Technically the title of that last entry was somewhat misleading, I was departing soon but for parts entirely known, I'm sorry I lied to you.
If I'm going to be chronological about this, this trip probably started a year ago. Certainly the planning for it did. During one particularly hot summer I decided that's it, I'm not doing this again, get me to the northern hemisphere specifically the icehotel, the coldest place I could think of at that point. I had a desire, a need, to do something I wished for, rather than just wishing for it all the time and so this trip was born.
Initially it was just going to be a short trip, maybe a month or six weeks somewhere but as things evolved it became clear that I needed to devote more time to this and so I have. I gave up my house, my job, put all my belongings into various hidey holes with family and friends and have thrown myself upon the mercy of the road. I wanted change and now I've got it and so far its been pretty good.
My first part of this trip was probably before I left Australia, meeting up with all the family and friends before I take off. After I worked my last day at Optus, I headed to the airport and got on a plane to see my sister in Devonport. We spent the weekend driving around to have a look at a few places like the Anvers Chocolate factory, (I recommend the Mocha Walnut Fudge, my nephews Liam and Jayden liked the Buttersctoch Fudge.) and Reliquare which is this old house filled with a bunch of different stuff you can buy, the amusing, the unnecessary, the amazing and the unimagined. Its so green there, living in Victoria and spending most of my travelling time going between Bendigo and Melbourne you forget that places can be really green as opposed to the browns only tinged with green that I'd become used to. Penguin was beautiful too, somewhere I'd like to spend more time I think. Once I get back from this trip I'll be going over to spend more time with the family. A weekend is not long enough. I spent my last week in Australia divided between Bendigo with Dad and East Keilor with Yvette, Anthony and Miki. Time at both places was really nice and relaxing, just what I needed before the big off. Big apologies to everyone I didn't get to catch up with in person before I flew out, everyone seemed to be so spread out all of a sudden and I never seemed to be able to find a time where everyone was both free and in a place I could get to them when I was free and could get to them, I still love you and will see you when I return.
The last night in Aus was spent with Yvette, Miki and Anthony eating Taco's and Yvette's amazing mud cake (the recipe for which I will allow Yvette to keep secret :) ) under the gaze of the big smiley face of Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon. I choose to see that as a good omen for my trip, had it happened the night after I left I would have had to interpret it as a sign that Australia was glad to see the back of me. While I didn't sleep much that night for the most part I feel pretty relaxed, I find myself smiling for no reason, maybe the satisfaction of having a plan and seeing it executed and I got up the next morning early to get to the airport for my first flight, to Sydney to connect with Etihad. Lina drove me to the airport (thank you!!) and I chatted to the girl at the Virgin check in desk about where I was going and what I was doing I was a lot more relaxed after finding out that my suitcase wasn't as heavy as I thought it was going to be and came in underweight, yayyy no excess baggage so far. One thing I've noticed as well is that when you talk to people about where you're going to live in London they all seem to have their own opinions as to what's good and what's not and they all seem to be contradictory, I'm at the point where I'm just not going to listen anymore, might as well make my own mind up when I get there. Got through security and got tested for explosives AGAIN, everytime I go through a security checkpoint they pull me over for that test, what is it about me? I talked to the explosives testing woman about the trip as well, I'm such a broken record. My brother John met me at the gate in Sydney and we scammed transfers over to the international terminal with Virgin, (I cant believe they try and charge you to do that) and after check in settled into this Italian restaurant in the food court that had quite a nice beer garden considering its at an airport. Made my way through the gamut of customs, through the last temptation of duty free and on to my Etihad plane bound for Abu Dhabi. I don't know where its the lack of sleep or the surfeit of things to do but mostly how I feel about all this is really calm, touch wood it'll stay that way, maybe its because I feel like its the right thing to do, I have my moments of smiling like a moron but mostly I'm relaxed, it was almost disconcerting, I'm used to freaking out about stuff like this.
Flight was pretty good for the most part, pretty spacious for economy and their onboard entertainment was fantastic, they had about 100 odd movies of all different genres one of which was The Dark Knight so I watched that for the 4th time while crossing Australia. The person sitting next to me was a 12 year old called Carys who was travelling on her own for the first time to London, she and I amused ourselves cheating at Battleship and playing Reversi which were a few of the online games but after 15 hours anything becomes a little wearing and so somewhere in the sky above Chennai I started to get restless. Oh I saw these weird lights in the Java Strait that I'm assuming were oil rigs but I have to google to check for sure and there was an amazing lightning storm over Dubai as we came in to Abu Dhabi.
In our next instalment: Arriving at Abu Dhabi or will they let Jane in the country and National Day or pimp out your car with pictures of the Sheik.
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