Australia is the lucky country

I met Vicki at the Good Wine and Food Show with my evil ex in 2009.  She was blogging on her iPad, which was novel then.  Neither of us even use my ex's name now or have talked to him in years, but she and I have managed to stay good friends.  

We trekked across Burma together in Christmas 2012, and are planning a drinking trip to Barossa in September, after a failed plan two years ago, to see my trust in nearby Adelaide on my way to Thai.  

We make an effort to continue our tradition every year and head for the casual Friday at the Wine Show before the weekend crowds mob it.  This year the show moved from Darling Harbour, under rennos, to a new spot in the inconvenient, unnatural-feeling 2000 Olympic Park in Homebush.  We were both surprised we liked the venue out there, maybe better than Darling Harbour, though Vicki had enough of the train ride.

That's Cynthia waving, my Rolf Binder wine manager, who got me cheap cases of outrageously good Canadian-export-fiasco shiraz. I think Rolf is a god of wine- Dionysius.  Vicki has less naive view; she says he inherited beautiful old vines.  Either way, we love his wines.

This year, we skipped the always dumb cooking demos, and only we ate food at 550p with the lights going off, so it was 90% wine for 3 hours, a vino-ultra-marathon of Sumptuous wines from South Australia, the undisputed top Aussie wine regions.  

Vicki and I had to stop at Bruny Island Cheese to get our fill, mine a Brie, hers a hard wedge of cheddar, with no knife or fork, so we were forced to gnaw on it with gaping mouths on the train home,  hungry drunken rats.

We've experimented with start times that force us to limit our alcohol, late morning works best, but morning is a disaster!  This year we started very late since stressed-CFO vicki is doing a big project at work for EOY.  No need to stress her out more, so we started at 3p.  No matter, we just headed right to South Australia and drank unbridled for three hours, full reidel always in hand.

My trustee Mark would be a bit freaked  seeing my credit card being pulled out combined with lots of alcohol intake, but I see little risk here.  Vicki won't let me buy crap wine.  These are fine commodities that last a decade, and actually improve over that decade.  So I go overboard a bit every year, but I pat myself on the back all year when serving the gems from my cellar.  That's a quality of life that's worth a few hundred dollars a year.  I try to get my cellar weeded out and drunk down before the next show, and don't accumulate too much, four cases now after this show.  Vicki and I decided I will reorg my cellar by variety and date not region since I have a lot of aging whites hiding in there.   I can drink them this winter instead of buying $13 French roses from Woolies online (BWS) every week.

I mostly buy reds, shiraz, cab sav, blends, here in virtual Barossa and virtual McLaren Vale, but was on the lookout for a Chenin Blanc after my trip to Cape Town this year; I tried two from top Barossa vineyards, but they are no match for South African.

Yum: Dowie Doole, prime stop in virtual McClaren Vale.  DD staff recognize us year on year..  Vicki and I are a great tasting team.

The train to Olympic park is a modern, very short after-thought hacked line. I am so glad Bakamuna has flown back to me.  He's fluffier than before.

For footie at Homebush, there is a direct train from Central, free to make up for the hassle if going so far West.  It exits pax right into a little outdoor picnic ground that hosts live music before games, usually Swans-AFL-family-oriented but sometimes they host ear-splitting hard rock.  And wine and loos, which are key. But the ghetto-inspired rail transfer junction at Lidcombe makes zero sense.  Who planned this bottleneck, especially for a massive people moving event like the Olympics? 

The train lets off at Central which means El Builli a block away for mates with post-drunken munchies in a dark warm environment.

We met my mate Phil after the drink fest for Spanish tapas, and it was devine.  I love combining strong personalities and seeing what happens, and these two get along great.  But we are all 50-ish, so though we were totally up for dinner, we were elated to head home to bed at 830p after three long Fridays.  

I walked out of el bulli onto the dicey quite-indigenous streets of Surry Hills, walked 5m to the curb, and stepped unceremoniously right onto an eerie waiting 372 and was in bed by 930pm.  I felt bad leaving my buds on the curb, but vicki lives for her über-taxis and the usually scroungy 372 is faster than going via vickis in Bondi, even if her über-taxis are cleverly somehow prepaid and always prompt.

