03 – jan 21: island in the sun

the downside of sleeping in a dorm is that you wake up together with the first person to wake up – in my case, 6am. the alarms continued to ring at 6:15, 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, 7:45 and mine rang at 8, and there was still a person sleeping!

oleg was already at the counter checking out. he also found a cruise that we can take, which departed at 9 – boarding at 8:45am. we quickly parked nearby the pier, got coffee and sandwiches, and soon after left for the cruise on the yellow shiny boat.

cruise on the bay

the cruise was 4 hours long, and surprisingly awesome. the boat was one of those that hops on the waves instead of cutting through them, which lead to first me getting sea sick, and then oleg. however despite those two minor moments of inconvinience, we generally were very happy with lots of sun and lots of wind and sometimes even splashes of sea water (i know that all of my hands, face and hair was salty tasting afterwards… don’t ask how i tasted my hair).

we first went to find some dolhpins, where i shot some videos which kinda suck, and photos which really suck, and oleg got some incredible photographs. i’ll just defer to “yay teamwork” on this one. after looking at those awesome animals bouncing around, and listening to all the abilities that they posses (far more than humans), i’m firmly convinced that HHGTG had it right.

the second and final part of the trip was bouncing out to the pacific ocean, which was anything but pacified, and looking at some islands, rocks, beaches, listening to some kiwi history and going through a hole in a rock. it was far more exciting than what it sounds like! the hole in the rock is essentially a … well .. hole that lets a fairly big boat and go out into the pacific ocean. its pretty worrysome when you see how huge the waves are, but our captain managed to do it without killing us. after all the excitement and wind and speed and dangerousness, i found a sunny, windless corner on the top part of the ship and i just napped there. it was beautifully warm. i still can’t get enough of the warmth and sun. feels like the cold of toronto won’t ever leave me!

upon completion of the tour, i finally got to try out the card and found out they ripped me off – paid $10 for a $5 and didn’t notice. however, all is well as now a connection exists between the continents. and furthermore, we can make reservations without spending $.50/minute on local calls. those vodaphone people are NUTS.

after extensive testing of the card we started driving back down south. the road was astoundingly pretty, with more new and beautiful surprises around each corner. one place in particular just took our breath away – it was this absolutely awesome, soft white beach, pearly blue water and mountains on the horizon. we stopped, walked around, i got ice cream, and we soon continued on our way south towards new adventures. but that place was something special. and the most incredible thing is that people here seem to take places like that as normal.

one of the reasons why we ended up going this way in the first place was because of the kaori trees of the area. kaori trees are a NZ speciality – they are HUGE, white, smooth, tall trees, and on the west coast of northern NZ there is a whole forest of them.

we stopped by one tree in particular. neither words or pictures can describe how huge it is – let me try numbers. its thought to be around 2000 years old. at least. it is 50 meters tall, and 13 meters girth. like oleg said “if i lived here a few hundred years ago and saw this thing in the forest i’d start worshipping it too”.

after the tree, we whirled down the curving roadways towards our hostel, both being pretty tired of driving. the road through the forest was incredibly happy, and you can see some videos of how awesome it looks here.

after leaving the forest, and doing some more scenic driving we arrived to our hostel which turned out to be yet another awesome thing in a pretty awesome day. the road to the hostel is a curving 200m long driveway that goes STEPLY down. a very interesting idea of driving.

the hostel turned out to be a really pleasant, quaint, country style place. except i tore the curtain (a bit) and broke the window handle (one of the two). i’m just going to pretend nothing happened and hope for the best. its up to them to keep this place running in face of clumsy travellers like me! especially given how “strong” i am, that window handle was about to break anyway.

the hostel offered fresh farm eggs for 40 cents (boiled eggs never have tasted so good), and homecooked steak dinner for $12, served at 7pm. we eagerly signed up for that (the time was 5:30), and i made myself 2 above mentioned boiled eggs (oleg didn’t feel like any). the time before dinner was spent lounging around the place, unpacking, reserving the stay for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and just relaxing.

