Airports… god damn airports

I hate airports. With passion. You’d think it wouldn’t be that much of a change between Melbourne and Sydney, but I may as well be in a different country. I’m sitting at Starbucks in Sydney airport, where I’m starting a highly enjoyable five hour wait for my next flight (why oh why I can’t spend six hours in Honolulu instead I do not know).

At the very least I’ve found a powerpoint, and didn’t have to unplug a vending machine for it. I only hope the staff here aren’t bright enough to realise I don’t drink coffee.

I’m getting flashbacks to L.A., here at Sydney. We land at some random terminal, catch a bus across the tarmac to the international terminal, and then walk for twenty minutes trying to find a damn check-in counter1. At least I didn’t have to haul my luggage all that way… apparently it’s being forwarded automagically onto my next flight. Or a flight, at least. I’d love to put a GPS tracker in my luggage and see where it goes… imagine the frequent flyer miles I could accrue if I could get them from my luggage.

Damnit, why does no one here speak English.

I may very well have passed into the Twilight Zone… this could be central Czechoslovakia for all I really know… I think this group next to me is speaking Russian.

They have a giant frog here, skinned with tens of thousands of tiles. It’s quite impressive. It must be the national animal of whatever this country is.

Well, actually it looks a fair bit like a cane toad. Hmmm.

“Sydney” is apparently “sid-nay-er” in Russian. Important thing to remember.

My decision to pack all my CDs with my laptop seems to have been exceedingly wise… I’ll soon be able to fire up Starcraft and pass a little time. Unfortunately there’s no wireless here… at least, not that’s usable. There are networks from Optus and Telstra, but they charge $12 an hour. Ummm… no thanks.

This sucks.

  1. There isn’t one – a check-in counter – by the way… apparently check-in counters only appear three hours before the flight. Indicating this at any point would of course be much too difficult for all concerned. ↩︎

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