My Coogee Girls' Technoworld

Social life is now all about gadgets.  I studied AI in uni at Brown and in post-graduate at Univ of California, and I knew in the 80's that we would eventually be ruled by machines.  They are taking over gradually, and we are indentured to care for them, along with corn, rice, sugarcane, wheat, potatoes, cows, sheep, goats, and bees who seduced our ancestors and now sustain us.  Our animal and plant mates are reliant on our machines, too, in large scale agriculture to maintain their unnatural global dominance and control over us humans.  It's a slippery slope, it's a vicious cycle, it's a pan's labyrinth, but we primates are happy to just slide along munching corn chips.

Stacey is happy with this arrangement despite her cloudy view of the world.  Not only happy, she buys into it wholeheartedly, thumping along to her robotic mechanical techno music.

Humans are blind to being dominated by machines.   We see side effects like the high rate of accidents caused by texting and driving, texting and walking, texting and cycling.  But these gadgets are an attachment that is hard to shake.  I took myself off of Facebook in 2010 because of the undeniably evil energy behind the company.  Many cannot live without it now, but it's not part of my world.  

But then there's my iPhone.  Don't mess with my iPhone!! As I told that ruski police fascist: He BePbTe MHE Ha TE^e%oH (ne verte mne na telefon), when he arrested me for taking selfies in the Sant Pete train station, including pics of him, for my uniform blog.

Ruski copper headed my way to arrest me for doing NOTHING wrong but playing with my iPhone spy device!

"Are the machines all in sync?", Jamie asks carefree Stacey.

"We love this machine, can't live without it!", Jamie pronounces proudly.  Visitor Canadian Rob is mesmerised by its hypnotic drone.  He wants one now.

"Darn, I'm so frustrated.  I can't sync with that darn stereo!", says Canadian Rob.

Genetically-calm Swiss-Italian Mikele methodically adjusts the wireless signals in the house to make sure the machines can talk to each other seamlessly in the background.

Things got nasty when Rob tries fixing the cooking machine and a turnip protests violently.  Turnips have little control over humans.

I head home to care for my own machines.  

A torch is not really a machine, I'd say, though.  It sure is nice for walking home on the beach in the the dead of winter.   On the way home, one of the girls' uptight Neighbors accosted me.  

"What are you doing?!", she shrieked at me.  

"How is that your business?"   

"I live here!"

We were on the sidewalk, so that was a stupid comment.  But the girls explained maybe she thought I was going to rob her house.  Was it because I am clever enough to carry a flashlight at night, and that no other Aussies have the sense to do so?  Perhaps she though I was going to bollux up her precious machines inside, to "whom" she's so attached.

"I'm just taking a selfie."  Duh.  She's as arrogant and nasty as the fucking Russian police I have been mocking.

Then I realized I was dressed like a tough Russian soldier in my one and only piece of leather clothing, a gorgeous leather jacket my ex David and I bought in Florence in 1997, custom handmade to fit both of us.  He kindly ceded it to me in the divorce.  I figure the cow cruelty is already under the bridge so I think about that cow fondly, wear it and love it.  I don't but anything leather any more if I can avoid it.

At home, I use a non-machine toy to amuse my non-machine cat, Beautemps.

Beautemps is an unreal leaper, lean and strong and beautiful.  I got him from my vet's lobby when my carer Matt was out of town.  Bt was a rescue cat from the Blue Mountains RSPCA.  There's apparently a lot if heroin up there and probably a lot of bad pet owners.  So I am thinking long term for my bee hives, to buy a country house in the other direction in posh, quaint Bowral.  It's on it's own  dissected sandstone plateau gorge, which is just as nice as the famous blue mountains'.

Beautemps leaps 0.5m off the ground.

Beautemps has impossible unnatural art design.  But it turns out he is an exemplar physically and behaviourally of the oldest natural breed of domestic cats on the world, Turkish angoras, from Ankara, Turkey.  He's unusually intelligent and loves high places, loves getting his sweet, buff, pretty step-brother kimba into trouble, teaching him how to climb on the roof, which kimba never even considered for three years alone. 

Kimba makes sure the computer does not consume me.

Phil

8am DYI Sunday

I've made two trips to Bunnings in two days.  I love having a car.

Chubbier when playing this character, Robert sports his morning tradee look with his favorite tradee tool bag, personalized with his tradee name, Irwin.

Beautemps must get in on any action 

BB: Before Bunnings 

AB: After Bunnings

I cleared the new West Wing to get my living wall arrange properly.

