May 1: PI lost his job (as predicted 6 months ago to the day)

May 2: Happy birthday SS

May 3: Pick up TK and leave for OSCC

May 4 - 6: Conference. It was a pretty good conference this yr. Haven't heard the fall out yet though, so I think I'll leave posting about OSCC to PI and PM.


(eg of student art)

May 7 - 9: On the plane! We left Toronto on Air Canada to LA on an air bus. PI now swears he will never travel air bus again. They're not particularly comfy. The in flight movie was King Kong. I watched it 'cause I really had nothing better to do as the flight's about 4.5 hrs long. I didn't really enjoy it though. They don't feed you on Air Canada any more, and blankets and pillows on day flights are $2. At least they give you water and juice. They checked our passports 5 times before we sat down on the plane.

Once in LAX we discovered that we have to go down 2 floors to the air canada desk, tell them we were in LA, go back up 1 floor to get the luggage, go to the Air New Zealand desk to tell them we were flying to Aukland, recheck in our baggage through customs, get visas to enter Australia, and go back up another floor to go through customs again. They make you take off your shoes, belt, jacket, etc. and you have to take video cameras and lap tops out of their cases to go through. It was a pain. Neither of us liked the air port or being in the States in general.

If you have to fly, we both recommend an Air NZ 700 series air plane. They are COMFY!!! You have your own tv screen in the back of the seat in front of you and you can use it to watch movies and tv shows on demand (pretty big selection), play video games (eg tetris), listen to the radio (30 channels), look at the flight info (time of departure, arrival, local time, outside temp, estimated temp on arrival, altitude, distance traveled, distance yet to travel, etc. w/ diagrams). The remote also doubles as a phone and has a credit card slot. I watched Mrs. Henderson Presents, which i recommend, Memoires of a Geisha, a Futurama episode, played Tetris and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, listened to Robin Williams Live at the Met, and watched part of Tristram Shandy. They served breakfast and dinner. Alcohol is complimentary, there's leg room, blankets and pillows provided, they give you candy for landing.



The Aukland air port is wonderful. They have a spa where you can relax while you wait for your plane, lazy boy massage chairs, bathrooms that are entirely automated and say, "thank you, please come again" (a bit hitchhiker's guide really), and extremely friendly, polite, and helpful staff. Aukland air port is PI's new happy place *grin*. Short wait while they cleaned, refeuled and restocked the plane then off to Brisbane. Lunch came w/ chocolate ice cream and wine :)

We arrived at Brisbane, having completely skipped May 8 'cause of the time and date shift, at 11 am. J and J picked us up at the air port and drove us "home". We had a walk around Redcliff and went to the duck pond to feed the ducks before dinner. There are eels and turtles in the duck pond as well as a number of different birds. We still don't know what some of them are called. We tried to stay up to about 10 pm to put us on track and get over the jetlag, but PI fell asleep watching tv at about 8 and then, after he got up to make the bed so he could sleep in it, all he managed was to put the matress on the floor and fall on it.



...to be continued...