End of the Road
July 18th, 22:54 - I was writing that last entry starting while waiting at the gate and finishing literally as we began to taxi down the runway. So it was a bit rushed at the end and didn't include some pictures I've since added.
Flight was with United, direct from LAX to Sydney. It looks like they'er building a monorail or at least light rail connection at LAX, that would be pretty rad if they actually connect it to the national rail network. I was surprised there was no passport control to leave the United States through the United terminal. Flight was mostly full, but got lucky, had the window seat with an empty seat next to me! 40ish woman on the aisle and I high fived when they closed the door and the seat between us was still empty. Place to dump all our junk! / I totally made use of sticking my feet under the seat in front of that seat for added room. Dinner was a cheeseburger, which I thought lol how very American of United, but it was actually very good. Seatmate remarked on it being surprisingly good. She was a paramedic from Florida, headed to Australia for the women's world cup, was going to potentially visit whichever cities the team she was following (USA?) was playing in.
In Flight Movie Reviews
The D&D Movie - you know, it was actually quite good. I'd heard it was good, and I'd gotten in to D&D the other year, but I was put off from seeing it any sooner because that actor Chris Pine seems extremely hateable to me. I just have this uncontrollable loathing for him. He looks so punchable. I can't even say his acting was bad, I just can't get past how much I hate his appearance. Anyway, I think part of what made this movie so good is that, very much like D&D characters, almost formulaically so, they gave each of the main characters as basic backstory-motivation. I say almost formuliacally because it really seemed like each one had the paragraph one writes when creating a character, almost down to being like the pre-written suggested ones, but it totally worked in the movie and it had me thinking that most movies don't really bother to do that with anyone other than the one most main protagonist. And each of the characters had a meaningful character development story arc. Plot was interesting and had a lot of clever references to D&D things without seeming like it was awkwardly trying to jam them in or in danger of boring people who weren't familiar with the game. In fact I think someone unfamiliar with the game would enjoy it perfectly well purely on its merits as a fantasy movie. I might have given it an A if it weren't for Chris Pine but god I hate him. B+
Avatar: Way of the Water - So the original Avatar didn't exactly have a mind blowing plot, everyone roundly made fun of it for being "dances with wolves with smurfs." Well this one somehow had a worse plot. At the end of the previous one the bad human colonists have to leave the planet Pandora. This one establishes that after (10 years?) another human expediiton arrived with greater force and established a bridgehead on the planet called... Bridgehead City. Our protagonist has been leading guerilla partisan warfare against these colonists, which has been successul in being a huge nuisance to them but not stopping them. It's now (5?) years after the return of the humans. Okay here's where it gets mind bendingly dumb. The colonial authorities want to kill Protagonistface because he's the leader of the resistence, so what does he do? He stops fighting, but leaves his tribe because he fears the colonials will strike his people, and he joins some other tribe, which immediately becomes the target of colonial strikes. Like, what did that accomplish other than the obviously intended meta goal of changing to an ocean based setting? But in universe, why would he stop fighting? Why would the colonials necessarily know where he specifically is? How would he justify really making some other tribe the target for persecution, considering he's supposed to be such a Good Guy and just causing a different innocent tribe to suffer instead of your own doesn't seem like good guy behavior.
None of this is really spoilers btw, its pretty much established as exposition as soon as they can. And then what I thought was really lame is they have the exact same guy as the bad guy. They're just like "lol look we cloned him before he died!" I think that's a pretty piss poor excuse just to make the same movie again in a different setting. And then, spoiler alert (but really its too lame to be much of a spoiler) they make it clear that the apparently defeated main antagonist has survived, clearly setting up to have him once again reprise the same role (groan) in a third installment. I give this movie a C-, it would be less but I do like all the cool CGI animals they've made and some of the humantech vehicles too.