There was so much clutter there before.  Ivo would say no good!  My plants got some decent starter growth while I was gone for two months, despite being the dead of winter.  Now I need to situate and train them into my wall and ceiling lattice.

1030a AO: After Oatmeal.  I am getting my focus as the first part of my two hour trance to carry me through my intro-back gym program.  

My usual four hour gym swim routine is pure pain, but my ritual makes it fun, and i i love it.  Today in Sydney, it is about 12C degrees, skies are damp and grey, punctuated with bright magenta and pink XYZs, orange roses, and fuscia bougainvillea in my garden, lots of greenery, faded prayer flags, and a 2m pink Aussie nautical flag blowing off my terrace.   Before i turned on music, i could hear waves crashing on the beach.  I can see there's no cricket or rugby today on the oval, just nippers soccer, so it's unusually quiet except for the rough seas.  But now I am listening to Duran Duran on the jambox, getting high on coffee, running through my program in my head and visualizing how i am going to perform.  "I need to get a PB in rowing today", I think to myself.  This is a good pace to get me ready for putting on my shoes, taking a pee, then Chaka Khan will start belting it out, the playlist with start rotating and I'll get sucked into the trancey pipeline for a few hours.

The more serious part of my gym trip today will be to finally clear my lungs of all of the crap and inflammation they endured in six weeks of travel.  I've been on antibiotics for four days now, so imy lungs are not infected, they just need to give up on that old trauma and get used to the trauma i'm gioing to give them today.

I almost never break out of my trance with headphones on, to noticed other people, with only a few exceptions.  I've worked out next to Sam Stouser a few times here.  She and I have very similar bodies.  I don't think that strength is helping her as a lady tennis player.  i saw Serena Williams play Ivanovic last year in my annual pilgrammage to Aussie Open in Melbourne.  They are exactly evenly matched players, but Ivanovic has the body of a stick bug, where as Williams is more of a beetle, a lady bug, if you like.  Sam and I also have a very similar workout.  I do triple sets in sequences of three, three sequences for upper body, one for lower, as prescribed by my physio, and Sam seemed to be doing something similar.  I always do a sprint triathlon- in gym- for a half hour, warm up cycle, treadmill intervals including sidesteps, elliptical without holding on with arms for core, spin bike intervals, backward and forward, then i gauge my fitness with a rowing ERG for 5 minutes.  Then weights, core, yoga or tai chi, and rolling, then a warm down swim at the beach if it's nice.

Can someone invent tangle free iPhone headphones please?  Enough of these apps.  Sure, it's a good tactile puzzle but I don't need this crap now

The other time I got distracted was when a totally hot tradee was fixing the warm up bike next to me.  I wasnt really in my trance yet, and my speech therapist Gaye taught me how to converse with people effectively: ask them relevant questions, even if you don't think you'll care about the answer.  People usually surprise you.  So I was thinking of anything I could say to him, and said, "I really like your bag.  Where did you get it?".  I did really like it and wanted one like it, and nice dark blue and black.  How cute, he had his name "IRWIN" monogrammed on the side in yellow.  

He beemed in tradee Australian "Yeeah, I goet it at Bunnings.  I love it."  

"Thanks, Irwin."

Love my tool bag

Later that day, at Bunnings I bought the bag, really a super masucline purse for macho things, and all of them had "IRWIN" monogrammed on the side in yellow.  Oh, oops, that's the manufacturer.

BUT- amidst all of this fun, I never forget that I owe everything to Buddha, who showed me how to come back from dead, bled out on the pavement with a broken neck, and how to live a smart life to honor his teachings.  Thank you, Buddha.

You look like the food you eat. I look a bit American now.

Woolies' delivery was right on time at 8am today, a cool cloudy Friday on the Sydney's Eastern Suburbs' beaches.  

Heaven is allowed.

The always polite flourescent-clad tradees hauled the twenty unfortunately-plastic bags of pre-sorted groceries from their truck on the street, down my alley, up three flights of stairs, and set them gently on my kitchen table.  Delivery is free for me since I bundle all of my food and wine shopping, but I give the guys a $5 tip.  Why doesn't everyone in a civilized country do this at least fortnightly?!!

