The Journey Thus Far...

The 2007 World Police and Fire Games in Adelaide, Australia are now only a few days away.

I began packing last weekend. I had been needing various and sundry items for some time now, like underwear, shirts, shoes and pants, but decided to put it all off until before my trip to Adelaide. There is no policy against going to work commando. In fact, a district so seemingly terrified of litigation that it will not fire registered sex offenders (in a stunning show of bravado, the offender was actually reprimanded) there is very little in the way of policies at all. In the absence of a dress code, my interpretation that dressing at all is optional would very likely, ahem, stand up in court. In any event, I went on a shopping spree and placed all the new, and very well wrapped and folded clothes in my suitcase directly. This resulted in a suitcase packed very close to its theoretical maximum density – calculations indicate that a single teaspoon of my suitcase would weigh something like three of my mothers’ purses.

Having packed everything I could think of left me free to spend the rest of the week wondering what it was that I had forgotten. The cardinal rule of traveling is that you will forget to pack something. Over the next week, I remembered certain things, like Belts, and packed them. Experience has also told me that I will not actually read a small library when I am in a foreign country, so despite many a longing session standing in front my bookshelf, I limited myself to only two books. So far, I cannot remember what I forgot to bring. If I don’t remember what I forgot before I return, I will count my packing a success.

My journey officially began on Wednesday, March 7^th at 5:20PM, when I left San Diego on a commuter turboprop bound for Los Angeles and the Malaysia Airlines ticket counter. In San Diego, I picked up the first of my Traveling companions – Kathy Longway from the San Diego office of the Games. We met up with the rest of the group in Los Angeles. We hung out for a few hours in the first/business class lounge where we enjoyed tiny little corona’s and freakishly small sandwiches while waiting for our flight to board. Once boarding began, something happened that could only happen in large organizations… For some reason, the plane was not actually parked at the departure gate. So we were going to be bussed from the departure gate to the plane. Boarding proceeded as per normal – elderly, infirm and squally little kids first, then the first/business class passengers followed by the steerage class. So, we (business class) began “boarding” which consisted of getting on a bus. Then everyone else was allowed onto the same bus. We drove to the airplane and disembarked the bus and began our embarkage onto the plane. The end result was that the order of boarding onto the plane was very nearly the inverse of the loading order of the bus – steerage, first/business and finally the elderly, infirm and squally.

Such inconsequential occurrences are no real bother – simply providing fodder for humorous observations – and I must say Malaysia Airlines does a superb business class. The food is actually good! Not, of course, up to par with land (or sea) based fine dining, but certainly many steps above the TV dinners served in steerage. And the flight attendants are well trained, helpful and go out of their way to engage you in light banter (being sure to use your actual name many times). This is the second such trip I have taking with Malaysia Airlines, and find the service to be superb in all respects. So good, in fact, that I began to suspect that they all wanted Green cards…

As I write this, I have just left Taiwan/Taipei after a 2-hour layover and am cruising at 38,000 ft on my way to a 9+ hour layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (home of the Petronas Towers). One interesting note about the layover in Taiwan is that everyone is required to debark the plane with a stern warning about a “mandatory death penalty” and go through a security screening before being allowed to live, er, board the plane once more. As an American I was, of course, not at all worried.