and try new things within the company. So at last we have some Pounds Sterling coming in, not just leaking out. Hooray!

And while we're on the subject of banks, it's quite interesting that they are not quite as universally-despised over here as in Australia. Maybe it's because they will still actually pay you good interest (like 8%!) on your savings account. Our favourite difference is the way all the high-street banks have an arrangement so you can use any bank's ATM to get your money out, with no fee. You just have to be careful about the dodgy "private" ones at service stations and pubs. They still gouge you...

Old South Wales

For our first weekend trip in the UK we visited a completely new country for both of us. And best of all it took less than an hour to drive there!! We hit the road to Wales fairly early last Saturday morning, relishing our newfound freedom with Beatrice (that would be our new car for those who haven't read that post). First stop was Tintern Abbey, now mostly in ruins but still very impressive and incredibly atmospheric, set in the beautiful and remote Wye valley. We wandered around for quite a while, learning about the abbey's origins dating back to the 12th century, and about the lives of the monks who lived there. So peaceful.


Then it was up through the valley to a town called Abergavenny for lunch (fish & chips which unfortunately came with peas as standard), followed by a gorgeous drive through the Brecon Beacons National Park which covers a vast area in central Wales, including several mountain ranges. The highest two peaks, reaching almost 900m (so not all that high really...), are the Brecon Beacons themselves:

Saturday was the pick of the days weather-wise, so after a cosy night in a Crickhowell B&B (cute little town) we emerged into a dismal, rainy Sunday and headed for Carreg Cennan Castle, another ruin, sitting proudly on top of a huge rocky crag. Unfortunately the weather was so nasty we were scared to climb up to the castle, as our footwear was hopelessly inadequate for anything beyond smooth pavement! We moved on quickly to Cardiff, Wales' capital, but not before again marvelling at the weirdness and wordiness of the Welsh language:

... OK then!

Cardiff was an unremarkable city, made especially unremarkable by torrential rain coming down. There was another castle right in the centre of town but we elected to leave it for another, hopefully drier, day. We walked around the town centre for a while before giving up and jumping back onto the Park and Ride bus with 50 rugby fans, fresh from a game at the Millennium Stadium. Driving back over the Severn Bridge, we both commented that New South Wales looks absolutely nothing like the original South Wales! Somebody's memory was seriously scurvy-scrambled when they thought that Botany Bay bears the slightest resemblance to anywhere we saw!

Bath Christmas Markets

Last week we thought we'd do a spot of christmas shopping at the Bath christmas markets, which was a temporary collection of cutesy little wooden huts filled with cutesy little gifts. A lot of it was pretty ordinary stuff but it was all very attractively done, in the square outside the Abbey:
We got very suitable pressies for Johnny's auntie and his granny, who we'll be spending Christmas Day with, and Amanda picked up a nice print of one of Bath's picturesque crescents. For herself :-)

It was also the official turning-on of the lights on the Big Tree and the christmas lights which were strung up along the main streets. We hung around until 6pm, waiting in the square outside the baths for the illuminations to fire up. We were parked right in front of the 10-metre christmas tree at 5.57 waiting for the 6 o'clock countdown, when we heard the last few numbers of the countdown echoing from somewhere around the corner! D'oh! The lights on the tree flicked on with a grumble from the assembled crowd, and stayed on for a full 5 seconds before abruptly clicking out again! The crowd's disappointed "awww..." was quickly followed by the ironic cheer when it turned back on again. Hilarious!

Ring-a-Ring-a-Roundabout

Bec had an interview in Swindon today and I thought I'd make myself useful by driving her in, then finding a supermarket and doing the weekly shop while she got grilled. Swindon is not a particularly nice place - especially compared to Bath - it's one of those concrete jungles with a ring-road arrangement that tries to get you smoothly around the edges of the jungle without having to see too much of it.

I figured I could orbit Swindon, starting from Bec's interview point, until I found a shopping centre or big supermarket, and then either complete one full circuit or double-back, whichever was shorter. Unfortunately the ring-road is very tricky to follow. It's schizophrenic, randomly calling itself either Ring Road, A4289, B4289 or sometimes, enigmatically just [R]. If this isn't enough, it twists and turns, sometimes even folding back on itself, to the extent that sometimes you think you're on it, when suddenly you find yourself driving over it at an intersection!

The Swindon Ring Road needs a big blue line or something down the middle of the lane that goes clockwise, and a big red line along the anticlockwise path. Actually if they did that they might find that it's not really a ring at all. More of a series of overlapping lines, like a bowl of spaghetti. They might lose the guys doing the blue and red lines. Or more likely, every road in Swindon would end up having both red and blue lines in each direction!