I studied Fresh Direct in business school, the first big online local grocer, in New York City.  I'm not sure if the model has changed much, but it makes a lot of sense.  As a registered Green in two countries, I feel I have to buy my groceries online, for the same reasons I bought a hybrid SUV when I started to drive again.  It's evironmentally intelligent.

Online grocers ship the food directly from a warehouse or clearing house directly to the consumer.  That eliminates long-term warehousing, envionmentally-toxic transport to supermarkets, the resource-hungry supermarket itself: heat, lighting, refrigeration, maintainance, original construction materials.  The food at a supermarket sits for days or weeks, where as in a tuned online model, like Walmart's distribution model, it does not sit at all.  That reduces cost of inventory, cost of labor, cost of damaged product, and the consumer basically gets a better product, which I definitely see in the produce I get online versus the former-backpackery Woolies right next door where the food is about to rot.  Woolies can be much more generous with promotions in the online model, too.  Woolies Online also has flawless customer service, by email even, which i prefer.

Some friends think I am arrogant or lazy for not buying my groceries in the supermarket when it is literally right next door, but that is not the point.  This is the wired generation, and this is a better way, and it will improve our lives if we embrace it.  I did sign up for online grocery delivery in the agony before I had my first hip replacement, but I've had no reason to switch.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

Sure, this operations model is efficient, but what if i want to poke around in person and see for what I am hungry?  My Aussie-government-paid men's health centre provided me with a dietician after my accident, and she and I have this down now.  My carer Matt and I learned through trial and error and consultation with my dietician Miriam, later Jessie, what foods were right for my body.  Matt did this himself, too, and lost I think about 50kg, gradually.  I have a tendency to do things impulsively, because my frontal lobe was damaged, where inhibition lives.  So walking through a supermarket is not an ideal way for me to shop.  Oh, cookies and chocolate and ice cream!

Long story short, I now have a private online store at Woolworths, which anyone can set up. My list of favorites is everything I have ever ordered, that is in stock, in season, all of which has been approved by my dietician and carer. The list includes homewares, wine, spirits, everything.  Woolworths has consciously, I think, provided me with a ultimate TBI prompting tool for stocking my house every week.  It works the same for normals.  

Maybe I dont get to comparision shop as much as customers in supermarket, but i figured out recently that just about everything in my normal diet, except soy milk, is a whole food.  I usually but the top quality lower priced Woolies house brand.  It's a flat commodity.  And since I save so much time and effort and cost not driving to a store, who cares about missing a few discounts?  I seem to rat out some big discounts anyway, hoarding my usual items when they go on sale.

I usually order the same things, but first I have a quick look at my pantry to see what i dont need.  It's so easy.  And for those of you whinging about your failure at diets, it is the best way to diet.  One can view an entire week's or month's comsumption and analyze it and adjust the foods.  My weekly haul is now always nutritionally balanced.  Miriam says it does not matter when you eat things during the day, as long as they get in your system.  It's just calories in and calories burned.  How easy is that?  Furthermore, she says it is fine, and recommended for me, to eat the same thing every day, but to just vary the nutrition throughout the day.  Does anyone notice why this is better than some crazy popular starvation diet?  Besides the nasty effects of starving yourself, the same-thing-every-day-diet is sustainable for life, with minor adjustments as one gets older and perhaps slows down.  (I havent.)

My friends in American were shocked that I have continuously and effortlessly lost 500g a week, week after week, for the past two years, about 33kg in total.  Well, I gained back 4kg in restaurant meals on the road this trip.  I dont really see it year on year like they would, except I can wear all of my designer clothes from 2002 again now.  Before I left Sydney for Cape Town, I was 77kg, at 48 years old, the strongest, leanest, fittest I have ever been in my life, even when I was a full time athlete at 30, and even a year after a couple of hip replacements and with a disintegrating knee, and a brain injury.  How is that possible?!  It was not just from exercise- which had been more that moderate but also limited by my injuries and surgeries- but from a smart, efficient, web based diet and food fulfilment plan which was 100% free and available to anyone in a city.

I clean my fridge and empty any dubious food into the bin on the night below my delivery.  So my fridge is always super clean and hygienic, and Matt doesn't need to worry about this old man robotically eating rotting food.

