- Sitting on Singapore aeroplane headed for Zurich next to an Australian teacher who now teaches in an International school in Switzerland. Plane delayed apparently because air traffic is quite bad at that time of the "day". Managed to sleep for 3 or so hours and watched a few weird movies such as 'This is it' and '9' and 'Love Happens'.
1430 hours- Plane lands in Zurich airport (0730 local time) which has a light dusting of snow. Debbie is happy just to be on the ground and in a cooler climate.
1500 hours- Grabbed small 15kg luggage, went through customs and found out EasyJet flight to Gatwick airport is cancelled due to "terrible" weather conditions.
1630 hours- After several most likely very expensive phone calls and text messages, Uncle Clarence books flight for me to fly to London City Airport on British Airways at 16:55 local time.
1800 hours- Debbie changes Singapore dollars to buy a cup of coffee and a Danish pastry. Debbie also realises that laptop battery hasn't died yet and loves the fact that she can use offline gmail though should probably start roaming airport again before she falls asleep and misses new flight.
2300 hours- Sitting at gate waiting to board plane headed for London City Airport
2337 hours- Pilot announces at the gate that there are serious technical faults on the aircraft and more information will be released as they try to fix the problem.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
0100 hours- Some sort of announcement is made and everyone goes to a different gate only to find information was wrong. We all return to original gate.
0130 hours- Flight is not officially cancelled but people at gate tell us it is. Told to wait for further information
0145 hours- We move to new gate and they collect in tickets.
0200 hours- I get a new ticket for a different flight scheduled to leave at 1915 local time bound for London Heathrow. Current status: desperate desire for a hot shower and a warm bed. Realised that I have now held 3 different tickets for flights heading to 3 different airports within London and yet have not been out of this airport for almost 12 hours. Add on the delayed 13 hour flight due to bad weather and the journey from the ship, I've been "on the road" for 28 hours now. You may be able to tell that Debbie is ever so slightly grumpy at this point of time.
0300 hours- Everybody finally boards the plane
0335 hours- Problems with snow on the runway but we finally take off. Debbie is ecstatic but much too tired to express such emotion. :P
0500 hours- Touch down in LHR terminal 5, YAY! Oh wait, there is serious ice on the runways so outbound flights are stuck therefore there is no free parking space for us. They tell us it could be a 45min to 1 hour wait. Lots of swear words are being flung about... kinda funny.
0545 hours- Debbie is out of the plane and praising God for IRIS so she doesn't have to stand in the ridiculously long passport control queue.
0615 hours- Luggage finally comes through.
0630 hours- Catch free train to Heathrow Central. That's nice.
0700 hours- Catch X26 bus that takes me to East Croydon... hope I don't fall into too deep a sleep and miss my stop.
0820 hours- Managed to wake up in time to get off X26 and wait in the cold for about 5 minutes before 119 comes along to take me home.
0845 hours- Debbie finally opens the door to the flat to find a pile of mail on the floor.
Summary Statistics
0900- The local time in Singapore when I waved the Doulos goodbye possibly for the last time on Thursday the 7th of January 2010.
4- The number of plane tickets with different destinations I held in my hands though I only sat on 2 planes and stayed in exactly one terminal of the airport for 3 of them.
12- The number of hours I hung around Zurich airport... still not sure how I survived that one as I definitely did not sleep.
3- Total amount of hours slept out of the last 36.
0100- The current hour now in London on Saturday the 9th of January 2010.
36- The total number of hours spent to get from point A to point B.
Status: hungry, sleep, a little bit cold but all in all, extremely grateful to the Lord for friends who helped get the tickets, for the fact that I DID actually managed to fly and that He brought me safely back... also for things like a warm bed, super-comfy duvets and my much-missed pillow. Indeed, GOD IS STILL GOOD! Goodnight dearest praying friends.
