So if this post doesn’t read very well blame my lack of sleep! It’s weird, I don’t feel like the time-zones are wrong — I just feel tired and dizzy. It remind’s me of that clip from Flight of the Conchords after they have taken acid and the walls of the bathroom are moving back and forth. Oh well, I’m planning on a long and deep sleep tonight!

First up, check out what this bank is called:

I spoke too soon before

Can long-haul flights ever be good?

In my last post, I mentioned how I was quite enjoying the flight. Well… I definitely spoke to soon! The 3rd leg of my journey (Kuala Lumper to Dubai) was painful. The 7+ hr flight departed KL at 2:59am AEST, so my body just wanted to go to sleep. But as much as I tried, I couldn’t sleep while sitting upright in a seat. Luckily we got there eventually :-)

Of cause, it wasn’t all bad. I met some more cool people, such as a big group of older Aussies who were on-route to do a tour in Turkey. Also, the Malaysian girl sitting across from me had actually presented a paper at some conference hosted at the Uni of Tas! Small world hey!

“… because of Technical.”

Fault-starts are common in running, but what about aeroplanes? Well at about 4:30am our plane started powering down the Dubai runaway. We had not gone very far before the pilot cut the trust and we just rolled to the other end of the runway. I’ve got no idea what went wrong, except for the description given to us by the pilot, “blah blah blah… … we are returning to the terminal because of technical.” Great description mate! Anyway, two hours later the technicians had fixed our plane and we were back in the air.

Istanbul

So I’m now in Istanbul! Security at the airport was almost non-existent. They asked no questions, said nothing, and looked at none of my bags. They just gave me my USD20 visa sticker, stamped my passport, and I was in Turkey! I imagine it’s going to be a lot more complicated to get back into Australia.

Istanbul is a pretty awesome city. Here’s the official list of Humphreys Top Weird/Cool/& crazy things about Istanbul:

• Everything is so old! I’m used to being in Australia where no building is more than ~200 years old.
• I’m the odd one out in terms of ethic background / religion! There are barely any ranga’s here (except for tourists).
• Sales people are annoying! Almost every shop (at least in the region I’m staying in) has a sales evangelist standing outside their shop. They seem to use one of three main approaches to try and convince you to come into their business.
  1. Just ask you if you are interested: “Sir, come in for a beer, a meal, etc”, or the most recent one I heard, “Come in and have a look. Looking is free.”
  2. Just start a friendly conversation with you: “Are you having a nice day”, “how long have you been here?”, “Are you from Barcelona?” — I was wearing a Barcelona t-shirt today :-)
  3. Get angry at you — “Sir, can you please wait a moment. SIR, I need to talk to you. SIR! SIR! It’s important. Without a jacket you will get sick!”
• There are no road rules — Red lights don’t seem to mean much, and cars do not try to avoid people. I’ve had to move very quicky a few times today to avoid becoming roadkill. Also, every 2nd taxi has a dent & scratched paintwork  mmm…
• I no-longer think it’s weird to suddenly see a number of polis standing around on the street with machine guns. I walked past about 50 polis officers today — 10 or so with machine guns. Later on, I walked past some building that was being guarded by two polis with machine guns.

“We go to baths, then my hotel?”

While walking past the ensemble of polis officers, this dude started talking to me. It was a bit weird, but since there was heaps of people around (inc 50 polis) I wasn’t too worried. Once he found out it was my first time to Istanbul he wanted to take me around and show me some stuff. “We go to Turkish baths, massage, we have some tea, then go back to my hotel?”

I would be keen to try a lot of those things (except for his hotel), but not with some random person who just started talking to me on the street. Luckily, he didn’t seem offended that I rejected his offer.

“You have girlfriend back home in Australia?”

“Are you from Barcelona?” were the words that I heard as I was stopped by some Turkish guy in his low 20’s. That was the 3rd time today that I had been stopped with that question. Serves me right for wearing the t-shirt Anyway, this guy just started up a friendly conversion about where I’m from, what I’m doing here, and then [all of a sudden] about whether I have a girlfriend back in Tassie.

“Do you like Bulgarian girls?”, since he then knew by then that I was going to Bulgaria soon. “What about Turkish girls? hey hey? Not good for liking but good for satisfying needs!” Wow! the topic of conversation changed that way very quickly! What a PIMP! I didn’t hang around after that. He even had to stop and think about what his name was when i asked!

Bed time!

Well it’s been an awesome day! I’ve eaten kebabs, Turkish delight, balaclava, and Turkish coffee, and got to look around at heaps of cool stuff. So, it’s bed time for me!

Thanks for reading, and remember that school is cool — but not as cool as commenting on somebodies (read “my”) blog post ;-)

Since I’ve got 3.5 hours left to go, and I haven’t managed to fall asleep yet, I thought it’d be the perfect time to some blogging. I’ll make this post live whenev’ I come across some wifi-ness, so I’ll probably be on the other side of the world by the time you read this.