Day two

I pre-prep everything I can.  I even grated the stick of Parmesan cheese on delivery today before it went in the fridge.  Why wait until I am rushed to make dinner, or worse buy some more expensive stale pre-grated version?   Head of lettuce: chop and wash and it goes into Tupperware.  Fresh garlic: I do the hard yards once a week and it goes into Tupperware.  Wait until this arvo and I start making a bag of spaghetti, a bag of oatmeal, and cook some veggies.  This fridge will start looking like a container ship, which is precisely what it is.  Container shipping and this diet plan are both based on smart business school research methods in Operations.  The container goes right into the microwave and on to the plate, fresh and tasty and healthy and with zero incremental effort.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

The other smart reason to cook in batches and store in Tupperware portions is reduced cooking and clean up.  I have never had a stack of dishes in my sink, except when I have lent out my house.  :)  There's no reason, really, you have to clean up eventually so best not to leave an unhygenic mess.  I cook a lot, but usually it is reheating.  When i make batches, cleaning in the moment is part of the process, amd not usually doesnt have to be in a hurry.  And frequently the ingredients for dishes are already prepped and in tupperware.  Maybe I can do this since I am retired, but I think it is the opposite, it is super efficient and would be great for working people.  And dishes go in the dishwasher after the meal; dishwashers are more water and power efficient than hand washing, by the way, Australians.

My freezer is full of fresh frozen wild salmon 

I just hauled back four types of fresh wild salmon from BC with major effort but cleverly zero expense.  I removed the heavy ice from my bags at check in an hour before the flight when the Air Canada whingey check-in hags complained my first class bag was a few kg over.  That arvo, I had asked the fishmonger in Grandville Island, Vancouver, to prep my fish for export, who admitted he had never seen anything like my annual international fish buying spree.  I guess he forgot I handed him the Aussie, Canadian, and Air Canada regulations and ordered the same thing last year.  He was shocked to verify the Aussie Customs regulations online, and will recommend to others in the future.  It is a nice $600 order for him, priceless to me. This year, I am traveling earlier in the summer so I  got fresh wild Alaskan Copper River salmon along with some fresh wild BC salmon, fresh BC halibut, frozen wild BC black cod, canned wild Alaskan salmon, and wild smoked BC salmon.  One cannot buy wild salmon in Australia.  Restaurants and fish markets cannot import it, only individuals can carry 5kg of it on their person through Customs, plus as much canned or smoked as you like, but no fresh caviar.  For you Aussies who have never had wild salmon, come to mine for barbie tonight.

Making the weekly oats

The secrets to my success: Woolies online, of course, but also a rice cooker and tupperware.  They all make advance prep of healthy food super easy so there is never a reason to reach for crap food.  Tupperware are the ocean-freight containers that make portion control a snap, and give me instant healthy fresh food any time of night or day.

Tupperware containers on dry dock.  Did I mention that I buy my Tupperware at the bargain Chinese store in Randwick, which is basically just a cut of the crap that comes here from china.  So there's some sort of metatextual thing going on here.

Midnight in the garden of suffering and contentment

Vicki and I went to Burma for Christmas two years ago.  It was spectacular.  What a lovely, safe, interesting country.  Go if you haven't been.  I knew I wasn't right the night before we left, but I soldiered on, and ended up in quarantine for a week over NYE for tuberculosis, which I didnt end up having.  Have I learned any lessons?

I made it through Air Canada's marathon flight from Vancouver across the North Pacific, over Hawaii, across the South Pacific, over Fiji, growing sicker and sicker.  But this year, I moderated the alcohol, made sure I had a ton of sleep, early to bed two nights before I left.  When I came back from Yosemite I knew my lungs were not right.  I had been swimming in a glacial melt river on a scorching summer day, sleeping next to an open mesh window in a cot with hardly any covers, where the temperature plummets  every night, then living at a cabin at the River, taking showers outdoors every day.  I was Hauling 85kg of crap through airports on five flights in two weeks, up and down, up and down.  So what's gonna happen?

Nina called it.  She's adventure traveled a lot (Antarctica!), and she could see how my body was disintegrating, but was holding out for the final bit of holiday fun.  Just like in Burma.  This time I played it smart.  Sure, I got home, had to sneak into the garage, grab my hidden key and bring my 85kg of bags up three flights of stairs, unpack the fresh fish right away into the freezer, love my kitties, and start the assembly line of laundry.  Two hours into it, I had made amazing progress, but my body was ice cold.  All of the bags were put away, and all of the laundry was done or in queue.  