the dinner was incredibly filling – steak and lots of veggies. tried kaura, like sweet potatoes (never tried before, but tastes exactly as described. sweet. potatoey.), except local to NZ. and absolutely mindblowingly awesome bbq sauce. imagine very pleasant bbq taste in a thick, juicy, warm, dark red sauce, with a strong, pleasant sensation of wasabi. turns out the owners grow wasabi. must… resist… temptation.. to… ask.. for… some… i think they could sell that recipe to restaurants easily. so awesome.

evening was spent editing photographs, typing a little of the blog (i’m finishing right now, which is next day in the car on the way further down the island) and staying up till late talking to other hostelers. they’ve got tents and they pitch them in the backyard and then cook in the hostel kitchen. we intend on buying food tomorrow and starting to cook as of tomorrow. i’m mostly likely going to be responsible for figuring out what to buy, so that will be interesting. we have no fridge at the moment, or box, to use a fridge (plan is to freeze water bottles and just store stuff there). hopefully we’ll find one when we stop for supplies.

only 2 (3 nights) days in NZ and i’m already overwhelmed! doesn’t feel this short, but instead more like a week.

02 – jan 20: due north

departing auckland

the day started with a (far too early) waking up at 8:45am, by the hotel wake up call. we grudgingly drag ourselves out of the super comfortable beds (after the couch and the fold out bed of sydney, it was definitely nice to sleep on a hotel quality bed), and went to inspect the breakfast. the inspection was considered a success with 4 bowls of cereal (on my part only), 2 glasses of orange juice, and 2 cups of coffee with cream and sugar.

soon after the adventure has officially began with our checkout and departure from the hotel to the “bus on tahp o; the rahd”, which turned out about 10 minutes walk under blazing sunlight. given how before we were mostly in shade and/or wind, and dressed fairly warmly (like sweatshirt and windbreaker), and ended up being loaded like pack mules (oleg’s backpack is 15 kilos and laptop bag is 7 kilos, and mine are 10kgs and 4kgs) – this lead to a lot of discomfort really fast. upon arrival to the “tahp o’ the rahd” we figured the top is the other side where we could see a bus stop, so we crossed. upon arrival of the bus it turned out that we were on the wrong side, so we rushed back to the other side, and in another 10 minutes our bus came. total savings out of this small adventure: about $20 – since the bus turned out to be $6/person. cheap! we were told tales of 15$ – $20 tickets.

from this point life became a little easier for the next hour, while we were riding into town from the close-to-airport-hotel. unfortunately, in town we still had to haul our bags to vodaphone (to get a sim card. ask my parents for the number if you feel like paying $50 cents a minute to talk to me!), and then to avis. i believe i’ve worked off all the doritos i ate in 2005 on those few walks (and even getting lost once).

the process of getting our cute white 4 door hatchback holden astra was incredible. i don’t think i’ve told any of you that if you reserve the rental car in NZ from canada, the under 25 age charge ($25/day!!!) is waived. i called Avis NZ first a few weeks before christmas to check if we can rent at all, and they told me this information. then oleg called avis canada then avis international who confirmed this

guess what we were told when we arrived to avis to rent the car? “you’re under 25, so we have to stick you with a $25/day charge”. of course we disputed this, and two fairly sleazy looking young men of course disputed us. after them arrogantly demanding to know who did we talk to and when (when i asked why – and i was nice to them, i swear – the main sleazy looking one said “we record all the conversations”. *eye roll*), they said “sure we’ll call avis international to check”, with their own eye roll. after waiting for about half an hour, the less sleazy guy hung up with a slightly disappointed look and told the main guy that “yeah, you can give them the discount here if you wanted to”. argh! anyway, we got the discount. so its all good. :-)

upon settling into the car with all our stuff (i’m taking bets on the amount of time it took me to forget the weight i had to carry and start regretting not taking this or that “since we drive anyway” – hint, i’ve already said that. on the same day.), we quickly left auckland, with only one goodbye snapshot of the city’s skyline. and a blurry one at that!

driving…

the trip around new zealand started off with us heading towards “bay of islands”, which turned out to be a fair bit away. after a challenging drive through the beautiful NZ scenery (see photos for all the photographs/snapshots – i’m going to oversaturate you people with those as much as the sky here is oversaturated to blue, because there IS NO WAY THAT I CAN CHOOSE), we stopped in wharengei, pronounced “fanragey”, for a fairly expensive dinner ($20/person) (but still better than nothing, and at least the food was excllent), and a break from driving.

