A short night

Saturday 25th April (Part 1)

Here I am in Melbourne airport, on my way back to Houston for a 3 week stint. To get there from Perth you basically fly to one of the cities on the East coast of Australia and then to LA. From there you take a domestic flight.

The flights to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne all leave about midnight and arrive about 6 or 7 in the morning. You then have to wait till the international flight leaves at a time that gets it to LA around 7am local time. Whichever flight I took, I'd finish up on the same internal flight, so I opted for the connection that gave me the shortest stay in LA, since from my experience last year, I won't have access to an airline lounge.

This turned out to have one disadvantage. The overnight flight was only 3 1/2 hours and although I pretty much dropped off to sleep as soon as we were in the air, I've only had 3 hours or less sleep. The Brisbane connection time is longer but so is the flight so you could actually get more sleep on it.

I didn't do much work yesterday, although I did do some debugging for a local client. I had to get the washing done, update the laptop with all my emails and program changes for the last week I made on the desktop and organise money. I also bought a new laptop bag - one with wheels. And of course, I had to pack again. I had thought I might get to play in the Twilight comp at Gosnells but in the end I decided it was too hard, and the weather wasn't the best.

The kids came over for dinner, the first time we've seen each other since I left for Thailand over a month ago. They did meet up over Easter, which pleased me since it means I don't have to actually be here for them to get together. I decided to get some T bones and David cooked them on the BBQ. It was good to catch up and it'll be another month and a half before we do it again. Penny and her boyfriend leave for their US holiday the day before I get home.

They all left about 9 and my taxi arrived at 10. I estimate it will be 31 or more hours from the time I left home to the time I get to the apartment in Houston. Last year I stayed in a Marriott Residence hotel, which was a small suite with a kitchenette. This time they have booked me into a serviced apartment, which from the brochure looks ok. They have also bought me a local Sim. The idea was to leave that number on my answering machine, but I realise I have forgotten to do that. Ho hum.

With all those flights the lounge in Perth was quite full. We flew from Perth on an Airbus 300, which is the first time I've flown on that aircraft on a Qantas domestic flight. The Thai flights from Bangkok are on a similar plane and the seats on that plane are bigger and further apart than the Qantas one. It was still comfortable enough to get some sleep and the Business section was a bit over half full.

We landed in Melbourne about 6am so I have a 4 hour connection. I've had breakfast, at least I had a bowl of cereal. There's an array of food still available - Pancakes, quiches, pastries, toast etc. It's now coming up to * and the lounge is still pretty empty. There were only a couple of other people here when I first arrived.

I have prepaid for the rental car and this time I've deliberately gone for a smaller car - supposedly a Corolla sedan "or similar". One of the things I had to do in my brief visit home was to get last year's taxes done. I have been quite slack on this, normally I get them done in the first couple of months after the end of the tax year. However with my travels, it got delayed and then I started travelling again. It was quite urgent since my Super tax return, in particular is due before I get back from this trip.

One of the points raised in my discussion with Debbie, my financial planner and accountant, was that I should consider a new car. There are some government incentives to invest in plant and supposedly a new car qualifies plus my current one, although going well, is now 10 years old. I had thought it would be a simple enough choice - get a new Corolla hatch to replace the current one. I took a bit of time on Wednesday to look at the current models at the different car yards along Leach Highway. I had my golf bag and buggy in the car and one test was to make sure they fitted in the back of any prospective car and the lid could be close on the hatch. I was quite surprised to find that neither the current Corolla hatch or the equivalent models for other brands actually have a big enough boot. It may be that I have to buy a sedan to get a car that I can fit my golf gear in. Obviously a Corolla will be on the list so I will have a chance to test one out before I get home.