I'm Flying! (Day 1) - edited

Ed note: I wrote too much. Here is a shortened, more interesting post.

I'd never been on an international flight before, and now I've been on two. The first one was from JFK to London (Heathrow) and the second was from London to Singapore. After flying internationally, I can honestly say it's not as bad as you might think, but it's still long and tedious and I look forward to the day when they invent the transporter.

Things to note while flying:

- Fast Bag drop can take an hour. I have no idea how they can call that "fast."
- There are no clocks in airports.

The flight was quick, relatively speaking - it was about 6 hours. It took us 35 minutes to be cleared for take-off, however, and there was a great deal of turbulence in the middle of the flight. All in all, we lost 2 hours or so with delays and such.

London (Heathrow) was about the biggest airport I could imagine. I had to take a train IN the airport to another part of the airport to take a bus to get to a different terminal. My first flight was delayed so much that my expected 4 hour stopover turned into exactly enough time to get my boarding pass, get through security, and then wait for 3 minutes before boarding my plane.

I met Mathew at the gate. It was good to see him after nearly two weeks apart. :-) We didn't originally have seats together but the steward found us two unclaimed seats and we got to sit together. Yeah! Our neighbor there was a woman from Australia who had been living for 2 years in Japan teaching English. She was nice. We didn't speak much until the end but she was very accommodating when we had to get out to use the bathroom.

QANTAS airlines fed us constantly, starting with wine, then lunch, then ice cream, then a snack pack, then cocoa with a real marshmallow or peppermint tea, then breakfast. The food was not horrible, but not great. The flight was uneventful otherwise, and we landed safely.

Immigration was a piece of cake - he asked us, "What are you doing in Singapore?" Mathew answered, "Work & travel," and he stamped us both for 90 days. That was it. All the freaking out about needing return tickets and needing money in the bank and work passes, all of it, for nothing. All we needed was the address of where we were staying.

Customs waved us through, too. We didn't even have to stop at all. Just whoosh! Right on through. I wish I had known, I would have brought one or two things that I left back in the states for fear of customs.

Dave (Mathew's coworker, a nice Irish fellow who will be staying with us for 2 weeks) met us right by customs and we grabbed a taxi. The taxi was tricked out in holographic stickers on some of the panels, it had a plant growing from the rear view mirror, and it had funky red seat covers. The cabbie didn't speak to us at all, and our apartment was about 10 minutes from the airport.

The apartment was simple enough to get into - keycards with electronic bits that unlock the front gate and also automatically bring the elevator to your floor. You cannot take the elevator without waving the card, either. It just won't work.

The entire apartment, which is a reasonably large 3 bedroom (+ 1) is entirely decorated out of IKEA catalogs. (Pictures to follow). And it's all white. White drapes, white couch, white coffee table, white chairs, white lamps, white floors, white walls - it's all white. Really crazy. White, white, white, white. I think I'm going to buy some cheap lampshades and pillows for the couch that are NOT white. The only things that aren't white in this place are one rug that's red, and one chair that's black that has a dead animal of some kind on it as a throw.

The +1 is a maid's quarters, and a bathroom next to it. I don't think I'd let Daisy live in a room that small, in truth. And the bathroom is smaller, and includes a shower. (Pictures & video to follow.)

We were quite tired and filthy, so we took a shower and laid down for a bit. Afterwards, we decided to explore the mall across the street. It was about 7 stories, with maybe 10 shops or so on each level. There were a bunch of food shops outside of it and a few inside. We found an electronics store, a video game store, and a few clothes shops. We decided to grab some lunch because it was about 11am and we were hungry. We found a little food court in the mall and I ordered the infamous Chicken Rice. He had fried Wontons - both of us got some sort of clear broth with them which we didn't expect. I also had a mango juice and he had Coke. The chicken rice was more complex than I expected. The sauce on the chicken was good and the rice had a nice subtle flavor. Mathew's noodles were also great. The mango juice was actually mango pineapple juice, and it was really good. The reason I mentioned the Coke, though, was because it was sugar-based Coke, not corn syrup based Coke. He said it tasted the same, though. I guess his palate isn't as refined as some. ;-)

We headed back to the apartment and then met up with Dave. We went over with him to a technology center to attempt to buy an A/C adapter for my computer (because I left it in the states, wouldn't you know). It turns out that they cost S$150 (which is insane), and only one shop in the 10 storey building packed wall to wall with every kind of technology you can imagine sold it.

They saw us as tourists and immediately try to sell us everything. The whole place is ceiling to floor packed with people and nothing over $30 has a price tag on it. PSPs are everywhere and in every color - gold, pink, even Simpsons yellow. EVERYTHING comes in pink. Mice, laptop stands, laptops (pink AND lizard skin texturized), cameras, headphones, memory cards, everything. I've never seen so many things in pink. I hope to go back there and take some pictures of the place. It's really something else.

We found our first hawker center outside of the technology mall - and we each ordered handmade juice from a juice vendor. I had lemonade, which they called Lemon juice, and Mathew had real mango juice. S$3 for the two of us. S$2 for his, S$1 for mine. Some of the best lemonade I've ever had - not too sweet, not too tart. And his mango juice was at the perfect ripeness. Unbelievable. They had squids hanging from the shop stands and purple dragon fruits and dried mushrooms and everything was about $3 or $4 for a meal. I can't wait to try everything.

We were really really really exhausted at this point and left Dave at the technology center. We made our way back to the SMRT and on the train saw a bizarre scene with a sleeping man. He was Asian, in his 20's or early 30's, and was taking up 4 seats, sleeping. At some point he rolled over and his cell phone fell on to the ground. Another passenger picked it up and placed it on him, sort of pushing it into him in an angry attempt to wake him. It didn't work. Another passenger lightly kicked his foot. Still, nothing. At some point he coughed, which really annoyed the surrounding passengers who covered their own mouths and turned away. After a few stops, a transit authority official stepped onto our car and attempted to wake the sleeping man. The transit official shook the guy by the shoulder, touched his neck, tried all sorts of things. The man would not awaken. He finally picked the guy up into a sitting position, and the man REMAINED sleeping. Using his walkie talkie, the transit guy called another transit guy who met us about a stop later and entered our car. Within seconds the two transit guys had the man barely on his feet and were carrying him/escorting him off of the train, holding his shoes and his cellphone. The man was still not awake on the bench as they tried to get him to put on his shoes as we pulled out of the station.

We finally got back to the apartment and fell asleep. VERY asleep. We slept for nearly 14 hours, all told - from 4pm until 6am. I think that's going to help a lot with the jet lag, though we'll see. A few days and we should be all set.