Chinese Customs confiscated my yoghurt. :(
So I'm in Beijing - the airport at least - but I can't access Facebook or Twitter, which I probably should have seen coming. BUT ANYWAY! To the three or so of my friends who still regularly read this, hello, I'm alive and safe thus far. But the trip is young!
The twelve-hour flight to get here taught me that I really must cultivate the skill of sleeping upright.
Note to self re food on Air China. Dear self: I'm proud that when faced with the choice of "omlette" or "(unintelligible)", you took the adventurous option, even if it did turn out to be goo with bits of mince suspended in the slippery mass. It proved to be... edible. Continue with your spirit of experimentation; it hasn't killed you yet.
Christ, I could murder a coffee. I was warned that airport currency exchange prices are a bit prohibitive though, so I used my remaining cash in Sydney to pre-buy some muesli bars to get me through 'til my flight at 4pm (it's 7.30am now, here anyway... I think it's 10.30am back home). I'm hoping my plane leaves on time, because the same thick "fog" that delayed my landing has started delaying outgoing flights too.
Oh, you saw what I did there with "fog", huh? The stuff filling the air here is to fog what the Death Star is to moons. Dawn hit an hour ago and it took me thirty minutes to notice. "Fog", it seems, is a polite way of saying "murderous smog". Visibility outside is near-nil; the air is choked with this thick yellow-gray stuff. It makes for a fantastically post-apocalyptic view, but I'm not sure how I feel about inhaling it - yeah, it's inside the airport too. You start to see it at about the fifty-metre mark. You can taste it in every breath you take. I've never in my life seen smog bad enough to be visible at street-level, let alone indoors... it's an amazing experience (but one I'd prefer not to experience for too long, for the sake of my lungs).
I've run out of steam and some of those benches are starting to look awfully good for a nap. Signing off until I hit the States or get bored... whichever happens first.
The twelve-hour flight to get here taught me that I really must cultivate the skill of sleeping upright.
Note to self re food on Air China. Dear self: I'm proud that when faced with the choice of "omlette" or "(unintelligible)", you took the adventurous option, even if it did turn out to be goo with bits of mince suspended in the slippery mass. It proved to be... edible. Continue with your spirit of experimentation; it hasn't killed you yet.
Christ, I could murder a coffee. I was warned that airport currency exchange prices are a bit prohibitive though, so I used my remaining cash in Sydney to pre-buy some muesli bars to get me through 'til my flight at 4pm (it's 7.30am now, here anyway... I think it's 10.30am back home). I'm hoping my plane leaves on time, because the same thick "fog" that delayed my landing has started delaying outgoing flights too.
Oh, you saw what I did there with "fog", huh? The stuff filling the air here is to fog what the Death Star is to moons. Dawn hit an hour ago and it took me thirty minutes to notice. "Fog", it seems, is a polite way of saying "murderous smog". Visibility outside is near-nil; the air is choked with this thick yellow-gray stuff. It makes for a fantastically post-apocalyptic view, but I'm not sure how I feel about inhaling it - yeah, it's inside the airport too. You start to see it at about the fifty-metre mark. You can taste it in every breath you take. I've never in my life seen smog bad enough to be visible at street-level, let alone indoors... it's an amazing experience (but one I'd prefer not to experience for too long, for the sake of my lungs).
I've run out of steam and some of those benches are starting to look awfully good for a nap. Signing off until I hit the States or get bored... whichever happens first.