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Fri­day, 12^th March, 2004

Thursday and fly­ing home. 20 minutes from hotel to checked-in, and through cus­toms. A posse of Singa­por­ean sol­diers patrol the air­port with their machine guns at the ready. The world has changed.

Whatever you want, there is a place to pur­chase it at the Singa­pore air­port. The prices are more than the Funan, and the Funan is only about 10% cheaper than Australia.

QF6 from Frank­furt via Singa­pore leaves 30 minutes late. De-icing in Frank­furt took “fright­fully long”, so we’re late leav­ing Singapore.

2 hours sleep on the flight, and a full day of work on Friday.

Wed­nes­day, 10^th March, 2004

After 2 days stuck in internal meet­ings, and short sojourn to a bowl­ing alley, its time to go shop­ping. Stod, Lee and I leave the hotel and head toward the Funan Centre: a build­ing with IT stores.

If you are smart, you can walk from one end of Singa­pore to the other without los­ing sight of a retail store, and under­ground so you miss the sky. Half way, we see a tourist-y couple look­ing at a roadmap of Singa­pore. Stod assumed they had been stuck under­ground for days and were per­man­ently lost in the mall underground.

So I got lost too. Too many changes in build­ings around Raffles City, one wrong turn and you’re lost. Thank­fully, a short S$6 taxi ride and we’re at the Funan. The Funan Centre houses most of the IT stores in Singa­pore, all under one roof. I am look­ing for a PCMCIA Com­pact­flash card reader. Lee clocks one in a store on a high level. S$18 and we’re away.

Stand­ing in the rain, 45 minute tough phone con­ver­sa­tion. I won­der what people around thought of my con­ver­sa­tion? Missed lunch, but didn’t miss lunch if that makes any sense.

Monday, 08^th March, 2004

Flight QF5 is delayed by 30 minutes. Some­thing about the engine need­ing to be “run up”, so it looks like Qantas have just fixed some­thing on the tar­mac. QF5 is also on its way to Frank­furt, abso­lutely full of an eclectic mix­ture of For­mula 1 pil­grims and tra­gic Gay and Les­bian Mardi Gras attendees.

On the pointy end, and I mean pointy end, of a sieben-sechs-sieben vier hun­dert on its way from Sydney to Frank­furt via Singa­pore. This time, I am alight­ing in Singa­pore. Watch­ing the inseat enter­tain­ment, choos­ing “Lost In Trans­la­tion” from the vari­ous choices. Bill Mur­ray (my father-in-law’s name), Scar­lett Johannsen (I am in love) and Gio­vanni Ribisi (from “Sav­ing Private Ryan”). Hmm, Tokyo in May; Nor­mandy in April. The world is a small place, indeed.

Note to self: pur­chase the Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo so I don’t get lost. In the past 3 months, the Hodge fam­ily has pur­chased about 12 guides for vari­ous cit­ies. The Seoul guide helped my not get lost. Which I think is the point.

I blame my father for giv­ing me pro­fes­sional won­der­lust and a desire to travel. As a sailor in the late 1960s, early 1970s I remem­ber see­ing pic­tures and souven­irs from exotic places includ­ing Singa­pore, Hong Kong, San Diego, Hawaii and Toyko. Either by nature or nuture, I want to see other places in the world. The next 70 days is going to be many cit­ies com­pressed into a short time span.

In roughly 70 days time, I am in Tokyo for the first time. Watch­ing “Lost in Trans­la­tion” holds many res­on­ant moments. Call­ing from a very strange time in an unfa­mil­iar hotel room to a chaotic fam­ily at home is very com­mon for partner’d travellers.

Sit­ting at the front of the 747, and I do mean the abso­lute front: seat 1B, the rain beats on the nose cone. It sounds like rain on a tin roof, but we are in a plane trav­el­ling at a couple of hun­dred kms per hour, on the equator, 25 minutes from Singa­pore. Ah, the tropics.

Fast and effi­cient Singa­pore: out in a taxi within 20 minutes off to the Pan Pacific hotel. The taxi driver is speak­ing on his mobile, hands free. Also, hands free from the wheel as he ges­tic­u­lates his points in a lan­guage unknown to me. As we aqua­plane in Changi to the Pan Pacific, I am eagerly await­ing to get hori­zontal in a hotel bed.