Despite the Ring Road, I manage to find a supermarket and get the shopping done. Back into Beatrice, and I try to regain the ring road and get back on time. When I finally locate it, I realise I have no idea which way around I'm going. And then Bec rings - she's all done.
It's getting dark, the traffic's getting heavy, I'm lost, running late, and come across this sign:
Yes, I'd stumbled onto the UK's (and thus probably the world's) most complicated roundabout. And it was pretty clogged with people keen to get home.

It took about half a second for the memories of amusing forwarded emails to make their way from long-term storage into the "action stations" area of my brain. There was a small side-street off to my right - one last escape route before I was dragged into the whirlpool.
Mirror-Indicate-Brake-Clutch-Shift-Blip-Shift-Clutch-Turn-Relaaaax.

The Magic Roundabout actually ended up being my saviour, because the U-turn that I did to avoid it ended up leading me back to Bec. But still - it's not really what you want to come across without being prepared. Brown underpants would be a good start...

Toy Time: It's a New Car! (sorta)

He says: It's a '99 BMW 318i E46 SE - 125hp, 5sp man, 4dr, ABS, EBD, ASC+T, PAS, EM, EW, AM/FM with 6xCD and wood trim.
She says: It's a green one.

After 2 weeks of scouring the internet and local car rags, we've finally picked up the new car! As you may or may not have been able to determine from the above spec, it's a green BMW 318i four-door which we picked up for about 40% of what they're going for in Australia. Yeehah!

With a 1.8 litre engine it's not quite the rocketship my old turbocharged WRX was, but then again it will go about twice as far on a tank of fuel (I'm not kidding - we did 300 MILES on half a tank last weekend). And at AUS$2.20 a litre that's MUCH more important. It also goes round corners extremely nicely (being rear-wheel-drive and all that) and, should anything go awry, there are airbags all over the shop. Unlike the Rex which was an airbagless driver-skewering missile.


Amongst the nice creature comforts are the 6-stack CD changer in a pod in the boot, the multi-function leather-rimmed wheel, nice woodgrain around the cabin and on the gearstick, cruise, and climate-control AC. The only options it doesn't have are the things I reckon are a bit of a gimmick anyway - radar parking beepers (PDC), fancy-pants Harmon-Kardon stereo and electric seat adjusters with per-driver memory. OK actually the seat memory would be pretty cool - when you "plip" the remote to open the car, it knows who will be driving and puts the seat in the right position - up/down, fore/aft and back angle. I have short legs hanging off a long body and Bec is "normal" (let the comments begin!) so there's usually a fair bit of tweaking needed when we swap!

So there we have it. We'll definitely be putting our new baby (she's called Beatrice, by the way!) to good use, zipping all around the countryside, and experiencing it all from Land's End to John O'Groats. Pure Driving Pleasure ;-)

Bath: First Fortnight Roundup

Our first 2 weeks in Bath have just flown past!
Since settling into Jesse Hughes, it's been a flurry of job applications, telephone calls, travelling to get things organised/bought, and, where possible, stopping to relax and enjoy our new surrounds.

Johnny put his CV onto one of the big job websites late on the first Sunday night and by lunchtime Monday had fielded 6 phone calls and had an inbox full of emails. Bec quickly followed suit. While we are both still unemployed, Bec has some excellent and interesting prospects. Johnny, despite stressing at having never been unemployed for so long, chants his "it'll be better in the new year, it'll be better in the new year" mantra and keeps searching/taking calls/emailing.

A trip into London by Death Bus (4 hours plus - not recommended!) secured us UK mobile phone numbers and a bank account, so at least we're ready to receive wages when we do finally get employed! We stayed the night with friends Beth and Dan who are now beautifully set up in Islington (yes, near The Angel!) having moved from Melbourne after marrying a few months ago. We checked out the fantastic Natural History Museum with Beth before a cracking French dinner - cheap too! Big thanks to B & D for having us - you guys rule! Lunch with Bec's uni friend Kate the following day, a bit more sight-seeing and then it was back on the dreaded bus...

Back in Bath, the days started to take a familiar format. One of us would wake early and drive Amanda to her work at the hospital, so that we could then use her car to get us around to do things. We'd spend the morning wading through the new emails from job agencies/recruiters/spammers/time-wasters, while fielding calls on multiple phones. Often we would drive into Bristol (a bit of a hell-hole, but where most of the work is) to talk to work-type people and/or check out used cars. Back to Bath by 4pm to pick up Amanda and get home. If it all sounds rather casual and relaxed, believe us, it's not!

