Remembered everything?

Some people thought that I'd forget my passport, or perhaps run it through the washing machine.  Others wondered whether I'd have booked flights for the correct dates. 

Obviously working in supply has sharpened me up to the real world, and there were no such catastrophes.  What was a minor catastrophe was the amount of champagne I managed to consume at the Christening yesterday.  Never a great drinker at the best of time, having a bit too much not only secured me disapproving looks from Vicky who had to drive us the two hours back to Rickmansworth, but also a sleepless night to really kick-start the jetlag.

Monday was always going to be a busy day for us.  Not only did we want to leave the flat looking semi-reasonable (Ian is coming to look at it whilst we're away, and we can't have him thinking we live in total squalor, can we?), but we had the packing to do, and I'd managed to get the laptop to a state where it no longer got any further than a "blue screen of death" (BSOD). 

Obviously the laptop had to take top priority; without it, there would be no blog and without a blog, there would be endless abuse from those already subscribed to it.  Suffice to say, I'm typing now but it was, to coin the phrase invented by my Conquer Club colleague, a world of hurt.

The taxi was booked for 6pm.  We planned in advance that we would do the bare minimum to bring the flat to reasonable levels of sanitation and that if we did this first, we'd have 8 minutes left to pack.  Packing is always my least favourite job (ref: any previous blog, forgotten items post) so it must only be done at the very latest moment, as if to maximise the opportunity for basic, fundamental errors.

The journey to Hong Kong bears some similarities to my business trips to Hong Kong: we were picked up by one of Terry's cars, and we are flying on flight VS200, surely the most booked flight by colleagues flying to the Far East.  Sadly, there are some key differences to the business trips:

1. Terry's driver wanted paying
2. Terry's driver didn't go through the Virgin Upper Class drive-thru check-in at the airport
3. Food (in the loosest sense of the term) and drink was available at the airport, however, unlike in the Virgin lounge, they also wanted money for it
4. The seat on the plane may be fractionally smaller than the business class seat.  Also, I don't recall my seat getting kicked from behind by a noisy Australian woman quite as often as it's happening today

Turns out that airport security staff are equally unpleasant on the commoners side of the divide.  The only difference in the 'by invitation only' area is they have fewer passengers who are completely unable to understand why they can't bring through 18 2-litre bottles of Coke through security, claiming to have "never heard" of the 100ml fluid rule.

As I type, we're flying over China still a couple of hours away from Hong Kong.  Vicky's asleep, but I always find that aircraft sleeping somehow doesn't count to your sleep quota and makes you feel even worse than before. 

But overall I have the most unusual feeling: normally when away on holiday I'm targeting doing as little as possible, but this time I'm impossibly excited.  How much can we actually do and see during this trip?  Will the jetlag really bite, will I have to take intravenous Red Bull to keep myself awake?  Perhaps I'll revert to type and just want to sleep until it's time to fly home.

Let's just hope that I can have this Australian woman sitting behind me on the way back, too.