What? Me? An idiot?

Anyone who knows me in any capacity will readily attest to the fact that I never admit to having done something stupid. Today, here on this blog, I am going to make history.

I am sitting at Sydney international airport right now, all alone in the departure terminal, looking suspiciously at the janitor who is looking suspiciously back at me. It's almost like we're in the O.K. Corral, staring each other down, about to quickdraw our guns, or mobile phones, or whatever... I'm waiting for a tumbleweed to casually bounce past. I suddenly see a flash of movement! ...Phew, it's only the barista popping his head up from behind the coffee cart. Deep breathes.

I'm waiting here at 4am, amongst broom-weilding, detergent-slinging cowboy-janitors, a mere 6 hours before my scheduled departure for Japan. One might be forgiven for thinking that I'm an overly eager, excessively anal traveler. Not so.

As I was packing yesterday, my mum asked me what time the flight for Japan would be leaving. I glanced at my e-ticket and thought my flight was leaving at 7:05am. As such, I made arrangements for my parents to wake themselves up at 4am for no other reason than to call my mobile phone (I was staying at a hotel in Sydney) and make sure that I was awake.

As it turned out, I didn't need them to because between checking into the hotel at 11pm, and checking out at 4am, I was fortunate enough to have been an audience to an (almost) half-hourly performance by La Orchestra de McDonald's Carpark Hooligans with their rousing rendition of "Honk-Honk-Fully sic, bro-Honk-Honk-Get out of his car, ya f$#king slut-Honk-Honk" in G-Minor. Needless to say, I was in no danger of falling asleep and missing my scheduled check-in and departure time.

So I finally get to the airport, and discover that my flight does not leave at 7:05am, but 10:25am. In fact, the 705 number was the flight number...

And so it is, without further ado, that I hereby announce that I am an idiot.

That is all, thank you.

I'M OUTTA HERE...

I'm off to Thailand for a week.
I'll either write again over there, or once I get back.

It smells like snow...

It's past midnight, and I'm balancing precariously on my window sill, laptop in its rightful place on top of my lap, feet resting on a slippery balcony railing, with a rum and coke in one hand and trying to type an instant message to Aunty M with the other. I am doing this because I was told that it was going to snow tonight/Sunday, and so I sit here, defying gravity, common sense and risking the possible onset of deep vein thrombosis, in the freezing cold, waiting to see some snow flakes.

It's not like I wouldn't be able to see them. Should they ever happen to float down, there is enough ambient neon light from the nearby shopping district to illuminate the heavens to give it a light bluish/purplish tinge.

While I wait, I thought I'd post some photos from my time in Australia, my spontaneous trip to Osaka and just some random pictures from the infuriatingly incessant light show that is my local shopping district. I have too much to write about and not nearly enough time to do it all at the moment, but I will get there eventually.

---There is something quintessentially Australian
about a country vista with a portable dunny---


---Australia's answer to Hogwarts... but prettier---


---Osaka Castle---


----3 steps to being "so happy" - (1) relax, (2) feel yourself,
and finally (3) enjoy yourself----


---The local red light district---




---Problem gamblers watching problem gamblers---

I'm going home!

At first, I was lead to believe that clicking my ruby red slippers together 3 times would suffice in getting me home, but I tried and I tried, and then it just got too embarrassing... standing there in the little girls section of the department store with these shoes half hanging off my size 10 feet...

So I left, barefoot, and trudged home to call the travel agent I usually use for my constant cavorting across the globe to try and get back to the Land of Oz by decidedly more mundane means... flying.

The phone conversation went much like this:

[Round 1]

[Travel Agent] Would you like the cheap option or the stupidly, ridiculously "Oh My God, Are You High!?" expensive option?
[Kallun] The cheap option, please.
[Travel Agent] When would you like to leave?
[Kallun] It depends on when I arrive. I would like to arrive on Day X, January.
[Travel Agent] But when would you like to leave?
[Kallun] Whatever time/day I need to leave in order to get there by Day X.
[Travel Agent] I can't guarantee whether you'll arrive on that day.
[Kallun] Excuse me?
[Travel Agent] I can't give you that information until you book the ticket.
[Kallun] But how can I book the ticket unless I can make a decision given the details of when it actually leaves and arrives?

(Kallun is having a "chicken or the egg" moment here.)

[Travel Agent] Well, how about this... what day would you like to leave Australia for Japan?
[Kallun] I want to return on Day Y, February.
[Travel Agent] No, no. What day do you want to leave Australia?
[Kallun] ...

(Kallun's sense of humour is being sorely tested.)

[Kallun] What airline will I be flying with?
[Travel Agent] Umm...
[Kallun] You can't tell me that either?
[Travel Agent] If you take the expensive option, I could tell you.
[Kallun] So... to recap... you can't tell me when I leave, or when I return, or what airline I'll be flying with?
[Travel Agent] Right.

(Kallun has a mini-breakdown.)

So I spin the wheel of aviation Russian roulette, and book a flight on Air Who-The-Hell-Knows to arrive at 10 minutes past God-Knows-When p.m. and return to Japan at a quarter past I've-Lost-My-Will-To-Live a.m.

[Round 2]

Having bitten the proverbial bullet, the next step is to go into the agency to recompense them for their stellar customer service. Although I had little confidence in giving them my credit card details over the phone - what, with all those digits, something was bound to go disastrously pear-shaped (why, just getting them to spell my name correctly was a feat of extreme linguistic contortionism) - such a method of payment would just be far too logical and efficient for this company to even begin contemplating, and so I was forced to front up in person and pay in cash. So I do, and the lady with whom I had been speaking the day before wasn't there... in fact, it turns out that they'd never heard of her. After a few minutes of frantic arm waving and guttural growls (I speak perfectly fine Japanese, but my ability to form words is directly inversely proportional to the degree of fury I'm experiencing at any given time), the collective brain power of the 20 or so people in the room brilliantly deduced that my booking had, in fact, been made with another branch of the same company.

Yes. As it turns out, though I had dialed the phone number for this branch, what I failed to realise, due to my complete inability to read the mind of the person on the other end of the phone, was that the switchboard had surreptitiously redirected me to another branch elsewhere in Tokyo. Upon learning this, I was not fully capable of articulating the depth of my elation... no.. wait... that's not the right word... RAGE! (there we go... that's it...)

[Kallun] Can I pay for it here, at least?
[Travel Agent] No...

(Kallun, already steeped in the traditions and quirky idiosyncrasies of Japanese bureaucracies, knew better than to argue the point.)

[Travel Agent] But you can pay for it through a bank transfer... you just need a form.
[Kallun] Fine. Can you please give me one?
[Travel Agent] No...

(Kallun is beginning to shake... maybe a 4 on the Richter scale...)

[Travel Agent] You'll need the lady from the other branch to send it to you.
[Kallun] Fine. Can you please call the lady to fax through my payment form?
[Travel Agent] No.

At which point, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had nothing on me. I went all biblical on the bastard, and then calmly went on my way to work. So, thus far, I have managed to book and pay for my ticket... all that remains is to see what special surprises await me when I go to the airport this afternoon to collect my ticket 2 hours before my flight departs.

Round 3... ding, ding.