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-Diario - 11 July
-================
-
-Feeling deceleration: 20 minutes to landing. All passengers seated, cabin crew
-prepare yourself, you know the drill. Dubai by night from on high is a sight:
-orthogonal streets outlined by yellow lightglobes, white lights marking houses
-or plants (not sure which). Front camera shows the approaching lane, rear
-wheels touchdown, front touchdown, brakes brakes brakes, down we are, get out
-of the way, do a nice parking, it's been a pleasure to fly you, now get out of
-my plane! and take every thing yours out with you!
-
-So out we go, to the warm welcoming of Dubai International Airport: 0200 local
-time, 37°C outside temperature, and rising. Warm indeed.
-
-Transit passengers this way (how do some people accomplish to get confused by
-ONE, SIMPLE, LARGE sign? how do they expect to survive in a foreign country
-without knowing this much of either English or the local tongue?), transit desk
-gives me (as an Emirates transit traveller with more than 4 hours wait in front
-of me) a ticket for refreshments (more below). Baggage screening, and the
-airport is all mine!
-
-They said Dubai Duty Free is impressive. That's an understatement. 40 meters
-wide, about 150 long, it comprises so many shops: you can buy anything you'll
-ever need while traveling, and most of what you'll need not. My Newton, after
-deceiving me with the local time (which is one hour ahead of what Mr.N thinks)
-tells me he never knew the exchange rate for the Dirham (UAE currency). A
-cashieress (is there such a word?) tells me 1 USD = 3.6 Dh; couple of mults
-give me 1 Dh ∼ 500 ITL. I need some batteries for my CD player, so I go
-exchanging some liras. Walk many a hundred meters to find someone willing to
-buy liras, discover 1 Dh = 588 ITL. Not bad for a quick estimate. Buy
-batteries, buy Pink Floyd - The Wall live (because it's there).
-
-Go find where to reclaim refreshment ticket. Info desk. MacDonald. Oh great.
-Actually, it's a french-sounding croissanterie and-the-like-erie. Get a tea and
-an apple-filled whatsitsnameagain. Microwaved. Ten minutes to recover use of
-tongue. Another ten minutes to reduce tea at acceptable temperature.
-
-I'm boarding at gate 7, take off about 0730. I'll listen to some music now.
-It's another two hours before gate opens.
-
-Fog! And I was thinking about asking 'which way is north?' to see the sunrise
-on the (quasi) desert! No chance: sun is probably rose by now, but I'll not see
-it till I am well above fog and clouds. Oh hell.
-
-Countermand: Ek 463 to Johannesburg is late, so I board at gate 18. Thanks me I
-asked.
-
-Regular boarding, no problem till taxing. I'm 25G, that is, right-hand side
-aisle is on my right. Emergency exit is right beside me. R3 (flight assistant
-Iutoi) is uncomfortable: he notices a clunking sound coming from below. Captain
-is notified, crew members come and go. Captain drives the plane back to dock,
-for examination. In the following hour and a half we get to know that: no
-problems exist with the hull, none with the cargo, but: one of the cargo shells
-is broken. Cargo gets down the plane, changes shell, gets on again. OK, taxing
-to the lane. Uh oh, same sound. Captain says ignore it. So we do. Take off two
-hours later than due. Captain announces he'll try to make up for the time lost,
-but the atmosphere is not of the same advice: we encounter turbulence right
-after take off, and never really got out of it. Fasten seat belts sign is often
-alight, the plane rises to 37kf from the 33kf promised (to speed up the flight:
-we're running on an arc with a radius of roughly 6Mm, what's 1Km more or less
-gonna do?! He's the Captain, he knows better. I hope). More: my TV screen goes
-on strike: it doesn't respond to touch, it doesn't show controls or messages.
-Later I discover where they hid the hand control, but there's no way to control
-video params (and they're quite out of their senses). Food is not so good as
-the first flight: chicken with mashed potatoes and some vegetables, salad, some
-unidentified fish. Nice sweet piece: some kind of candied fruit with (probably)
-milk-based cover.
-
-We're nearing Singapore, where a one-hour stop was programmed. Don't know how
-they'll manage it, since we should have been here **two hours ago**! And
-probably we'll not arrive to Sydney before 0800 local time (due 0605). Will the
-guy (gal?) from Wollongong wait for me? After all, they have my flight number,
-they can check. Even thought about faxing them (this plane has a satellite
-phone system), but is full night there, and they'll leave to get me before even
-noticing the fax. We'll just have to wait and see. And hope my baggage is here,
-in the cargo area...
-
-I've slept most of the flight, and my bio-rhythms are quite screwed up. If they
-expect me to start working the same day I arrive, I'll ask Markus how he felt
-after making the opposite trip. What I want when I get there is a shower, know
-my hosting family, **then** I'll go and look around the campus. Not the other
-way round. They sound like sensible people, after all.
-
-Oh, I finally made sense of a picture in the air show (where they tell you nav
-infos and show you nifty maps with a plane in the center): draw a plane, draw a
-black box somewhere around it, and a black arrow pointing from the center of
-the plane to the box. What is it? Bingo! Have a cigar! It tells you where Mecca
-is! Remember this is a Islamic airline! (no pork in the meals, if you were to
-ask). So, using the Mecca-arrow as a compass, I quickly recalc my orientation,
-and discover I was looking for sunrise facing west-south-west. Would not have
-seen it anyway. Oh well.
-
-Landing: I'll pack the Newton.
-
-Changi airport (i.e. Singapore)... not much time to visit it: just got off, and
-that lady tells me to be back in half an hour. No problem: I'll just go look
-around. Around is a half-a-kilometer hallway, then some shops, then start
-coming back because time is running out.
-
-On the plane again. Getting tired of this; luckily it's the last take off. To
-comply with Australian regulations and such, we are sprayed with some
-pesticide, just to make sure we don't get nasty insects to land. They have
-plenty already.
-
-This time I get to watch some movies. The screen is still not working properly,
-but I'll make do. So I select channel 1 and watch The Tigger movie. It's not my
-kind of cartoon (Disney: songs & good feelings), but it's not that bad either.
-
-Dinner. Sleep. Not so well, actually. Succeed in a two-hour near-sleep. We're
-over Australia mainland, but still two hours and a half ahead prior to landing
-(yes, 7 hours between takeoff and landing): another movie. Mission to Mars,
-understading one word out of four. Finale cut out by Captain saying we're
-landing. Finally! Another spraying, just to make sure.