I finally arrived yesterday afternoon, in fact the plane was early, and I was home with my luggage all upstairs by 3pm. I've slept most of the time since then, apart from a short trip to the supermarket, and three hours last night when I was awake. Now it's nearly 11am, and I am sitting here, thinking of having a shower and getting dressed and doing a few things.


The journey was long - first from Sydney to Melbourne. I have to say I think Sydney Airport is much nicer than Melbourne, there are much nicer shops in the domestic terminal. And even when I arrived at the international terminal on Friday afternoon from New Zealand, they were much nicer and lifted the cases through the machine themselves, there were strong men there to do it specially, instead of like at Melbourne, where you have to do it yourself.

Melbourne international terminal is really dreary, there's nothing to do while you wait at all, and I had to wait three hours until Etihad check-in opened. I just sat there, and read, then checked in as soon as they were there. They made me pay excess baggage as well, work are going to love that! However, in Melbourne Etihad use the Qantas lounge, and - once I actually found this - it was comfortable and great, with free internet.

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I left this post yesterday to go to sleep again - combination of jetlag and the Tasmanian plague, which is still with me - I am seeing the doctor this afternoon about it all. I slept through quite a lot of yesterday as well, and all through the night, waking up at about 7 this morning. So perhaps I am getting back to normal, I certainly hope so.

To continue with my journey, the trip from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi was very turbulent, apparently this is normal on this route, but I was petrified the whole way, nearly. When we got to Abu Dhabi, I was extremely relieved, and rushed straight for the shower and had another breakfast. Then the plane to Paris was extremely empty, only three people in business class, so I had some more sleep and more breakfast, the third one for the day. This was a much shorter flight, only about seven hours, and I was met at the plane door by an Etihad chauffeur hostess, who took me to get my bags, and out through the staff queues, so that I was with my chaufffeur very quickly and home much earlier than I had expected. The dear man carried my cases upstairs as well, not that I have unpacked a thing since.

I had a load of mail, including all my CHS charts from SBB, and the last Loose Feathers from Blackbird Designs as well - I have even put a few stitches into this one. Apart from that, I've just been lying around sleeping or reading! Apart from talking to a project manager yesterday, who called me and said he wanted to assign me to a project in the Netherlands in September, which came as a huge surprise to me. He actually wanted me to go there on Thursday and be interviewed, which I have said no to - it's my holidays and I don't feel well. I've very kindly said they can all me later in the week, I think that's very good of me!