driving itself is very interesting. in sydney our host’s car had the blinker on the right hand side and the windshield wipers on the left – totally backwards. oleg was worried about it, as it’s a big habit of clicking the blinkers with your hand when you turn. thankfully, our car has the blinkers on the left side, which however prompts the question of what is the standard? we may never know ;)

but, generally speaking, EVERYTHING is backwards. turning left is “sticking to the curb” and turning right is “going to the far side”. driving on highways is alright as you’re moving together with some other cars, but pulling out and parking is just ODD. oleg’s saying that the biggest challenge is feeling where the car ends – its totally backwards.

as the passenger, sitting where i’d usually be driving, is not that weird. the thing that threw me off the most is that the mirror is facing oleg and not me. in the start i had to crash the instinctive reach of correcting it to face me – the gesture comes very naturally after being used to doing it all the time in toronto! other than that, its surpisingly regular – some moments of oddness exist, but mostly its fine.

the thing that made us BOTH feel like we’re on pluto is that the windshiled wipers go the other way. i can’t describe how much you don’t realize it, but its just SO WRONG for them to be rotating the other way. which brings me to rain – and weather.

weather

on the way to paihia (the big city in bay of islands where we wanted to stay and take a tour the next day) the weather changed at least a 100 times. and the most awesome thing is that the sky was always blue throughout that time. basically, it was really sunny, then rainy, then really rainy, then really rainy and sunny, then really sunny and cloudy, then some rain, then some rain and a lot of sun, then a lot of sun, then … you get the idea. it was mindblowingly awesome, cause the sky stayed blue, clouds stayed fluffy, and sun kept on shining, but seriously strange to the maximum degree.

arrival to bay of islands

we arrived into the scarily beautiful bay of islands in the evening. oleg said he had seen more pretty views, and in some respect i agree that it wasn’t the most gorgeous view i’ve seen. however, it was certainly unique. imagine standing on a shore of a bay that’s big, but not so big that you can’t percieve its limits. the bay is littered with islands that are about 50-70 meters in circumference, and each island has its own white sandy beach which turns into a “mountain” (a very steep high hill) that is covered with lush greenery (trees, evergreen trees, and palms). and the sun is setting, and the color is grey and pink, and the yachts and sailboats anchored at the bay are softly rocking on the waves.

unfortunately finding a place to stay was not as peaceful. after going through a whole bunch of hostels (walking between them as there arelike 5 within 3 meters of each other), we found 2 beds in 2 seperate dorms. at that point it was starting to get dark, so it was just easier to agree.

upon figuring that out, we made plans for the next day, which essentially concluded in deciding to wake up at 8, so that we make the cut off time for morning tours – 8:45-9:00am. after walking around the town for a bit and finding a convinience store, we got a phone card (one NZ for dialing NZ numbers, and one international, for dialing out. you use the NZ card to call from a payphone to a local number for the international card, and then you dial the pin, and finally your home phone number), we proceeded to local bar where it was 2 beers for the price of one. the price of one beer is $5. so, life became very enterntaining very quickly.

the bar had some silly contests, and i had the pleasure of watching one with 2 kiwi (that’s new zealanders for those of you who are not “in” to the “slang”) girls who were on their vacation from oakland. the contest was musical chairs, and you could take off your shirt to stay in, or sing a song, or make a little dance. the girls were joking about americans and saying that they’re not shoving enough.

after watching the 12-year-old-looking-guy win, and the a-bit-too-big-girl fall on her ass trying to make it to the chair, i decided that i’ve had enough local enterntainment and headed to the hostel, where the internet was too expensive, but not so much that i could resist its lure. quick emails were sent, vodaphone survey was filled out in order for us to get $10 credit on our cell, and soon after sleep came.

