Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror. — Gregory Boyington.
Sunset over Russia
I love flying, but like anything that can be remotely constituted as fun, the more I fly the less I like it. To ensure that my levels of fun were firmly restored to normal, I was the lucky winner of a Super Special Selected for Security Explosives Check, Ma’am, by a security official at Brisbane airport, smiling efficiently like a man who was both brimming with the energy one still has at the start of their shift, as well as exuding an aura of boredom. I was taken to one of those clinical side rooms previously only seen on shows like Border Security, where my clothes and bag were efficiently swabbed and efficiently and scientifically processed in some machine that looked suited more for the purposes of ticketing rather than having a beagle’s talent for spotting the bombs. I got a token pat down, and then was shoved back out to the main security area, where mum was trying to cause security dramas of her own with an umbrella in her carry-on. They let her keep it. (She would later try to take a pocket knife — a gift from dad — through security at the Louvre, and handed it over with all the wide-eyed surprise a senior citizen who wanted only to use it to cut her lunch — should the need arise — could only produce. She subsequently forgot to pick it up on exit. It is still in the Louvre).
Singapore Changi airport is one that deserves its reputation, but no one wants to endure a ten-hour stopover there, unless they are willing to fork out money for the in-house hotels. For those of us who are both cheap and less wizened, we ended up with that glazed, heavy-lidded look that inhabits the long-distance traveller. One can get even jaded with its sparkling clean toilets. No matter which toilets we used, or what time, there was always at least two cleaners hovering around.
We eventually tried to catch an hour or two of sleep, and we stupidly put our faith in the dedicated rest areas, not realising that the areas were designed by Satan himself. Sandwiched in between the equally serene locations of the childrens’ playground and the booming Kid Rockishness of the Hard Rock Cafe on the other, the adjective Rest seemed beyond elusive. None of the lounge chairs were made for comfortable lounging, let alone sleeping, and a large family had set up camp at the end of the Not So Restful Area and were taking dozens of photos. Even with a pashmina over my head, their ridiculously bright flash insisted on penetrating through.
And while my intentions on the flights were to get as much sleep as possible, it can’t possibly happen while I have an in-seat screen with on demand movies, and three novels in my carry-on. This all works against me and I stay completely wired awake from Paris to Singapore, until I get a much-deserved migraine that forces me to beg for mum’s sleep patch and curl up uncomfortably against the window.
We got the usual load of turbulence flying into Singapore too, and went beyond just the This is Your Captain Speaking, You May Get Some Turbulence So Let’s All Be Polite And Strap On Our Seatbelts, Yes?, and became a stomach-dropping adventure. After the third or forth time the plane dropped the majority of passengers on board screamed inadvertently, and then almost immediately the cabin became filled with 300 nervous giggles. And of course the plane dropped again, and this time the giggles were replaced with an Oh Shit silence.
I got a present flying home into Brisbane — the first electrical storm of the summer during landing. It contained all the horizontal rain and lightning bolts and crosswinds while landing that I needed.
