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It's been a while
There are times when you want to sleep, and there are times when you want to sleep but deep in the subconscious there is awareness that something is not quite right. With one eye hesitantly opening there was, in the row immediately behind, a young man in distress, surrounded by flight attendants being bottle-fed oxygen and having his head mopped. From premium economy, there is no business class here, appeared a doctor who took charge for the remainder of our midnight flight from Perth to Melbourne. Whatever had happened, this young man was in good hands as they cleared out a row of seats and he lay prone still with oxygen and still having his head caressed.
If this had been Jetstar that young man would probably have been charged for the three seats he lay across and for the blankets and pillows they fetched. Heaven knows what the oxygen would have cost, and they possibly would have invoiced the doctor for working on their airline. Fortunately this was Virgin Blue and for a budget airline (even though my seat cost more than for the Air New Zealand return flight) they deserve a nod.
Right from check-in the service was impeccable; the helpful young man at the booking counter spent time running through available seats, offering the emergency row with plenty of legroom on the trans-Tasman sector. He thought our pet didgeridoo may be too big for hand luggage, so went away, got tape and secured it so it could go as checked luggage and then didn’t bat an eyelid as the baggage weight snuck cheekily over the limit. On first impressions, and they count, Virgin Blue is right up there with the best, even the New Zealand-made food was agreeable.
Once awake, there was little to do but browse the West Australian, known for its high-quality journalism and in-depth analysis of world events. In Germany a postman married his obese and asthmatic cat, saying he wanted to marry her before she dies; in Perth at the weekend a Catholic priest lay a mentally and physically disabled young woman on an altar and ordered her to walk and talk and in Oxford, England, an Australian who has spent 37 years in prison for pedophilic offences against boys has been filmed leering at children just down the road from my cousin's house.
Mid-journey, at Melbourne airport, an Emirates flight to New Zealand was being called. It must have been careless of me but just before leaving I received notice that a cluster of Emirates air points were about to expire. That was only after I had booked and paid for a seat to New Zealand, but if there was one good outcome I did donate the soon-to-be-expired points to a seeing-eye charity, so as a result some poor young child possibly has vision. Next, the last remaining passengers on an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland were being called. The land of the long white cloud was getting close.
International travel requires a passport, no secrets there, but what many people may not realise is that there are many countries that do not permit entry to their borders if the intended travel is not completed within six months of the passport expiring. This begs the question of why have a passport of a particular duration if it is virtually useless for the last six months. Mine is close enough to that six month period to mean immediate travel to places like Thailand and Bali is out of the question, but at almost ten years old, it tells an interesting and exotic tale. In no particular order and without repetition; Greece, Switzerland, Korea, Sri Lanka, Great Britain, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Germany, Hong Kong, Macau, China, Barbados, Oman, Holland, the Republic of Ireland, Japan, Hungary, Croatia, Italy, Belgium, France, Egypt, an unused visa for India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia. There may be more but some stamps are indistinct, and then there is New Zealand. On the immigration form a question asks how long the applicant has been out of the country. At one year, four months and about twenty days, its been a long time.