Jetstar-ness

Even though I’ve been sitting on planes, I’ve really enjoyed today. I stayed up to 2am last night packing, only to have to wake up at 7:30 to go catch my Jetstar flight. Yes, I’m tired! The best thing about today has been the people I’ve met. On the Jetstar flight to Melb i got talking to this steel miner who was telling me all these awesome things to do in thailand. I think I want to go there some time now.

On a completely different tangent, last weekend in Launy I got followed / stalked / harrassed by some weird guy in a park in Launceston. Anyway I swore he was sitting a few seats behind me on the jetstar flight. Chances are it wasn’t him, since I can barely remember what he looked like. However, his hair looked familiar, and he did give me a weird look. Or at least, my subconsious told me he did. Anyway, I left much better once I managed to loose him in the airport.

Coffee-crawl-ness

Since my Jetstar flight was ontime/early (yes you heard me right), I skybused into the CBD of Melb to drink some coffee at St Ali. I was cutting it fine (needed to get there, drink coffee and get back in 2.5hr) but it was so worth it. Even if the coffee wasn’t as good as last time I was there. But still, much better than airport coffee.

What are you doing here God?

While at St Ali, I got talking to this business guy who was doing some proof reading there. We had some good chats about life, work, travelling to europe, etc… Anyway, it turned out that he was about to leave for a meeting right next to the airport, so he offered me a ride. My first thought was, “Oh wow, what a coincidence! God must be doing something here”. That thought was immediately followed by, “Oh, he could be a serial killer who sits around looking for unsuspecting victims”. Anyway, that got me thinking a bit later on about trusting and following Gods lead. So here is goes.

Side note, this aeroplane red wine is pretty good!

If I was back in Tassie, I probably would have just taken the ride with the guy. But before I left Tassie, a number of people told me to be safe, don’t take risks, etc. So, all of a sudden, I found myself praying, “So God, what’s going on? Is this you bringing cool opportunities my way? Maybe even you told him to offer me a ride?” After all, I was only asking him for opportunities last night. “Or God, is something going to go wrong, if I go with this guy? Will I miss my flight? Or maybe something worse?”

So I’m interested to hear what you guys would do in this situation? How do you know if God is leading you? It’d be great to get some discussion happening in the comments below. :-)

After a very quick prayer, I was pretty sure he wasn’t a serial killer, but I also didn’t hear God say that this was a sitition he was setting up. I’m not saying that it wasn’t Gods plan, but I didn’t hear him say it was So I decided to just get the SkyBus back to the airport. I figured everybody back home would kill me themselves if i didn’t do that Ok, so I was (and still am) about 98.273% sure that he was just a nice guy who was being helpful. But, I thought better safe than sorry.

But at least it got me thinking about listening to God and trusting him. After all, there are all these verses about how we should step out in faith and trust God. So in theory, I could have trusted that God would look after me. On the otherhand, God gives us wisdom and wants us to make smart decisions. So I’m sure I made the right decision anyway.

Don’t worry, if it sounds like a big thing, it wasn’t. It was more the thoughts about following God’s leading that were interesting.

The first leg of the long flight!

Well this is the best plane I’ve ever travelled in by a long shot. Malayasian airlines is better than jetstar! Every seat comes with a pillow, blanket, and surprisingly comfortable seats. The flight is also rather empty. In my row (of 9 seats, there are only four people). I’m in the middle bit all my myself, so I’ve already pushed up all of the arm rests and tried tried to sleep lying across four seats . Although, I still didn’t fall asleep. But I’m planning on trying again soon once I finish writing this!

Aeroplane Food

The food on the plane has also been good. So much better than the crap I tried to eat while waiting at the airport. I only ate half of the airport muffin I bought. And whatever this red-wine is they are serving, it’s pretty good! Nice and smooth. Hopefully it helps me sleep. Sitting/lying here on this flight has been the most relaxing this that I’ve done in the last week of so. Would it be weird if I said it was theoputic? Oh, and the best this is that they gave us one of those weis bars for dessert! That hit the spot VERY nicely.

Aeroplane People

The people near me are also really cool. In front are a couple of Indian friends who are going to a wedding. They didn’t know each other was going to the wedding until they bumped into each other at the airport. Behind me are a couple of pom-ish girls who have been touring in Aus for the past month. They seems to be very skilled at falling asleep — maybe I should wake them up and ask them how they do it!

And somewhere on the otherside of the plane is an old couple. They remind me a bit of my Auty Denny & Auncle Peter. When I went for a walk about the plane to look out the window, they were pointing out places we could see in the Australian outback where they havebeen 4×4ing.

Almost done now :-)

So all in all, I’ve really enjoyed today. I’ve still got about 2.5 hours left of this plane… Then I have to wait around until midnight (3am AEST) for my next flight to somewhere which will take at least 7 hours. I’m not sure where there next flight is going. Flight Center told me that I have to go via Dubai, but my boarding passes don’t mention anything about a stop over. So I guess I see where we land!

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, I commend you! It’s a really long post! Thanks for reading, and it’d make my day if you left some comments. Now to either watch an episode of Dexter or Heroes on my netbook, or try and fall asleep. I think I’ll go the sleep option, because I only have 2.5 hrs left on this plane, and who knows, I may not get to lay down on the next flight.