Saturday, February 28, 2004

so, never been to hong kong before, and some/most would say i have still not really been there yet. did not make it out of the airport this time, but whoa is that one big nice airport. oops, did i mention the excitement of our arrival at yvr...they lost the key for the planes front door, or something like that...bottom-line we were stuck at the terminal on the plane for about 20 minutes...i am starting to see some benefits from not racing to get off the plane first, you don't have to stand in the aisle for 20 mins when they lose the keys!

so, hong kong, hkia...3 hour stopover, duty free shopping (always overated), american burger chains (almost always standard menu and taste), travelators, smoking rooms (never cease to amuse me), free internet access courtesy of samsung (this is not the only country i have seen this, do they have an unfair monopoly or what?). suddenly i go from a country where i can read half of all the signs, and i get a free lesson in francais reading the other half. in hkia all the signs are in english, and almost all have this other crazy text on them, but i don't think i will ever learn enough to even recognise that text even if i saw it twice within a ten second time span. it was very similar to being in russia, but st. petersberg has much less in english, as you would probably expect.

so where am i going with this??? nowhere really i guess. i bought a pair of sony inner ear/ear canal headphones, these are truly the best thing you will ever hear. the sound is so clear and beautifully reproduced, man they are sooo cool. they are literally 100% better than any open ear headphones i have used. a couple of notes i must add though...the way they work is to slide into the ear canal, creating a seal which blocks out all other sounds around you, good for sound quality, bad for being able to hear anything or anyone around you. so i guess they are not the headphones for all occasions, but places like on a plane where they can block out a lot of the plane noise, they are great. i had recently tried a pair that apple is selling for use with the ipod, they are ipod white and stand out just a little too much. these sony ones are black and like the apple ones come with three different sized pieces of rubber that you can change depending on the size of your ears, tres cool...

so now sony owes me some money for that free advertising...
so what's the deal with...alright i need find another opening line for some of my blogs...how about 'once upon a time...'

once upon a time i was on a plane to aus, this time cathay pacific...has a good rep. hmm, well they did live up to it on the first flight, from vancouver to hong kong. holy crap, the flight attendants were cranky, the flight was fully booked and rather than the window seat i was told i would have all the way from calgary, i was in an aisle seat one row behind the 'bulkhead row' (this is where they put the families with very young kids). crying kids experiencing abrupt cabin pressure changes for the first time, and they were not reacting in a positive manner. behind me was another child, this one spent most of the 14 1/2 hour flight sitting on and climbing around the tray table attached to the back of my seat....and no amount of visual daggers got any reaction nor saw an end to this exciting experience.

now normally i would just kick back on a flight, and this is why i can crap on about the amusing ways people interact with washrooms (i used to call them toilets, but i've been in the continent of washrooms for too long). to bring you up to date if you have missed my exciting tales of washroom shenanigans from previous tales, people seem to have trouble locking the door when they go in, reading the multilingual sign on the door saying push, they sometimes even stand next to two vacant washrooms as they seem to be waiting for someone to invite them in and or escort them or something???? those green lights mean something you know, vacant means it's empty, you don't have to just stand there until you actually see someone leave that smallest of small rooms.

next we have hong kong to brisbane...oooo, what excitement will that bring......

Friday, February 27, 2004

traveling again, this time back to aus for the summer...well, aus winter i guess. my canadian work visa expired yesterday and so i'm gettin' outta cowtown, and the big white north for that matter.

summer/winter (this is going to get confusing) 2004 will be a bit of a change for the books...here's the plan as it stands now.

arrive in cairns mid afternoon saturday after leaving calgary lunchtime thursday! you gotta hate cheap multi-stop flights, but it is just that, cheap...a word i have grown to love and appreciate...the international dateline doesn't help matters, but i am traveling for almost 30 hours! get some scuba diving done, i need to do 35 dives before i start my diving instructor course in early april, at prodive cairns. then by mid april i will have some work on a dive boat teaching people the joys of living under the sea. it's about that time that i will need to start summer training also...and here's where the fun begins. do i go running along the golden sands on the beaches north of cairns, or do i cycle in the atherton tablelands, nearby daintree national park or the always close at hand rainforests?

inline skating on the many bike paths, sprint training with the local athletics club or touring with the cycling club should fill in the rest of my spare time i expect ;-) so it will hopefully pan out nicely and at the end of it all i will be fit, strong, fast and ready to return to calgary and the early snowfalls of september for a new skating season and my first full skeleton season...