01 – jan 20: new zealand trip, flight there

morning

after a morning that consisted of packing my bags (gosh, that sounds so trite… i’ve been meddling with bags of Stuff That is Mine for the past endless amount of days. i swear, no more moving. ever. unless i can consolidate all my stuff into one bag.), talking to tim, and discovering that our reservations for stay in auckland had fallen through (they emailed me last night when i couldn’t check my email anyway and said they’re full), we departed to the airport at 1:30pm, for our 4pm departure.

upon arrival to the airport and a soft pleasant goodbye from our amazing hosts (oleg’s family friends, who have kindly hosted not only him, but me as well as they would their relatives), we went to check in and discovered that our flight (with air new zealand) has been delayed to 6pm (boarding at 5:45).

this is where the good news started. (and i’m not being sarcastic!)

the flight that was delayed by 2 hours apparently on this side of the equator means that we each get a $8 voucher to spend on food and drink. KLM, which is imho a gazillion times huger gave me a $7 coupon for 5 hours of waiting, and i’ve never heard of anyone giving a voucher for 2 hours.

waiting

upon the discovery of our abudant amount of time, oleg and i proceeded to walk around the lovely sydney airport. it is not huge enough to be intimidating, but not small enough to be ugly. all of it is designed quite nicely, with smooth flowing lines of everything, and generally feeling quite awesome. high ceilings, pleasant lighting, nice arrangements, a LOT of stores, and generally nice accomodations. free internet booths, and – get this – an observation deck that’s free for access, has a bar, and is friendly towards all various addictions of a mortal human being. the observation deck looked out onto the flightrs, so you could watch take offs and landings while sipping on a beer and enjoying a sudoku puzzle from a book that you bought in the airport, of course if you bought one. (i did. i decided that i’m not spending another moment in the airport being bored, ever, even if it costs me whole $3 australia dollars!). we ate sandwiches that were given us by our hosts before departure, sipped on our coronas that were bought for the $8 coupon, and enjoyed the warm weather (its not super warm, but geez, a tshirt and a cardigan? nice!)

afterwards oleg used the free internet booth to book our stay in best western which was found for us by tim. only $10 more expensive (but not in the city, close to the airport), but its a real hotel, so we’ll at least get to relax nicely. unfortunately i didn’t get a chance to reach internet, but my laptop kept me occupied with pleasant reading and watching the first episode of firefly.

here one of many nice things of the day happened – when oleg came by to where i was sitting he found a pair of really cool ray bans that he thought were mine. since no one sat there for the past 20 minutes, i decided to give them ownership. proceed to photos of happy olya with her new sunglasses!

after some more hanging out at the area we decided to march towards security, as it turned out far too early as our flight was even later than expected – 6:30pm boarding. i used the time for walking around the airport, charging up my laptop, taking photos of myself in the new sunglasses, and doing sudoku puzzles while listening to music. fun!

the flight

upon boarding, it turned out the flight has only like 35 people, so i got a whole row of seats (3).

all of these things are nice, but air new zealand managed to impress the hell out of me with their service.

  1. first of all, since the flight was empty they offered us to partake in both of their meals – chicken cutlets and lamb pie. both were totally tasty and fantastic.
  2. when i asked for some tomato juice (my drink of choice on flights and generally lately), and some red wine i was given a choice in the kind of red wine i want. japan airlines didn’t have anything like that.
  3. after THAT managed to surprise me (i chose merlot by the way), they came around and gave ICE CREAM. do you KNOW how awesome that ice cream was? GENIUS. honey and kiwi and it was AWESOME.
  4. and after THAT they came buy with offerings of coffee and tea (again average) BUT this coffee was served with REAL milk. like none of those “this milk will not expire in the next 20 years” containers, but an actual pitcher of milk.
  5. and after that they came around again to offer more water.
  6. i think they generally were awesome – came by very quickly to collect the “rubbish” (i quote the flight attendants) that collected from the food
  7. to top this off, the seats were super comfortable.

so, my battery is blinking bright, i finished first episode of firefly, kinda finished typing this, and i shall shut down for now. till next time!

arrived at the hotel

the continuation of this saga is being typed from my super comfortable bed (i got the smaller one) at best western. apparently all of auckland is booked up as people in the airport RETURNED to the airport to find a place to stay. so i’m even more thankful for having a good place to sleep (and cheap too).

after landing, we fairly quickly went through customs, another xray of all our luggage to make sure that we’re not smuggling in healthy foods (only unhealthy shrink wrapped ones please), and started to figure out how to get to our hotel.