I made the bed, got a blanket and two heavy duvets and hid in bed with two instinictively concerned and helpful warmer-than-humans felines, certainly warmer than ill me. I woke now and then to swap laundry.  A nice thing about a 16 hour flight is that time is meaningless on the other side.  

My nephew Will had done a superb job looking after my apartment this year, and he even came after work to check on me and brought me soup and some veggies.  I threw in two fresh cloves of garlic and ate the whole thing, lot of water, and went back to sleep for ten hours.  

The next morning I smartly headed right to the doc, who asked why i didnt just go to the hospital if i thought i had the same TB symptoms.. but I think I took excellent care of myself this time.  She threw some antibiotics at me.  I am not coughing as much now- gallons of sludge were coming out of my lungs- so I am on the mend, I hope, and no Canadisn SARS or Russian TB.

I am just gonna watch the footie at home tonight, and maybe have Phil over for wild salmon steaks.  Sydney plays Richmond tonight, for whom my trustee's son Matthew plays.  I was totally out of touch with the Swans on this intense busy trip, but I saw the moment when the Swans found their magic:  coach Longmire had experimented with lots of scenarios in the first five games, with some tragic losses, to see how to best use new superstar player Lance Franklin's amazing skills.  I remember saying, yes, they are going to win the premiereship now.  And now they are on fire, an unprecedented ten wins in row.  I love Aussie rules football since on a given day, any team can win; it's not just about individual talent, but how the players operate as a team, more so than other professional sports, I think.  Maybe like ice hockey.

Is this the end of the road on a 35,000 km trip?  I'm not quite there, but I feel my life is settling back into my old routines, painstakingly set up my my care team to keep me productive with a nasty head injury.  I know my kitties are happy to have me to themselves 24x7.

 Beautemps is a smart talkative creature.  His brother Kimba is more basically feline but loving.

I hate to be so deathy ill, sweating it out.  But I secretly love the weight loss.  I need to take off 4 to 5kgs.  

My kind vego nephew brought vego soup, added spaghetti and lots of garlic!

Kimba is a bit greedy licking up his brother's leftovers.  Cats are like me, creatures of routine.  They hate change.  They love our getting back to cozy living.

Bear watches pile after pile of laundry get sorted and folded.  Now's the time to sort out the closet, getting rid of stuff that is worn or that I dont use and starting from scratch.  I will not become fat again!!

Uhhhh, Canada

Those bitches at Air Canada top class check-in at YVR once again ruined my flight.  I was forced to repack my bags at the empty counter to fit their over-exact Socialist weight requirements while they whinged I am not supposed to repack at the counter.  Where else, bitches?!  American Airlines or Swiss Air didnt even feel they needed to ask about the over-weight bags, and perfect-service Alaska Airlines told me politely "uh, close enough".  

I had a think and was forced to remove the heavy ice from my precious delicate fresh salmon. I couldnt throw away much else.   I warned the nasty pair they better put my bag on the plane.  It should be fine for sixteen cold hours at 15,000m unless they screw up again like last year and neglect to load the bag with fresh fish.  Of course, last year Nina and I were a bit tipsy, celebrating our friendship, and me in trauma from caring for suddenly my deathly-ill mother on a cruise through Alaska.  This year, I was trying to keep my cough in check and kept it to two glasses of wine at our incredible vego dinner.

Then the bitches made me repack my carry-on Joe's rickety trashed extra roll-aboard I had borrowed in Miami and they wanted to weight my backpack, too, even though normally carry-ons are never weighed.  They need to learn customer service skills!!  Socialists. It was 10pm and I am sure they wanted to go home, but there's no excuse.  Looking back, I was wearing my Russian military outfit and they know I was in Russia from my itinerary.  Maybe they hate Russia like the rest of us?  Or maybe they were providing me down-home Russian deceptive customer service.

It's good to know where the ocean trenches are in case we start having an Air France over the Pacific.

Egalitarian Vancouver airport has no first or business class security bypass.  Great.  The hour long security line of Asian pax and the security Asians ignoring them were slow as molasses.

Air Canada closed its lounge by the time I arrived at the gate.  Nice.  Some local whingey schmuck tried to convince me to let him into the lounge. I gave him a comical Russian interrogation, name, age, flight, class of service.  He was a grifter but why not help him out?  Neither of us got in.  The socialist lounge closed a full hour before the flight.

