Previous: 
I wrote the following on September 28 while waiting in the first class lounge for my flight from Sydney to Australia. I never posted it because the lounge WiFi I was so excited about was completely overwhelmed, and I kept getting kicked off. So my waxing wonderful about finally having free WiFi was premature. I forgot I had written it, but I think this is interesting, so I’m going to post it now, over a month later.
* * * * * *
My vacation is nearly over, and I am here in the Air New Zealand lounge waiting to get on my United plane back to L.A. Sadly, the flight is about 2 hours delayed. I imagine that was what the mysterious calls to my iPhone were in the middle of the night that I did not answer, and what certain unretrievable voicemails must be telling me.
Here are some items of (even less important) note so far.
The United people expressed grave concern that I, as a first class passenger, did not receive any calls about the flight being delayed. Explaining that the call was too early for me to bother answering was not worth going into, so I let them be concerned.
They definitely don’t care how heavy my bag is. The scale was flashing “30kg” and “OVER” and the woman gave it no mind.
International lounges still kick the asses of domestic lounges. I have so far enjoyed some cold antipasto nummies, vegetable frittata, chicken korma, cream of tomato soup, and chocolate black-out cake. there is power near most seats, unlike in the U.S. United lounge.
Internet in hotels is simply non-existent in Australia. I had no Internet access at all until we visited an Internet café two nights ago. The Travelodge we stayed at last night charged AU$11 per half-hour of in-room Internet. I did not partake. Many hotels had for-hire Internet stations in their lobbies, which were often busy. Aside from the Apple Store I visited in Sydney, this signal I’m using now is the only other free WiFi access I’ve had.
The Singapore Air A380 is always here. My guess is it never really travels anywhere. They simply tow it around the tarmac to show it off and get people like me all excited that they’re seeing one.
I hope you have been following my progress via Twitter. (http://twitter.com/lekowicz.) Twitter used very little bandwidth, so I could keep within my included 20MB overseas data limit. Thanks, AT&T, for making overseas plans so exorbitantly expensive that my iPhone was 90% crippled.
* * * * * *
Pack to the present. Out of curiosity, I priced my first class ticket for the exact same flights next year. Had I not used miles, I would have paid over $24,000. Well, actually, I would not have paid $24,000, but you get what I mean. Who can drop that kind of cash just for a flight somewhere? Crazy!