new zealand accent is THICK. like, wow. both oleg and i had very tough time understanding what anyone said! while oleg was getting his backpack into backpack condition from luggage condition, i ran outside and saw a “hotel pick up point“. after talking (where talking is from now on is asking everyone to repeat themselves at least twice – i felt SO BAD!) to the driver there it turned out we gotta call the hotel from free phones at information. talking to the hotel was fun too – eventually we all understood eachother.

oleg’s done with his shower so i’ll just forward to now. we got picked up, checked in, check out is at 10am, late checkout is at 12, and time has changed again – 2 hours forward, thus we’re losing 2 hours of sleep. blah. my body is all mad at me now: “3 days ago you told me now is morning, then a day ago you told me now is evening, and now you’re telling me its the middle of the night!”. fun!

off to the shower, then probably an episode of firefly until i fall asleep, or just falling asleep.

(all the photographs for this entry are here)

australian saga: time goes by so slowly (part 2)

continuation of part 1, story of my arrival.

arrival to sydney

i was woken up by oleg saying that we’re arriving. i was totally out of it (think 6 hours of uncomfortable sleep in an airplane chair after of like 20 hours of awakeness), so i was like “already?” turns out that it was breakfast time – 6:20 am. after a fairly small sandwich, 2 cups of green tea, a cup of coffee and some yogurt, we still had to circle over sydney for 40 minutes due to bad weather. apparently for them bad weather means warm and humid with some light drizzle.

customs was easy – got my australia stamp, w00t!

australians are extremely scared about people importing anything “natural” – food, or any food derivatives. we had propaganda with crocodile hunter playing on tvs for about 30 minutes, and all the way to the customs there are bins where you should throw out stuff that you don’t want checked (i threw out my small bag of nuts that i snacked on. thankfully i finished almost all of it by that point). after picking up your luggage, you go through 2 more people that check your forms (i.e. that they say that you’re not importing anything) and then you and all your luggage go through an xray machine. oleg’s stuff went through juts fine, but i got stopped.

of course i mildly freaked out, even though the lady was nice and polite, they put the pressure on you (did you pack this? did you fill out this form? is your name so and so? “no, its olya”). after opening the huge-ass-70lbs-suitcase turns out they wanted to check the big climbing rope that oleg brought with him but was put in my bag cause didn’t have enough space. turns out they just couldn’t figure out what it was on the xray and wanted to check, and thankfully oleg jumped right there when she pulled it out and said that its brand new and wasn’t ever used, so i kinda relaxed that i’m not at fault. they didn’t fine me or anything – its not one of their restricted products – they just weren’t sure. still a bit unnerving.

outside the airport

upon exiting the gates easily at that point oleg tried to find the people that were supposed to meet us, as they are his family’s friends, while i hung out outside at the SUPER WARM AND HUMID AMAZING WEATHER WITH PALMS AROUND ME. JOY. after so much time in air i was like “i dont care if we have to cab it to a hotel, i’m here, its warm, life’s great”. i had enough time to change into flip flops that i pulled out of my bag, so life was peachy.

after about 30 minutes of waiting, oleg found them (or rather they saw him on the way to the phones to call them). we stuffed the insane amount of stuff we had into their tiny hatchback corolla, and we headed to their apartment. this was around 12:30pm, sydney time, or 9pm toronto time. definitely felt weird.

upon arriving to their place, these nice people provided us with a phone to call our families, food to feast on (breakfast), and a place to house all our stuff. the long wait to evening began.

the day was spent peacefully – after getting internet we set it up so that i can connect to it through an ethernet cable to the couple’s dsl modem, and oleg connected to it through the wireless service on my laptop. i did some browsing of your people’s blogs, wrote emails. we ate again around 5pm, after i finished talking to tim, and i noticed a SCARF (that was your another mention) in my bag. after the dinner they provided us with instructions on how to get to the beach, and off we left to explore sydney.

