Day 0 - Melbourne - Singapore - Frankfurt basically a day on bloody planes or around them or within the centres that cater for them

Most of you know that I am not petite,.. I am "rather large" so the prospect of sitting in confined space for some time is a bit hard to deal with. First leg was melbourne singapore, Thanks to the silent killer SARS. Iraq and all that othe good stuff the flight was empty .. i exchanged pleasantries with the guy sitting near me and enjoyed 7 hours of lounging around, empty seats everyplace... watched °adaptation° several more times,.. great movie ... glad it won zero oscars however.

Singapore wasn't quite as SARS crazed as i thought, lots of people wearing masks but not everyone.. As I already had my hospital mask pics taken back at Tullamarine i didn't bother donning it again for the benefit of the locals, who really wouldnt appreciate how funny I looked,

3 hours kicking around singapore airport,.. (they dont call it Changi quite as blatantly as they used to i noted)... is enough for anybody,.. so got back onto the singapore airlines flight for frankfurt.

Now i was supposed to fly direct to Rome, but singapore airlines in an effort to save people from the dangers of SARS had the great idea of dumping everyone onto the same flight (genius) and therefore cancelled the rome direct flight and moved us all, hosts and carriers alike... onto the Frankfurt flight..

The frankfurt flight was full,.. not a dry seat in the house...i sat opposite lots of lovely people of asian persuasion wearing masks... sat next to an interesting young german couple returning from 4 weeks in hospital in bali,.. turns out that they had a motorbike accident on their first day... so they had a great time!!! he deserved it .. she was nice.. dump him, dump him i say!!!!

12 hours and 30 minutes straight on a plane full of oddfellows... it was supposed to be 12 hours and five minutes but we had to go up hill a bit more than expected.

Frankfurt airport is a hole, don't go there,.. its sprawling as this makes german people feel more important,.. you get to have a good look at the planes that actually fly you around, trust me this isnt a good thing... dont fly Thai whatever you do, their plans are held together by recycled noodle boxes.

Sav had mentioned that I should count the dots at frankfurt airport,.. had i recalled this important tid bit of information i perhaps wouldnt have gone insane... alas... 2 hour wait, 1 hour delay, and the final leg to Rome on a bloody Lufthansa flight was underway.

The flight left at 10:30am so it was a °snack° that landed on my tray, here is the exchange

Lufthansa boy: You will be having of the snack?
ziz: yes i will be having of the snack?... i will also be reading of the newspaper
LB: reading of the newspaper?
ziz: yes reading of the newspaper
LB: reading of the newspaper?
Being the first time he had met me i let him off lightly, he probably didnt know that i am a lyrical gangsta and also didnt know that i had spent 28 hours on in or around planes...
ziz: yes please
LB hands me a newspaper... its german, i hand it back
LB looks at me
ziz: do you have an english paper?
LB an english paper?
ziz; yes an english paper
LB an english paper?
ziz ya un auslander newspaper fastunkerden
)i dont know what fastunkerden means but stevie b made the word up a few years ago.. it had the desired effect)
He brings me ... the financial times... If i had any stocks... i would know just how they were doing ... on April 12th, but i was sitting next to americans after all, so i appreciated his efforts.

We landed in Rome, and as per usual, my luggage was the absolute last to come out of the carousel, I'm standing there, just me and the odd sniffer dog rooting around the 1 or 2 abandoned bags spinning around the carousel,.. I'm standing there watching the little flashing light on the end of the conveyor belt that has delivered everyone else their sock and jocks... thinking "well this is grand".... and suddenly it appeared... plopped out the chute and sat there staring at me... it didnt look opened,.. but had it contained anything other than my undergarments I dont think I would have seen it again... obvioulsy nobody in the rome airport baggage handling department has a prefernce for XL sized mitch dowd cotton lycra boxers, fools.

The interesting outcome was that my luggage was so late,.... nobody was interested in my passport... so i dont actually exist,.. i can stay forever,.. but that's a lot.