However, we do try and keep in mind that we're not just here to work - so we have done some fun stuff too. And we'll be blogging about that soon!

Jesse Hughes Court, Bath

Boy did we sleep well that first night in England. Breakfast was at 8:30am sharp, followed by some quiet time, then more elevensies, then more quiet time, then a yummy lunch and yet more quiet time (gotta love Granny's house, so relaxing!) before our friend Kathryn arrived in the evening to take us back to her place. Kath has been in England since July and is working as a nurse in Kent. Her flat is in Sittingbourne, which is about 45 minutes drive from Granny's house, so quite convenient! And a lovely, modern, comfy flat it is too, we had a very nice dinner and a good chat before settling in for bed on her futon.

Next morning was a Saturday, and we all piled into Kath's car for the 3 hour drive across to Bath in the South West, the last leg of our journey home, as it were. The weather, which had been crisp but clear on the day we arrived, had now turned a bit nasty, and most of our drive was through a grey drizzle. But as we approached Bath the blue sky reappeared and the rain stopped, as if to welcome us! Even more welcoming was the sight of Amanda (Bec's sister, who we are now living with for those who aren't up to speed) waving to us from the window as we pulled into our new street, the somewhat odd sounding Jesse Hughes Court. John has googled Jesse Hughes, by the way, and came to the conclusion our street is named after either an American rock star nicknamed "The Devil", leader of the band 'Eagles of Death Metal', or a western Virginian frontiersman from the 1800's... take your pick!

Hugs and unpacking followed, and we explored our new home with great interest. It's one of a number of flats in the small, tucked away court, which is just off the main road heading into Bath so a great location, perfect for easy getaways as central Bath can be quite hectic traffic-wise. We're on the 3rd floor so have a lovely view up to the hills of Bath from the balcony, and the place has just been renovated so everything is nice and new including the furniture. It's also quite roomy compared to lots of places in the area, with a separate dining room, decent living area and a huge kitchen. Check out the photos via the link at the top right of the blog for a better idea of how it looks. There's even a pic of our new little friend who visits us in the backyard each morning.

Arrival

14 hours, Singapore to Frankfurt to Heathrow, and they can be summarised in just one word.

Lufthansa.

Anyone who has flown with them knows what I'm talking about. It's like a trip down aviation's memory lane:

• Hop on board 747 number 00001, unrefurbished since 1969!
  
• Watch old, bad, censored-for-everything films on a fuzzy projector!
  
• Land at Frankfurt's "smoke free" Airport and marvel at the open-plan "smoking areas" that don't even have a hole in the ceiling above them!

But anyway, we made it in alive. Next stop was the immigration counter where Bec was told she was required to have a health check-up - immediately. She was actually quite sick with the 'flu and we were somewhat concerned that there could be some time-wasting, rubber-gloved unpleasantness. Luckily for us, the health inspector took one glance at Bec as she walked into the clinic, asked her where she was from, and stamped her papers. A gruelling examination...

One last heave of the luggage to the Hertz car park and into the back of a Ford Fiesta (just!) and we were belting our way around the M25 to Johnny's Granny in Kent. We got there in time for elevensies, and began loading up on caffeinated goodness to try and get us through the jet-lag to a reasonable bedtime. Unfortunately Granny's place, being warm, quiet and generally very relaxing, is not the ideal place to try and stay wide awake - a fabulous roast for lunch also brought us dangerously close to nanna-nap territory.

We made it to dinner at 7pm before having to excuse ourselves at 7.30. Falling asleep into your plate is not a good look.

Singapore Fling (3rd and final part)

We decided to check out the island of Sentosa, which kinda hangs off the bottom end of Singapore, attached only by a long bridge. Thinking it was just a nice, relaxing, beachy sort of place, we were surprised when the friendly waiter at a little breakfast cafe told us about the many attractions of Sentosa. With an Underwater World, Dolphin Lagoon, Luge Ride, cable cars, a Merlion (whatever the hell that is...), 3 golf courses, a butterfly enclosure, and some kind of magical musical fountain to name a few, Sentosa was sounding more like an amusement park than just some island!