Banshees of Inisherin - The official plot summary of this movie is "Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship." Which doesn't actually sound that exciting but the movie is actually very amusing. There's a subtle humor to almost every line and it moves along quite well. Unfortunately I only started the movie near the end of the flight and we reached the gate when I had just about exactly half an hour left of the movie. Now I'm quite wrapped up in wanting to know how they resolve their plot arcs! It's apparently on Disney+ but I was getting Disney+ through my former roommmate Trent and it appears he has changed his password. And after he moved out he started being kind of a dick to everyone and only hanging out with his 18 yr old girlfriend so I'm not terribly inclined to beg him to give me his new Disneyplus password. Guess I'll need to fly on United again so I can finish the movie. (But note to self its literally on the 30 min remaining mark I left off!) A-
/End In Flight Movie Reviews
At Sydney in the baggage claim I had some confusion, because as I had checked my checked luggage the handler had said it would go through all the way to Melbourne and the luggage tag I was given reflected that, indicated pick up at MEL, but conventional wisdom would be that I'd have to retrieve my luggage on arrival from international flight, go through biosecurity/customs, and recheck for domestic, and an employee I asked said yes I would have to collect it here. Aggravating things was the fact that it continued to not come out onto the belt until I was really starting to wonder if it wasn't coming out here at all and had indeed continued on automatically. But then finally it came out. By now I had an hour to catch my connecting flight (only half an hour till boarding!), deja vu of the JFK debacle!
Emerging from international arrivals it was entirely unclear where to go for my domestic flight and I couldn't even find an airport employee, until I asked someone at a currency exchange desk who pointed me in the right direction for the inter-terminal shuttle. Arriving there a airport staffmember was advising us that if we had a tight connection to make it would be faster to take the train, so I rain in the direction indicated, down the two flights of stairs to the subway. Train came within a minute (unlike th NYC JFK train that took ten minutes to arrive!), at this point it was only about half an hour to departure (8:30) and I was afraid they wouldnt' check me in but they did, got through security and arrived at the gate just in time to board the plane.
Once again had a window seat with an empty middle seat behind me. This time the woman in the aisle seat was matronly and threw her purse into the middle seat in what felt like an unfriendly hostile manner. We never spoke. Looking out the windows as we flew over the mountains of the Great Dividing Range there was an impressive amount of snow.
Stepping out of hte Melbourne airport it was indeed coold! 9c (48f) "feels like 4" (39f). I had just missed the earlier Gull shuttle bus to Melbourne, would have to wait an hour for the next (which was the one I had expected to catch anyway). Changed into some more layers in the restroom while waiting. Bossman picked me up from the shuttle stop in Geelong, filled me in on some of shenanigans that had occurred while I was gone, sounds like an eventful two months!
Kind of expected the car to need to be jumped but it started right up. Went and got lunch at the schnitzel-wrap place nad then some groceries since I obviously have no perishables from before I left. Then headed home.
Just on the edge of my village I pass a police car, which I see promptly do a u-turn behind me. Which isn't a normal place to do so so I was bracing myself for what came next which was the reds and blues behind me. Remember my car? Having collided with a cow on the road? Well, I was waiting for their insurance to pay me for my damages, finally finally after taking seemingly forever (literally 7 months) they emailed me while I was in Africa saying they (the insurance company) found their client was not at fault because the fences were in good order and a cow jumping over a fence is an "act of god." I responded by sending the photo of the numerous cows on the road, and reminder that the farmer had admitted to owning the cow I hit, and they responded that it was unprovable that those other cows were also the farmers, which in my opinion stretched credulity beyond reason. So now that I'm back I've made an appointment with a lawyer to sue them for the damages. But long story short my car has not been repaired yet.
The copper, who it turns out is the local Birregurra copper, was relatively friendly, said he wasn't going to ticket me or condemn my car with a "canary" (yellow ticket making a car officially unroadworthy), but he would if he saw me on the road with it again. Soo I was going to go to work tomorrow but I think I'll instead take the day to buy another car. As I've mentioned before I hate hate hate hate hate shoppinig for cars. But I think, though I innately feel like one "should" shop all around for the best car, I'm literally going to buy the first reasonably priced reasonable car I find because did I mention I absolutely haaaaate shopping for cars?
Anyway, welcome home ey?
Arrived home at 15:45 local time, which I think would have been 22:45 July 19th back in California, ie right on about 24 hours after my flight took off from LAX.
My neighbor who i left my house key with wasn't home just yet, which presented a bit of a pickle. But weirdly, considering I recall having a hard time finding a house key to lock the house with at all before I left, on this occasion I went to where I felt my spare key should be and lo there was a key tehre that opened the house. I don't know why I couldn't find that key before I left? Or maybe I knowingly put it there at the time in addition to giving one to my neighbor and have simply forgotten.
Anyway, the end.