Mitch's Stellar Advice

Mitchell Jones gave me some great travelling advice in a letter. This advice served me well throughout my flight - for example, when confronted with the choice of pancakes or omelette for breakfast, I immediately went for the pancakes - because I knew that I should avoid egg at all costs lest I get sick. Similarly, my cup was rarely empty of Coke (the sweeter Canadian type), and my screen was filled with various movies and television shows at all the pivotal points where I wasn't reading letters or books.

But perhaps the best advice came after my initial flight. I got a linking flight to Edmonton in Canada, which lasted only an hour. I was sitting next to a nice looking lass, and I asked her where she was from and the like when we first got on the plane - polite chit-chat, you know the sort. Then we sat there for the next fifty minutes in silence, listening to our iPods/sleeping.

As we were making our descent and about to hit the runway, I suddenly remembered Mitchell's final piece of stellar advice! He suggested that if I find myself in such a situation that I'm sitting next to a hottie, I should break the ice with the following:

A man goes to the dentist and says "Doctor, help, I think I'm a moth!"

The dentist replies "Why did you come to the dentist's then?"

Then the man shrugged and said "The light was on"

So with only a moment's hesitation, I began a new conversation that went something like the following:
Me: "Do you mind if I ask you a favour?"
Her: "Sure, go ahead"
Me: "Can I try this joke out on you?"
Her: *awkward looking smile* "Go for it"

And so I told her the moth joke, with a strong, fairly deadpan delivery that effectively conveyed the punchline. And she laughed. I'm serious, she actually laughed. So I said "You think it's a keeper?" and she said "Yeah, definitely" and then we kinda sat in mostly silence with a few short conversations for the remainder of the trip.

Never did catch her name though.

Moral of the story? Listen to Mitchell - he's a good bloke.

It begins - Vancouver airport

So here I sit in Vancouver airport. Local time is 7:50am, which is pretty impressive considering I left Sydney at 10:10am on the same day.

The flight went a lot quicker than I expected – and it just so happened I got given one of the best seats on the plane. It was definitely the one with the most leg room, as there was no one in front of me at all. I sat next to a nice Canadian/Australian bloke named Marcell (an interior designer who’s lived in Perth for ten years) who was taking his five year old son back to his homeland for the first time.

Food was really good, there was a bit of French cuisine and a lot of fruit. Canadian Coke is a lot sweeter than Australian stuff, and I don’t hate it. Canadian beer doesn’t taste as good as the Australian stuff though, and I couldn’t put my finger (or is that my tongue?) on the reason.

The sun coming up over the clouds when you yourself are above them also is absolutely beautiful. I got my camera out to take a photo or two, when I realised that I hadn’t actually put batteries in it – and they were in my other bag. What’s more, I haven’t brought an SD Card reader with me, so I couldn’t upload them anyway. Thankfully though, Marcell came to the rescue and let me use his and offered to email them to me. What a nice guy.

As we got off the plane and walked into the airport (at about 6:50), the place was absolutely deserted. It was quite eerie, like all those movies where you think it’s all empty and then a zombie jumps out and chews on your face. The people on our flight were the only tourists in the whole of the international section of the airport.

But now I’m in domestic where there are people milling around doing their everyday kinda thing. They still sound American to me. I should probably learn to discern the difference.

Being on the other side of the world for the first time ever is actually quite exhilarating. In the line to check in luggage at customs (which just consisted of some guy in an orange flakjacket and boots taking the bags off us and putting them in piles) I was standing behind a girl when I realised that – “Hang on, I’m in a completely different country. I can just be friendly and be myself and people will just assume it’s that friendly Aussie tourist-ness.” (As it turned out, she’d just returned home from Aus, where she’d travelled all up the east coast from Melbourne to Cairns)

The other major thing I’ve noticed is that I start conversations with “G’day how are you?” – something I know I’ve always done, but it seems so awesome now.

An hour and a half left til I can get on board the flight to Edmonton. Guess I’d better get used to these airport waits. Thank God for wireless Internet.