sydney – clovelly beach

this was definitely the highlight of the day (haha, says me after freaking FLYING TO SYDNEY AUSTRALIA WHICH IS ANOTHER CONTINENT DID YOU KNOW?). the walk was nice and easy:

me: so how far is it to the ocean?
owner of house: hmmmm… slow walking its like… hmm…
*me thinking: shit, its like 2 hours away*
him: 20 minutes?
me: *bursts out in laughter*
him: what?
me: that’s so close
him: (i think thinking that i am sarcastic) its not that far really
me: in toronto you have to walk a few months to the nearest ocean

in case you didn’t know, in australia and new zealand all the roads are backwards. i.e. driver’s seat is on the right hand side, and the traffic moves forward on the left side of the road, not right. it feels pretty surreal on turns especially – they are completely opposite in terms of sticking to the curb or pulling away from it. walking to the beach thus was an excersize in futility – each road we crossed i was spinning my head around like the exorsist, trying to ensure that we won’t die (this fast). it worked, no one hit us.

the beach was awesome. sunset, waves, huge ocean waves. they built a small bay like enclosure that lets people swim in the ocean water without being afraid of getting carried away by the waves. all along the beach there are huge huge rocks. we hung a bit at the ocean side, and watched the waves, listened to the birds, and just marvelled at being near the ocean. aftewards we went back up to the beach walk and walked further down the beach, where the rocks weren’t as huge, but more flat, and allowed us to actually walk around the small pools of water that gathered from the ocean’s movements. this turned out to be very cool – in the last picture i linked the black dots are lots and lots of shells, which all have snails (i suppose) inside of them. after some wandering around that area (its fun walking among the rocks, and the salty smell of the water, the warmness and humidness – its relaxing), i noticed amazing sunset started. unfortunately my camera’s batterys died, but i managed to snap 2 photographs before it died.

as it got darker around 8pm we headed off back home, walking under the super pink skies as it quickly got dark.

upon arriving home, i blogged about the day before that, and then i got tired and so i went to sleep.
fortunately for you its only 8:20pm here, so i’ll blog about today too.

january 18th

upon waking up i noticed that my hair has formed a most magnificent mohawk, just through its shortness and awesomeness. i seriously wish i could keep it this short and not grow it out that much more over the next few months. of course i took a photograph :P

next was a snapshot of the outside. the reason why oleg and i ended up waking up at 10am is because there are PARROTS here. i don’t have any photos, but i promise one as soon as we returned from auckland. today just wasn’t a photogenic day – it was raining and grey the ENTIRE day. the parrots are bright green, blue heads, red and orange chests – i mean, people, they are REAL PARROTS. just like flying around. not like those budgees that flew into maha’s balcony either! no, these are freaking parrots. and there are also blackbirds, pigeons and some other small bright yellow black and white medium sized birds. and they all squawk. a lot.

other than parrots, and more eating, we planned out the new zealand trip (the extra 5 days will be used throughout the time beforehand as needed), which took a decent 4-5 hours. i spoke to tim on the phone for about an hour, which was heaven embodied. also i spoke to my parents, which was nice but i’m kinda used to living away from them at this point :P sorry mom and dad! i still love you, though! i think the distance makes my love for you grow even stronger. right. yes.

moving on.

we also watched australian tv:

  • a guy making some bbq lamb while surfing
  • during show he spontaneously fed some of his food to a bird that landed next to him
  • victoria secret model showcase is on in an hour
  • 2 chicks TEARING APART memories of a giesha in a way that NO north american show would. they seriously spent like 10 minutes dissing it. brutally. on tv. insane!
  • 2 channels playing same australian open match

    • and this brings me to this moment, so i’ll stop typing and:

  • upload pictures and post this
  • pack for new zealand
  • watch victoria secret’s show if we can OR
  • watch robin william’s stand up comedy OR
  • watch firefly, episode 01

    • and then go sleep. flight to auckland is at 4pm tomorrow. our place to stay in auckland is reserved (a twin room, meaning 2 single beds in one room, sharing with no one. w00t.), we got all the addresses for car rental figured out (500 meters from the sleeping place), and as you can see we got our plans laid out.

    i definitely won’t write as detailed from NZ, since as far as i know i won’t have internet from laptop for the entire 3 weeks. i will write on my laptop however, so you’ll get a report eventually. and, duh, pictures.

    and i can’t promise 1.8k word essays each day :P its just the initial excitement. my goal is for about this much per week once i get settled in.

    i want time to move by far faster than it is right now.

    p.s. note the statistics section that has appeared on the right hand side

    flight to australia – we come to the land down under (part 1)

    so, first of all, i have arrived to australia, safely, soundly, with some issues along the way, but nothing major.

