In transit

Schiphol Airport, 09.52

I write this mostly because I can't figure out if there's any free internet here. Boff's post about Schiphol suggested there was but the only network my BlackBerry and my MacBook want to hook up to costs 3e/15 minutes, which is not a very good deal to me, no matter how desperate I am to Tweet about the various mishaps that I've endured since leaving Sydney oh, about a day and a half ago.

Where should I begin? Maybe with my last minute decision to wash my hair. Well, it wasn't a last minute decision as I'd originally planned to wash my hair before my flight but it turned out that waking up at 6am after 3.5 hours sleep makes me much slower than I anticipated and I was still trying to find my new tiny towel while shovelling a breakfast of oat porridge down my gob and brewing a coffee. The coffee, as a result, was shite so I ended up throwing it out but I still had to wash everything, including the grainy plunger. I can't remember whether I locked the bathroom window, either. Just have to risk being burgled. Not that we have very much for people to steal anyway as I obviously have my Macbook in tow. Should have maybe hid my heirloom jewellery?

Anyway, I'd planned to catch the 6.57am train from Ashfield to the airport, the one that goes around the city circle and then magically turns into an Airport Line train. Ha! I ended up leaving on a 7.32am train (not late by any means, but with not a lot of contingency to play with), getting to the check-in counter around quarter past 8 and just bang, bang, bang, customs (long line), security and then walking to the gate. After all that I didn't have very long to wait, even with the 30-minute (not very well communicated) delay.

I'd realised in the check-in line that I'd only managed to bring my China Southern flight tickets (ie Sydney-Guangzhou-Amsterdam and return) and had neglected to print out my LOT flight tickets (ie Amsterdam-Warsaw-Budapest). A quick bit of thinking had me log onto the free wifi and mail it to my phone so at least I had an accessible copy. (Turns out it didn't matter: the check-in process mostly involved scanning my passport and typing the name of my destination but it is still nice to have the itinerary for reference.)

Flight to Guangzhou was uneventful. I managed to score a two-seater for myself, which was cool, though since it was a day flight I don't think I used it very well. They had the old style screens from the ceiling setup, except even worse: the screens were only suspended from the middle aisle and I was in such a position that the closest one to me was at a bad angle and the next one down was too far away for me to read subtitles. I ended up reading and sleeping mostly.

Baiyun Airport was a stupid place that I never want to get stuck at for six hours again. The internet was activated by Chinese mobile only (hey airports, just letting you know that I don't expect free wifi everywhere, just reasonably priced, easily accessed wifi—is that too much to ask? Even Sydney managed a free version and goodness knows how backwards we can be.)

Then I thought it was really nice that they provided drinking water at a couple of stations. Except there was no cold drinking water, just 50C+ water.

Frederic Chopin Airport, 17.04

The clock on my Mac suggests I've been travelling for more than 39 hours now. I can tell you I'm bloody sick of airports and sitting around in aircraft. My health may be on the wane as well, can't tell you how many times I've been in the vicinity of a cougher or sneezer, then add the dubious nutritional value of airplane food (and my even more dubious choice of eating chocolate, drinking coffee and having dessert in between at airports) and the sedentary nature of waiting around at airports and sitting on planes and you have several recipes for disaster, not to mention deep vein thrombosis.

Flight from Amsterdam to Warsaw was uneventful. I sat next to a green-haired Polish girl, finished reading the June/July issue of Esquire (USA) and napped for a bit. They served lunch, a sesame roll with tuna, pickle and corn, which was actually quite nice, and a chocolate-covered wafer. The flight attendant was cute, a chubby Polish guy with dimples and an infectious friendliness.

Thus far I have spent my time at Chopin walking the length of the departure hall and the retail precinct looking for interesting things and finding none. The hall is quite long, maybe a kilometre in length and separated from most of the retail outlets (except a few cafes) by a walled corridor, which I find a bit strange.

I also bought (and ate, unfortunately) a 100g block of apple/plum chocolate, which was totally nice and which I would certainly purchase again when we are back in Poland probably for cheaper in the supermarket.

The exchange rate is about three zloty to one Australian dollar, which seems to go far for some things but not others. For example, internet at the kiosk is ZL1 (33c) for 7.5 minutes, although when I tried the only working kiosk the coin wouldn't go down the slot. I rescued it with a bent bit of cardboard and tried again only to lose it completely and not get any internet time for my trouble. Comparatively, I just paid ZL29.80 ie $10 for a medium (400ml) caramel latte and a rocky road cookie.

But then I texted Boff from a payphone to his Greek number for ZL0.70 (25c). At that point I'd dropped my phone case, as I often do, and was just walking back to retrieve it when two armed soldiers happened upon in and was examining it quizzically. I had to explain it was my phone case.

Everyone here speaks English straight off the bat to me, which is a change from Chinese flight attendants assuming I can speak Mandarin/Cantonese. However, it is bad for being able to pick up some Polish before we come here next week. All I've managed to remember is tak (yes), nie (no) and jen-shoo-yah (have no idea how to spell it, means 'thank you'). Need to do a crash course in Hungarian on the plane. o_0

Welcome to Revesby

I went to visit a friend yesterday, she lives in Picnic Point, which is kind of near Bankstown, the outer areas of Sydney and not exactly the most desirable place to live in the metropolis despite its perfectly acceptable suburban-ness.

I walked to her place from Revesby Station, a 20-minute hike. On the way back I missed the train by a minute - I literally watched it go as I entered the street where the station was located.

