Farewell Sydney
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Singapore,
Singapore
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
HOMELINK AUSTRALIA is an organisation devoted to setting up home exchanges for its members in order that they may cancel out the costs of accommodation whilst enjoying a vacation anywhere in the world. The relatively small annual fee places the member's home details on a database on a website designed to show all the attributes of the house and surroundings to entice other members to exchange homes. Exchanges may be arranged simultaneously or non-simultaneously. There are thousands to choose from...mostly in Europe, the United States or Australasia.
Anne and I joined up in July 2005 and spent the next six months trawling the site looking for suitable exchanges that would allow us to live in Europe for 12 months whilst Europeans lived in our house. We were mostly successful. Ideally we would have liked long term exchanges of 3 months or more in, say, four European cities but those "home linkers" either did not exist or were not wanting Australia as a destination. In the end we settled for and negotiated six exchanges which covered all bar the months of June and July 2006...no-one seemed to want to come to Australia in our winter.
Emails flashed back and forth across the globe in which we exchanged information and agreements. Anne & I prepared the house for a long term absence and to accommodate several visitors. We packed away all our more personal effects and all our clothes. We arranged for neighbours, K &S, to look after the place and meet our guests. For the period where we had no exchanges we organised rental accommodation in France and Ireland and hired or leased cars. Our long time friends, B &P, convinced us that a fortnight in Italy with them when they came to Europe for the World Cup would be a good cultural experience before the excesses of that football tournament.
March, 2006 went by at snails pace or so it seemed until those last few days.
Wednesday, March 29 at last arrived and, loaded with 80 kilo of baggage, we were taken to the airport by our son where we were met by B & P who had come to see us off...a nice gesture. The following is an account of our travels, some of my observations and some boring day to day stuff as recorded on my trusty Sanyo voice recorder.
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It was about 3 o'clock in the morning and we were coming down into Singapore somewhat earlier that we had anticipated. We had had a comfortable flight in our senior citizens business class seats. One of the little luxuries we had treated ourselves to was to spend a few extra dollars traveling business class. Considering the time we were to be away from home we figured we deserved a little luxury. They were just serving ice cream to me which, only moments before, I had jokingly requested. On the next stage I might ask for a Big Mac and see what happens.
It had been the strangest flight. We were offered a full evening meal about 11.30 pm just an hour after boarding...about 9.30 pm Singaporean time. We had already dined at a Vietnamese restaurant in Sutherland with our son where I had what I thought would be my last taste of my favourite 'satay scallops' dish. Anyway,Anne and I settled for some scrambled eggs cooked on the aircraft by the 'chef' and which arrived about 45 minutes later...only minutes before my beer which we had ordered at the same time. Unlike the trolley that goes around the economy class our 'hostie' writes down food and drink orders on an A4 size printout of the seat numbers arranged in a grid on which she writes her notes. I do not know what my stomach thought of that snack as it dropped down my gullet at midnight but there were no ill effects. The beer was terrible. It was a Carlsburg. If that was its normal taste I will not have another...ever. If there really is a taste like dishwater that was it. Not to mention the smell!
Our business class seats were not quite as we had envisaged. The advertised, cocoon like, Skybeds had not yet been installed on this route but the old seats were wide and had plenty of leg room. Initially they felt very comfortable but after a few hours they lost that pleasant feel and our bodies objected to being in a state of immobility and reached squirm status. We were in the last row of seats with a wall behind us so maybe the seats did not recline as much as they should. In front of us was an elderly gent with long, straggly grey hair and an artistic air about him. He was very restless and adopted many positions including laying out flat with his feet up on the seat in front of him...and that was while we were still taxiing on the Sydney runway! I had to remonstrate with him to let us get into our seats. He had one of these younger, plum in mouth wives (or mistresses!) who addressed him as 'darling' as she constantly enquired after his comfort and read paragraphs from books to him as he lay there doing absolutely nothing for the entire journey. When the lights went out he took over a couple of empty seats on which to sleep and over which he sprawled...almost upside down at times. A strange, no doubt spoiled, man.
Earlier at the airport after all our fears about getting our baggage through the 'check in' it was a breeze. A bit overweight but the business class check-in chappie tagged them with no comment and attached special labels to our cabin baggage which he said would have cost us $200 if he had not. We could have packed some of those items we had, sadly, left behind but then who knows what might happen at other airports.
I did sleep ...somewhat restlessly. No matter how comfortable they might try to make the seats there is still that constant drone in the background and the inability even in the best of wide seats to lie comfortably on my side which is my preferred position...my default position if you like. I do not like the individual entertainment screens that they attach to the seats these days. The problem I have is that I like to see a movie from the beginning and with this new in-flight system there was no way of knowing when the movies were about to start and no way of selecting your own start time. That is understandable and which is why we cannot yet stream movies down to our TV sets. They should provide a DVD player and a library of discs no doubt encrypted so that they would be useless if stolen although with cheap copying procedures available today the loss of the discs would be a minor cost.
[12 months later on our return flight not only were the Skybeds up and running but the movies were all on demand]
We arrived in Singapore earlier than we thought and it looked as if we were going to have a long wait for our promised pickup.
(As an ongoing project this account of our overseas stay will take time to be posted in full.
......please be patient......brianc)
[Comments within square brackets such as these were footnotes to my original 'word' text and reflect observations relating to the days events or surroundings]