After a short journey on the MRT (underground train) and a bus ride over the bridge, we were ready to sample the many delights, starting with Underwater World. Quite an amazing collection of creatures, including turtles, sharks, sting rays, jelly fish and all the usual suspects. One feature we especially liked was the "touching pool", where as the name suggests you could actually reach right in and touch the different types of fish. This included a shark! A pretty small bamboo shark which I'm sure was entirely harmless, but it was a shark nonetheless. From there we headed off to see the dolphin show which was pretty impressive. The dolphins were a rare pink kind and did all the usual flips and tricks (pretty standard if you've been to Sea World, but this was John's first ever dolphin show so he was quite excited!)

It was quite a hot day so we headed off for a swim at one of the beaches, and happened upon a spot that claimed it was the southern-most point on the Asian continent, for whatever that's worth. So of course we took a photo or two, then hit the not-nearly-cold-enough water for a bit. Afterwards John got very excited (again!) about the prospect of a luge ride - kind of a combination of toboggan and go-cart, you took the cable car up a hill then hammered down a windy road back to the bottom. Lots of fun!

We had a yummy Tandoori dinner at one of the Indian restaurants by the beach, then headed across the island to check out this magical musical fountain thing the guy had recommended. By now it was dark, and unfortunately just as the show was starting we were pelted with very large drops of tropical rain. It was a real shame as it was quite an impressive display, with co-ordinated water, lights and laser effects. We huddled with the rest of the crowd under nearby trees which sort of detracted from the experience just a little bit, then we quickly headed back to the bus to escape the downpour. At least it cooled us down a bit!

The next day was our last in Singapore, so we took it easy with a nice stroll around the gorgeous botanical gardens, which were just down the road from our hotel. The Orchid gardens were beautiful, well worth the extra admission price. And we couldn't leave without making a trip to Raffles Hotel for the obligatory Singapore Sling and peanuts in the Long Bar. A fitting end to our mini-break, now it was time for the real adventure to begin...

Toy Time: Apple MacBook

No, we didn't buy it in Singapore! (Although if we'd had the luggage space...)

We bought this about a week before we set off. Why? Because Bec has caught the movie bug, and as the Apple ads so stylishly put it, PC movies just don't quite cut it. We discovered this after creating a movie of our Thailand holiday in Windows Movie Maker, and then discovering the complete lack of a "make DVD" option. WMM is fine if you want to make little postage-stamp size movies to email to people, but it just doesn't support the quality levels and file formats you need if you want to make a smooth, good-looking DVD.

So Little Miss Spielberg "needed" a Mac - and I must say I didn't need a great deal of persuading, having admired Macs since OS X came out in 2000, and desired a Mac since they switched to Intel processors, giving them a very healthy speed boost and genuine (as opposed to icky-slow virtual) Windows compatibility.

So the white 13" MacBook was purchased. It's a 2GHz Core Duo (not Core2 Duo sadly) with a 60Gb drive, SuperDrive DVD burner and the RAM boosted to a healthy 1.25Gb.
It's a terrific machine, incredibly light and compact, yet the screen never really feels small cos the resolution is fantastic. It's just beautiful to look at, even the retail box is a work of art.

It boots in less than half the time of our similarly-specced PC laptop, has no annoying "trial versions" of antivirus/DVD/utility software clogging it up out of the box and nagging you to spend more money(shame, Dell, shame), and detected and hooked up to our wi-fi in about 10 seconds. Speed-wise, Firefox loads in about the same amount of time as the Dell (a 1.83GHz Pentium-M with WinXP), and feels faster when rendering web pages, although that might just be the smaller screen. I don't really use any other cross-platform software so can't compare the speed for any other tasks.

The real killer feature of the Mac is of course the "creative" software that is "free", installed and ready to go from the moment you first turn the thing on. They all work a little different to the PC - iPhoto and it's concept of albums vs. libraries vs. folders, iMovie's editing behaviour being destructive (i.e. if you trim the ends of a clip, it'll actually delete the unseen bits), but they work so well together that you feel you can try just about anything and, sure enough, it just works.

We're still learning all the tricks with the Mac, but we're definitely BIG fans. It's fast, small, silent, intuitive, and the hardware is simply outstanding design. Did I mention it will comfortably go for 4.5 hours on one battery charge? Or the MagSafe power connector which not only can show you at a glance whether the battery is fully charged yet, but holds onto the Mac magnetically so you can't kick it off a table when you stumble through the power lead? How about the way the lid is held shut magnetically so there's no clasp to break?

OK, nerd-rant over. Normal blogging will resume shortly...

Singapore Fling (part 2)

After quite a long, well earned sleep-in, we ventured out for a wander down the famous Orchard Road. Massive shopping malls as far as the eye could see, and we became quite familiar with the inside of several of them as it proved the best way to escape from the oppressive heat. It was a cruel form of torture for Bec, however, with Johnny constantly reminding her that we had absolutely no room in our luggage for purchases...

