Unisom & Golden Gaytime....

So...I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel in Sydney, doing various internet-y things.  It has been the longest day of ALL TIME.  After making a mad-dash to the airport and rushing goodbyes, I got to wait around while the airline tried repeatedly to convince Mallory and I that we didn't actually need to fly to Sydney that day, since they overbooked the flight.  When we finally did board about 30 minutes late, we got to sit on the plane for another 30 minutes while waiting for people from a flight from Chicago to get on.  I spent that down time getting to know my flight neighbors, who consisted of 3 screaming kids in my row, a screaming baby in the row in front of me, and 2 more screaming kids in the row behind me.  Lovely.  

Thankfully, Michelle had stocked me up with a most excellent travel survival kit, so I got to flip through trashy magazines until takeoff.  I decided to just catnap until the airline dinner came, just in case it was worth eating.  It was not.  So, out came my dear friend Unisom.  I didn't exactly know how potent a single Unisom capsule can actually be, so I decided I would try to watch 300 until it kicked it.  So about 20 minutes into the movie, I was down for the count, and it was all I could do to put my laptop away before I passed out.  Keep in mind, this was only about 1 hour into the flight, and I still had 13.5 more to go, so I was thinking I would maybe be asleep for about 8 hours...MAX.  Then I woke up over New Caledonia, approximately 2 hours off the coast of Australia.  WOW.  That was probably the only thing that made the flight bearable.  Well, that and earplugs for the screaming kids.  

So upon landing, I hauled all my crap off the plane to adventure through customs, where NONE of my travel documents were checked, and I was sent through with a cheerful "no worries" from the customs guy.  I finally got my bags, and set off to exchange my money, which was amazing, b/c Australian money is plastic and has see through portions and is unrippable and weird shaped coins.  I then set off on my adventure to find a shuttle to our hotel, which took an awkward amount of time, and I had the joy of almost getting run over by several cars because I kept looking on the wrong side of the street for traffic...

Upon getting into the shuttle, Mallory and I looked death in the eye several times with this guy's driving.  The whole...cutting across multiple lanes of traffic while driving on (seemingly) the wrong side of the road...it's scary.  But we made it to our hotel in one piece, only to be told that our room wasn't ready and that we would have to hang out for an hour.  That shouldn't have been bad news, because we're in Sydney, right? Tons to do.  Except it was POURING rain.  Not fun after getting off a 14 hour flight.  So Mallory and I trekked around getting drenched until we found a shady asian restaurant to eat at, which was also having electrical work done on it at the time... so we got to eat in the dark for half our meal, it was cool.

So we got even more soaked on the way back to our hotel and went snack hunting at a convenience store, where I came upon the ice cream section, and the hilarity that is the "Golden Gaytime" bar.  I didn't even look at what was in it, I just bought it for comic effect.  Needless to say, I probably should have read it better....because it was super-gross.  NOT golden nor a gay time at ALL.  

Now Mallory and I are sitting in the hotel lobby jacking the wireless internet, sulking over the rain.  Hopefully we're going to meet some other EAP-ers for dinner, so we can be social and feel better about our Sydney experience thus far.  We're going to try to track down some INDOOR activities for tomorrow so we can actually see some of the city, though the weather forecast for the next few days is quite bleak (rain every day).

I'll be in regular internet contact due to my aversion to rain, so feel free to email/facebook me at will!

p.s. - They have a fast food place called Chicken Wizard here.  I think I've found my calling.