In Which My Luggage of Course Doesn't Make It
Sunday, September 10th - Let us begin with the traditional in-flight movie reviews:
17 Again - The fact that I watched this movie at all and moreover kept watching it is a testament to the poor movie selection on the Latam Chile to New Zealand flight. That and the movie it was supposedly similar to "Big" had been a good classic, but hey it had Tom Hanks who can do no wrong. Anyway this movie was supposed to be like an inverse of Big, where the protagonist becomes 17 again. Every aspect of the plot was cheesy, every point it tried to make was exaggerated to the point of eyerolling. I thought this Matthew Perry was supposed to be a good actor but he was shit, everything about it was shit, F
Sisu - On the Qantas NZ - Aus flight I first watched this film Sisu about a man prospecting and digging for gold in northern Finland in 1944. He finds gold but then runs into a band of retreating Nazis who want to kill him and take his gold. We find out that he is a legendary former Finnish commando and what follows is sort of like Inglorious Basterds in that its a fun sort of revelling in Nazis getting the shit killed out of them. The story moved along, the specific developments of the story (how he kills nazis and evades them) were often interesting and creative. My one quibble was that towards the end (spoiler alert) it seemed increasingly like literally nothing could kill him, until he actually survives a plane crash that utterly destroys the plane but he somehow climbs out of the crater relatively unscathed. THAT was a bit much, and made me wonder if they actually were trying to convey that he actually _was_ immortal (they had earlier said that the Russians called him Koschoi the Deathless). Despite that I give it an A-, it was fun.
"Guy Ritchie's The Covenant - okay first off I feel like prominently putting the director's name in the movie title is an incredibly wankery move. All I know about Guy Ritchie is that he made a terrible King Arthur adaptation I had the misfortune of seeing and that plus his name being in the title of this movie makes me suspect he's a total douche. But despite that I watched this movie and it was very good. It reminded me of some other movie I saw I can't quite remember where American soldiers had to escape from Taliban pursuers in Afghanistan after a raid went awry. Anyway thats what happens here plus at the end then the protagonist, Jake Gyllenhall, needs to go back and rescue his translator but we landed when I still had half an hour left so I missed that part. A-
Okay so landed in Melbourne at around 8am. Proceeded through passport control to the baggage claim. As bags kept coming out mine didn't come, I joked with my parents via text that of course mine is always last. But then there were no more coming out and mine still hadn't come. Round and round the conveyor went but no more bags came down. There were about ten of us still waiting which gave me hope that maybe there was a whole cart still waiting to be unloaded to the conveyor but the time stretched on without anything else coming out, 9:00 9:10 ... on a hunch I asked the other people still waiting where their flight had originated -- "South America .. Chile." Yep, all of us were from the Chile flight. But I don't think it was everyone from the Chile flight, black hearted as I am I would have liked to have seen that couple that had been in a hysterical hurry and cutting through lines in Auckland, but sadly they were not among us. Finally (at 9:40) as a group we went to the baggage complains window. That also took forever as there was one person to help us and each person seemed to take 10-15 minutes.
At least the mystery seemed to have been resolved, as one after another the employee confirmed people's baggage hadn't been registered as loaded on to the airplane. Except! When it came to mine, it was listed as having been loaded on our flight! I went back and looked, the employee went back and looked, it was not there. So now we really don't know where my luggage is. Fortunately there's nothing hugely valuable in my luggage except it's nearly all my "socks and jocks," I might have to go to K-mart and resupply to make it through the week if it doesn't come in a day or two.
And with what seemed like a cruel irony, the line to get out of the baggage claim had grown quite long with some other flights so after finally finishing with the lost luggage claim I had to go wait in a long line for biosecurity could inspect the luggage I don't have (there's no skipping this). Fortunately though that line looked real long it only took about fifteen minutes, but it was 10:24 now by the time I finally got out of the baggage claim. Took the direct bus that runs between the airport and the central (Southern Cross) train station in Melbourne. Arrived at Southern Cross around 11:00, but there wouldn't be a train going to my village until 13:00. But that would be a perfect window to get lunch. Asked google for "burgers near me" and I noted that while I was primarily looking for hte best star rating, one that was close with a high rating I felt disinclined to go to solely because google had served me up a "sponsored result" for it at the top of the page, and thus I realized I'm actually biased _against_ something I see an ad for. But I reasoned it DID have the highest star rating of anything nearby so I'd try to overlook the fact that an ad for them had been put in front of me. It was actually quite good, though $27 for a burger, fries and drink, yikes, we're not in [Colombia] anymore Toto!
Back to the train station waiting room, where despite charging during the flight my phone battery expended itself with my phone only at around 30%, and no charging plugs here in the waiting room (looks like they'd purposely covered over all the plugs lest riffraff charge things here), so this would have to last me until I got home! Train departed at 13:00, arrived at Geelong station art 14:00, whereupon I had to change to a train-replacement-bus and that got me to my station right at 15:00 (I swear all these things were in fact on or within a few minutes of such round numbers), walked from there to my house whereupon I arrived at 15:24, 7.5 hours after my plane came in!
Well now it's 21:16 and I'm exhausted. I sure hope my luggage comes tomorrow!!