Singapore apparently goes absolutely crazy with Christmas decorations, especially down Orchard Rd. Ornate trees on every corner and in all the shops, and a whopping 45 kms of fairy lights strung up in rows along the busy street!! Pretty impressive.

For dinner we headed to Chinatown for a traditional Hawkers meal, strategically avoiding all the scary sounding dishes like braised pigs' trotters, shark cartilage and residue chicken... mmm, yummy! Not to mention the Hong Kong Boat People Congee...?? The Chinese markets were cool, and we managed to leave with a new digital camera - small enough to fit in our bags, yay!

Singapore Fling (part 1)

3 nights in Singapore was a lovely break in the über-trip from MEL-LHR. Although we should say the Singapore Airlines flight from MEL was an absolute delight (no really, it was - no irony there) as it was a daytime flight and they have the awesome movies-on-demand technology that just makes it a movie marathon with food delivered to your seat. Wicked.

It had been quite a while since either of us had spent any time in Singapore (Changi Airport not included) so we were looking forward to re-acquainting ourselves with this lovely island. After an inexpensive taxi ride to our hotel at the end of Orchard Road, we checked into our room and collapsed - as usual this hotel had given us the room the furthest from the lift. Great for avoiding noise but not so great when your baggage weighs more than New Zealand...

The rest of that day was pretty quiet, just lounging by the pool and then popping into one of the millions of shopping centres on Orchard for some noodly-ricey goodness. As soon as we got back it was time to hit the hay, so we tried to turn off the room lights. Click. Lights still on. Click. Lights still on. Click. Click. CLICK. CLICK! Right. Johnny re-dresses himself and storms down to reception. It should also be noted here that despite booking a double room, we had been given a twin, and told it was the only room left on a non-smoking floor. Also, the room itself had smelt like a smoker's tonsils.

Upon arriving at reception and unleashing pure fury (i.e. looking a bit put-out), John was told that a double non-smoking room had now become available (?). Thus ensued a very long and exhausting bag-repack and move operation, as we went from level 7 in one tower to level 12 in the other. We slept well that night!

Packing Ourselves...

So with 3 days to go before take-off we still hadn't done any trial packing.

When you fly to the UK in Zoo Class you're allowed a whopping 20kg each for checked luggage, and your hand luggage must not weigh more than 7 kilos. However, things like big coats, camera bags and laptops are not included in that, so we figured we could go in laden down like mules with all that stuff hanging off our arms and get a few more kilos of junk over to the UK.

We'd also heard from Amanda (Bec's sister) that you could probably get away with as much as 25kg in your checked luggage without too much hassle. The absolute maximum is 32kg, because otherwise the baggage handlers get hernias. "Fair enough," we thought, "we shouldn't be anywhere near that much anyway".

Hmmm.

Our first attempt at packing resulted in:
John's Suitcase: 28kg
Bec's Suitcase: 33kg
John's Carry-on: 11kg
Bec's Carry-on: 13kg
Plus
2x Big Black Coats, 1x Camera bag, 1x document bag, 1x handbag.

Right then. Lots of heartbreaking elimination later, we arrived at the airport with:
John's Suitcase: 26kg
Bec's Suitcase: 30kg
John's Carry-on: 12kg
Bec's Carry-on: 13kg
Plus
2x Big Black Coats, 1x Camera bag, 1x document bag, 1x handbag.

As we put the luggage onto the scales at the check-in counter, John was discreetly lifting the bags to try and get them to 25kg or less. But it turned out to be unnecessary - the check-in chick didn't even look at the weight!

The dude inside the big silver doors was not so nice however. He took one look at Bec's carry-on bag (which is one of those rollable ones with the retractable handles that is exactly the maximum allowable size) and put it on the scales. His jaw dropped when he saw 13 kilos registered, but quickly recovered, giving Bec quite the scolding before sending us back to check-in to get her bag put in the cargo hold. Luckily, we got the same zero-care-factor chick and we were OK.

I swear the mighty Boeing 747-400 struggled just a touch getting off the Tulla runway!

We're Here!

OK we've been here a week now so it's gotta be blog time!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks, what with emptying out the house (yay eBay!), packing, weighing, unpacking, repacking, weighing, swearing, unpacking (repeat), then getting to Singapore, relaxing, and then finally making it to the UK.

And I'm sure we'll tell you about it all, but just not in this post :-)