Bitch!  I didn't realize then I was a sick and derious, which you can tell by the photo.  Still, I am holding the most expensive ticket on Air Canada's longest flight, and weary RTW travellers on their final leg deserve respect, especially with the ground i covered in six weeks.  The airline staff should know this since they all have my itinerary in front of them.

Of course, self-consciously-egalitarian Air Canada bunched me into the economy line to board the plane, which took forever and ever, and I wasn't feeling well, nor was I at all pleased with this crap departure service.

Then I discovered that on the needless mad rush to shuffle weight around my bags (there was about a zero sum hauled on the plane), I had put my Cathay pajamas in my check-in bag so had to wear my posh tight Hugo Boss outfit for 15 hours. There are No free pajamas on board this bare-bone airline, even for a fifteen hour affair.  So I was wondering why I just didn't fly crap United, except for the detour to see Nina and Vancouver.  The bitches had broken me, bitch, bitch, bitch, and i passed it on to the crew.

I was not happy, but had nothing to do as we took off over a dark midnight ocean, so meditated on my situation, and discovered I was the one making myself not enjoy my posh air travel experience that others would rave about.

The seat was great for lying back and watching the flight map, and it was great for sleeping- i knew this from last year, same flight, same plane- and my plague-like cough expectorated nicely airborne. I decided to undo my pants and take off my shirt to sleep, under a nice duvet, and no one in the ambient blue lit cabin could care less. I had Australian, African, and North American animals to cuddle.  But first they served tasty wild salmon for dinner.  I dressed for dinner.  Though, sadly the stupid Socialists had no Aussie or BC wines in their pseudo-first class!!  The menu proudly highlined some fat cat Aussie sommelier on the menu and gave his email address.  Tragic.  I wrote him a nastygram on my iphone to be sent automatically on arrival in Sydney.  No Aussie wines on a flight that goes back and forth from Australia?  

My trust kindly allows me to do this RTW trip in business class every year.  If things get lean (and markets surge and wane), I'd rather do the trip every other year and still do it in business.  I look super fit, young and strong to the public, but i am actually a mismash of nailed together gadgets and drug-induced consciousness now, and my crippled old body would be wrecked after a long transpac flight in the back of the plane.  

In business class- or first or whatever that was- I don't avoid 16 hour flights, I look for them.  On an unhurried flight, I can get a good eight or ten hours of snoozing in, and still enjoy the poshish amenities for a good eight or six hours on both sides.  After I woke, I had warm chats in the galley with two FAs about their cool travel experiences.  The older gentleman (the FAs were all senior citizens) spent a decade working for a safari company in East Africa and had seen the same sights I had on this trip.  A lovely asthmatic lady was chatting to me about trekking Nepal on the route to Mt Everest that I did in 2002.  I assured her she would be safe, thoough she'd have to go slowly and monitor her oxygen intake and possibly end early at Namche Bazaar or Tengboche monestary.  They both still have spectacular scenery.  How can you not like Canadians, even if they don't provide perfect thoughful robotic service I get on Cathay Pacific?

Yum.  It's a Caesar for brekkie.

Go Boeing!  Cool environment on 777-200ER.

I decided to make this a win and when I woke, I did my tai chi in the aisle in the large space adjacent to my bed, to center myself, then mediated at 15km high, found myself back on the mountain top in the Himalayas, and had a bloody to sooth my aching sickened body as i sat in the dim blue LED light.  Air Canada conveniently forgot I am a vego so I got the normal yummy salmon for dinner (which the strict efficient Swiss would have never let me order), but of course, in the dark for my brekkie, I got some sad animal ground up in a sausage next to my pancakes in a strawberry sauce next to my pancakes.  We're over Coolangata now, so I don't need to whinge about food, but thank Buddha I brought my safari torch on the plane!

Circling in over north Sydney to N/S runway, must be funny winds today. We always approach S/N over Woolongong . 

Is Sydney really that pretty?  Yes?  No?  

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!  Excited to finally be home!!  Where are my housekeys? Checked in my bags, arg.  Glad I have a back up plan.

Asiana FAs giggling in warm Aussie sun

Nearly home, final leg!  It's nice to arrive at 730a, and even with my haul of third world loot, I jammed through Customs.  It's so much better than arriving earlier with all of the others at icky 6am.