The blue, blue skies.

I’m home!

First thing’s first: I do not like flying.

I’m 22, turning 23. Since I was three, I’ve been flying every year of my life. My brother have been flying EVERY YEAR of his life, because both of us first flew just a few months after he was born. We fly at least once a year. At least. Usually more than 3 times a year. And I hate it.

Compared to road trips, flying is no doubt the faster and easier options. To me, it is the most torturing. I don’t care if the flight is domestic or international. It’s all the same to me. There is nothing to see after you get to the clouds, there is nothing to do except read, listen to music or watch movie. I don’t like reading on airplanes, listening to music is a bit annoying when you have to pop your ears every 2 minutes and watching a movie…I don’t even watch movie properly when I’m on the ground!

I have people bragging about watching movies on airplane and I just give them the weird look. They either don’t fly much, or they don’t have TV at home to watch movie with that they have to stutter in excitement about in-flight movies. WTF?

I’m a curious person by nature, and if my curiosity are not aroused or peak in any given hour, I will get very irritable. The vast nothingness outside viewed from an enclosed space gives me a weird sense of mild claustrophobia and depressive psychosis. Oh wow, depressive psychosis. I must have been reading too much of my dad’s book. I don’t even know if that condition exists. I think I’m just trying to show off here because I’m the last person you’d know with depressive conditions. Psychotic? Maybe a bit. Depressive? Hah!

With road trips, you’re too busy looking at places and landscapes, and stopping occasionally, there is no room to be bored.

I dread to think that my chosen career will indeed entail a lot of jetsetting. Some people pride themselves in being a jetsetter. I say, bring your pride, tendency to show off and huge ego elsewhere because the term jetsetting now doesn’t constitute anything when airline prices are so cheap. That, and people who really do jet set and fly very often do not usually like it. So if you go on and on about it, it just means that you rarely fly. After a while, being on air can be very taxing. Well, to me anyway. When you have flown every year of your life for almost 10 years.

I remember my flight from Malaysia to Brisbane. I left my little town at 4.15pm. I arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 6.25pm. My flight to Brisbane will only commence at 11.30pm. Luckily one of my closest friends decides to come down to the airport to keep me company. I don’t know what I would have done without him. I arrived at Brisbane Airport at 9.30am. Further held up for Baggage Claim and Immigration. By the time I was out of the airport, I was ready to wage World War III against anyone who dares annoys me.

However, that’s just me. Had I been ambivalent about flying, I would have said that the services of flights that I fly with are usually good. My dislike for flying have nothing to do with airlines in particular. It’s just personality.

I flew with Virgin Blue airlines. My flight to Cairns was cancelled, news have it due to some difficulties with a Tasmanian flight therefore messing up the schedules for the rest of the days. I had to loiter in the airport til 9pm before I could get on our JetStar transferred flight…8 hours of nothingness in a ridiculously overpriced retail outlets!

However, Virgin Blue are not kidding when they pride themselves as the most on-time flight in Australia. My flight back touched down at Brisbane Airport at approximately 1pm, as stated on the ticket, give or take 1 minute. I think I will fly Virgin again, and perhaps I could say I prefer them over JetStar. The crew are more upbeat, friendly and quite a zany, talkative bunch. Some of them might be a bit insane, which is refreshing than your normal boring, humdrum, thank-you-good-bye flight crew. At least, even when I was irritated with flying, I find the service crew very cool. Cool, as in, “yo man, you’re so, like, cool!” cool.

All is good, though. I had great fun in Cairns. I wish I had more time there. There is a lot in Cairns to be discovered. I have so much to say about that place, so keep an eye on this space!

It was lovely to spend time with Hero again. We had the apartment to ourselves for the weekend, and the other lads who stayed behind for the long weekend kept out of Hero’s way.

In addition to that, the boss told Hero he could come to work late today. Since he was the one who bought my flight, he knew my time and he’d figured Hero might as well come to work after I’ve flown off. He told Hero to take the Saturday off to spend time with me. Told him to. That’s what’s cool about that boss! I keep on telling Hero that he is being spoilt senseless…but, like Hero said, it took him years to achieve that position of spoiltness. Haha. He’s reaping his rewards and I’m riding on his tailcoat.

I ain’t complaining.

I better write off now and take a nap. The house is quiet now and I should take the chance to catch a few winks before everyone comes home and decides to chat about our separate long weekend til the sun comes up for tomorrow!