    it is amazing how little i have done in terms of physical movement in the past 36 hours, and yet how many things i want to write about and how exhausted i am!

    so, in chronological order.

    departure from toronto

    departing toronto was early, cold, and fast. at the airport gate we had to go straight through to security & customs right after checking in, which imho was total b/s, as this essentially limited goodbye to a few hugs (and kisses) and a wave as you walked in. short goodbyes are good, but come on – checking in early and having breakfast/coffee at the airport was such a nice plan. oleg checked in uneventfully, while i had to repack my extra huge 72 pounds suitcase to be 70 pounds – thankfully, my bags are packed loosely, so i just moved my climbing shoes (2.4lbs) to the duffel bag, and we were off to see the wizard of US customs.

    US customs were easy and fast – where are you going? – sydney – blah, you’re boring. security asked us both to take out cameras and swabbed them for explosives.

    we came about 40-50 minutes early for the flight, so oleg chilled at the waiting rows (he said he enjoys it – i was too overwhelmed with thoughts to sit still), while i went and bought myself some spoilage – i.e. 2 journals, time and wired. after a quick 12 minute phonecall to tim to see how he’s doing, some snapshots of our plane, i kinda shut down at the waiting rows until we started boarding at sunrise.

    flight to chicago i cannot remember almost at all. it was about 1.5 hours long.

    chicago airport

    upon arrival to chicago, much waiting and walking was done. we changed terminals with their nifty monorail, then had to stand in a line up for JAL counter to get boarding passes (even though we theoretically shouldn’t have needed to do so as we had boarding passes from the woman in toronto. they are all so confused), then insane US security check – shoes off, bags open, etc etc, no camera swab this time, then heading over to the gate where we saw our huge insane Japan Airlines 747 plane. after much much wait, we at row 65 being 2 rows away from last one were boarded and ready to go for the 13 hour flight to tokyo.

    flight to tokyo

    this by far was the most physically and emotionally trying leg of the trip. first of all, there are only so many things you can do. the economy class in JAL is awesome cause you get your own tv screen and controller, but all the movies you can watch only so many times over. i saw mr and mrs smith another 2 times i think. and rewatched magadascar’s good parts. and saw some other movies. and read my journals, twice. killed the battery on my laptop (if they only gave me an outlet i’d be in heaven). and played out all their cheesy games (tetris, etc). and took photos of the things we were flying over (see alaska photos here). and missed tim. over and over again. and after i did all that there were still 5 hours to spend in the air.
    i was really good and didn’t pass out almost at all – maybe a few times, like 3, when my brain would just shut down in the middle of a thought. but all in all, i kept myself up, so that i could fall asleep on sydney’s night time and wake up on sydney morning.
    if there was one thing i would do differently, is that i’d buy a sudoku book (my palm is for some reason totally dead – unfortunately i couldn’t get it to work before i left – that’d be another thing i’d change i support), and i’d bring a nice thick book i want to read. there’s enough time for eeeeeeeeverything you want to do, and then some.

    arrival to tokyo was welcome and extremely anxiously anticipated.

    tokyo

    i’ll switch to point form notes because that’s what i feel like doing here.

  • JAL switch from one of their flights to another involves staying in a 100 person line up that goes to security (when all you’ve done was just get off the airplane that came from a 13 hour flight) and then standing in another 130 person line to a mosh-pit infront of the counter and disappears in 50 minutes. if we knew that we’d go and relax first instead of wasting time and nerves standing in the stupid line.
  • a distinctly japanese trend – a lot of couples wear tshirts/sweatshirts with the exact same design on them. imagine a scarfy like theme (paint splatters, weird funky fonts, cool clipart), but on both couples. identical. we’ve counted at least 10, probably more.
  • tokyo had showers (see photos) that positively are now stand as one of most remarkable events of my life. after being treated like total cattle in the flight (in terms of food and such, you know, group herding), in the line ups, and in the transfers, for mere $5 you get a clean personal 2 room shower with amazingly complex toilet, 3 fresh towels, a bunch of supplies, and awesome water in terms of temperature and pressure. i came out feeling like i’m a human being again.
  • i have some japanese coins with holes in them now.
  • i can also tell the difference between mandarin and japanese by ear. i know its not remarkable, but its especially cool when you can tell different words in mandarin.
  • mandarin, japanese and korean writings are remarkably different and can be recognized in an instant
  • spending 3 hours walking around the airport and getting free internet – not wireless, which is paid, but internet from yahoo’s kiosk desktop – while japanese pleasant voices announce stuff on the background all the time, is extremely nice.
  • they totally rip you off for coffee and beer. coffee was $3US, beer was $6US for small.
  • upon boarding the tokyo plane to sydney i fell asleep before we even pulled away from the gate, and slept soundly for 6 hours until breakfast was served.