So I decided to get some fish and chips (GRILLED fish, chips and salad, thank you) from a nearby chippie and eat it at the station. I get to the platform to the city - and there are paramedicas and transit officer everywhere. Then I see it, a body covered in a space blanket lying on the tracks.

I went into a minor panic until I realised one of the paramedics was speaking to said body and it was alive - the space blankets were there for warmth and to keep drizzle off.

I never did find out how he got down there - whether he fell, was pushed, or jumped, but I did think about what a terrible thing it would be if someone took a photo of him and posted it on the internet. No one did. Not that I know of anyway. Either it's a regular occurrence at Revesby Station or they have more dignity there than I imagined.

The train had to be delayed by 15 minutes as they scooped him off the tracks and into a waiting ambulance.

I don't drive

... so I found this image quite funny. Look, I feel for people who have no option but to drive because there's no public transport (or what public transport there is sucks arse) but for all those people who find it merely 'inconvenient', they can pay what it's worth, which is actually more than they're charging so be thankful.

My worry is that since urban sprawl has eaten up metropolitan farmland, the follow-on effect will be that we pay more for food because it's so damn far to transport it from where the farms are now to where we live. The problem with that is, packaged food becomes more attractive because it's cheaper to transport due to its longer shelf life than fresh food and that's worse for the environment.

Witmol goes North

Well, the election result looks all right - in my opinion, a Labor government (dogged by a stereotype of incompetency) is better than a Coalition government (known evil). Whether Australia's new Rudd-er (ho, ho, ho, bet you've never heard that one before) will turn out to be incompetent is yet to be seen but most of us, it seems, are willing to give him a go. And I think The Greens picked up the balance of power in the Senate so I'm pretty happy with that result.

However, North Sydney is still stuck with bloody Joe Hockey. Nooooooooooo..! Dammit, maybe I should have defaced that poster of him opposite my apartment block. Then again, he knows where I live so perhaps I would have been suspect #1. I don't suppose Mike Bailey would have been any better anyhow. Ah bugger it. I guess you can't have everything.

I voted absentee in my parents' electorate (the very safe Liberal seat of Mitchell - the new guy there is a young 'un, Alex Hawke) and it gave me such pleasure to walk past all the pamphleteers just to dismiss them with a "I'm sorry, I'm not from this electorate". I recommend it. Especially to the Christian Democratic Party. Seriously people, there's no place for religion in politics. Haven't you ever heard of Estates? I belong to the Fourth.

I then spent the best part of three hours in the thick of transport-related 'disasters' (usual kind...). First was the drive to the petrol station to fill up my dad's car and pump up his tyres and clean up the exterior to hide the fact that his alway-garaged pride and joy has spent about ten days of the last month outside, under a tree, in the rain. I'd saved up a Shell petrol voucher only to find that there was no longer a Shell where I thought there was. Then the squeegee cleaned the back windscreen but squirted dirty water all over the boot of the car, under the freakin' spoiler so I had to use paper towels to mop it all up. Top that off with my struggle with one of the old-fashioned air pressure hoses (I can never be sure whether I'm pumping it right - let's just hope for the best)...

So that my parents could have both vehicles at their disposal when they returned, I decided to catch public transport home. Laden with groceries. It is at this point that I questioned my decision to buy 3kg of grapefruit. Problem was that my parents do not have a bus timetable at their disposal and there was no internet at the house. So I had to call the transport info line which required me to know the bus stop number before I could find out the timetable. After much button-pushing, I managed to talk to a human who found my bus stop number for me and told me that the next bus was at 3:55pm and the next after that 4:55pm.

It was already 3:40pm and it takes 10 mins to walk to the bus stop uninhibited, never mind that I knew I was going to be burdened with four bags full of stuff. So I had to quickly lock up, pack everything together and heave everything up the hill to the bus stop. I only made it because I saw the bus as it entered the roundabout before the bus stop so ran in front of it to catch the driver's attention. Otherwise it was an hour wait...

So I made it to Beecroft Station. The citybound trains usually come at 21 and 51 past the hour on weekends so it was unusual to see the northbound train pull up first at 4:33pm. After it had pulled away, an automated announcement "reminded" passengers that there was trackwork on the line from North Strathfield to Strathfield. Now this particular trackwork is the bane of my existence because it is only one stop's worth of trackwork but the usual three minute ride turns into a 30 minute nightmare when passengers alight at North Strathfield and cram onto an undersupply of buses, negotiate Parramatta Road and disembark at Strathfield Station. It's even harder when you have four bags of groceries. However, I felt even worse for the group of consumers who'd just bought a suite of furniture from Rhodes Ikea.

I waddled onto the platform at Strathfield. I should also note at this point that the milk bar at Beecroft had run out of newspapers and the kiosk at Strathfield didn't appear to sell papers, so I was stuck with loads of dead time and nothing to fill it with. Eventually my train arrived and I reached Waverton just after 6pm. Just love it when a 30-min drive is a 2.5-hour public transport disaster. I'm losing my grip on public transport advocacy, climate change or no climate change.

I was particularly annoyed that the announcement about trackwork did not play until after the northbound train had left the platform at Beecroft because it would have been my pleasure to change trains at Hornsby and travel down the North Shore line instead of having to deal with the North Strathfield crap. Hmph.

Anyway, today there was more bad news in the north: the result of the NSW vs TAS one-day cricket match at North Sydney Oval. Although NSW totally annihilated Tasmania in their recent test, NSW went down by 9 wickets this evening. A poor effort. To be fair, we batted pretty well even though we kept losing wickets. And fielded magnificently... just no verve in the bowling, Bracken apart. Anyway, here's a pic of Australian captain Ricky Ponting as his typical swashbuckling self: