I left England on Friday at 7.15am with a car ride to the train station. I then caught a train to reading and another to Gatwick airport just outside london.
After the usual mess of airport security in the uk (and the fact id not got a visa for Australia!) I finally boarded the plane to Dubai. An uneventful flight saw the plane land 7 hours later in a hot and humid Dubai. The local time by now was 1.15am, which I think was about 4 hours ahead of the time in the uk, but by now my body didnt really care, although I found time to explore the duty free area and trust me, if you ever go to dubai, make sure you spend time in the duty free, it is incredible. Not only the size of it, but the prices are simply unbelievable, especially coming from the uk where the tax on alcohol and cigs are astronomical. Needless to say, as a smoker, i picked up 200 cigs for the princely sum of just 43dhinas, or around £6 in english money. Roughly that equates to 1 packet of 20 in the uk, so it was kinda like "buy 1 get 9 packs free" :D
After a couple of hours we boarded the plane once more for the next leg to Singapore, although this did not go nearly as smoothly. For a start, the plane got delayed due to "ground staff issues" and then the captain announced they were missing 100 bags and we would bewaiting for them. I was praying at this point,my bags werent part of that scheme, because losing luggage on a flight is bad enough, let alone when u have 3 flights and 12,000 miles to travel.
finally after an hour and half, we were under way once again, with all bags aboard. 7 hours later, we touched down safely in singapore, where the local time was now nearly mid-day and despite a little sleep on the plane this time, my body clock had no idea what time it was, it couldnt seem to make up its mind if I wanted the toilet, a cig or food or drink. I settled for a cig in a special area just outside the terminal building, but we were given just 20 minutes off the plane and had to return almost as I finished my first and what would be my only cig.
7 further hours later and we finally touched in Melbourne, Australia andwith the delays and so on, it was now 3am. A further hour of getting through security (it is probably the heaviest i have ever seen coming into a country, including china and the US) and then hanging around for a taxi, I got into my hotel room at 4.30am, some 34 hours after I left home (in real time) on Friday and with the timezone changes, it meant I was now on Sunday. Basically i spent my entire saturday in the air above some foreign country!
I did very little on Sunday, having gotten to sleep at 5am and woken up at 11am, I spent a lesiruely few hours strolling around parts of the centre of Melbourne, not being far frm the centre, this was done on foot and with a 27 degree sunshiney day, it was more than pleasant.
I met up with my TV Producer, Steve in the evening and he found a nice chinese restaurant and a bar after to go to, where I drank a lot and smoked a lot, eventually arriving back at the hotel for 2am, where I simply couldnt sleep, although did eventually fall asleep at around 3am, only to wake up at 7am again.
I write this from my hotel suite (yes, its a pretty big place, certainly more room than I am used to) and its now 8am, im showered and ready for the day ahead,although I think my lack of sleep and a hard days work should mean I am zonked by tonight, which will also mean I get some decent sleep at last. Although ive adjusted to the timezone pretty well, I feel slightly sleepy during the day still, but I am sure it will pass.
Today i get my first looks and feels of the new game being used in this TV show and after speaking to Steve last night and getting really excited by something new, I can wait to see it in action. I am not at liberty to say who have created this game right now, but they are big enough to command world wide respect from previous games, so we are not talking about a small team of bedroom software creators here (not that there is anything wrong with this of course :P).
I managed to take some pics yesterday of parts of Melbourne, although not enough for a gallery just yet, so i will attempt to post a few here to start with and perhaps if I do take a lot more I will add a gallery later on in the week.
Til tomorrow, gday mates!
![shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann](/files/avatars/2007/51852-shaftwhore.gif "shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann"){kind=small}