    • i shall depart to sleep right now (it is 9:30pm sydney time, 5:30am toronto, and i have successfully stayed up until now). the story, picking up in sydney and commenting on my today, shall continue tomorrow morning, with photographs of me at the ocean, and more!

    leaving in a few hours

    i’m a bit tired. all packed (for a while now). had a great going away party, and now will have a short nap before breakfasting and leaving to airport- flight departs at 8am.

    what i have:
    duffel bag, ~13kgs
    big suitcase, ~32kgs
    carry on rolley (camera stuffs and wires and blanket and towel and change of shirt)
    backpack with laptop and miscelenea for trip (like a travel pillow, yay)

    life’s good! i’m tired though, but i’ll have all of 20 hours to sleep.

    passport check
    camera check
    laptop check
    visa check

    i’m ready to go!

    summary of the 2005 in 40 questions that have nothing original whatsoever

    i’ll just cut out the ones where i don’t have an answer (like “did anyone close to you died” – “no”)

    1. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before?
    went skydiving

    2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
    i didn’t make any

    5. What countries did you visit?
    Russia, US, Canada

    6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
    more health

    7. What date from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
    february 10th and 24th. first two dates with tim.

    8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
    overcoming my fears and going for my solo skydive (specific event)
    improving my photography abilities (general event)

    9. What was your biggest failure?
    not spending more time nurturing my photography (as in, i keep shooting, but i don’t post/edit, and thus its a slower improvement curve. besides, i want to show my work to people, i just don’t know why i procrastinated so much).

    10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    i got really sick during the reading week, but thus i spent all my time online talking to tim.
    i smashed my toe … wait, that’s 2006, never mind :)

    11. What was the best thing you bought?
    sigma 12-24mm wide angle lens. i love it.
    tickets to LA during the summer.
    upgrade to laptop.

    14. Where did most of your money go?
    travel, photography, fun (in that order, decreasing)

    15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    falling in love
    australia
    in that order

    16. What song will always remind you of 2005?
    there are too many :\ no song (or collection) as far as i can think

    17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    i. happier or sadder? happier
    ii. thinner or fatter? neither
    iii. richer or poorer? richer (emotionally, intellectually, creatively, and financially not that much as i’m spending all of it on travel)

    18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
    reading

    19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
    sleeping

    20. How did you spend Christmas?
    with tim’s family

    21. Did you fall in love in 2005?
    yup

    24. What was your favourite TV program?
    CSI (las vegas)!11oneoneone!!

    26. What was the best book you read?
    i started read GED, but unfortunately still didn’t finish.
    its pretty sad otherwise… i read a lot of grisham, new book of harry potter, and da vinci code, and the latter one stands out, i guess. this is pretty sad.

    28. What did you want and get?
    love.

    ha, i knew all of you expected this:
    sd500!!1oneone

    29. What did you want and not get?
    absolutely nothing. life’s perfect!

    30. What was your favourite film of this year?
    sin city

    31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    i ate and drank with friends and family, 22.

    32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably satisfying?
    tim staying in toronto for the summer

    33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
    ultra casual with breakthroughs of french hottness

    34. What kept you sane?
    partying

    35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    jessica alba

    36. What political issue stirred you the most?
    creationism debate in US schools

    37. Who did you miss?
    my grandad (mom’s dad)
    tim (over summer)

    38. Who was the best new person you met?
    with no question about it, tim. i met a lot of other awesome people this year (hi diny!) too.

    39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005:
    it is when you stop looking for what you think you want, is that you find what you didn’t know you need

    40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
    the world is mine