... ready for boarding

alas, my plane is not. i'm waiting at the domestic terminal at tullamarine for my flight to sydney. i played raiden ii (classic vertical-scrolling airplane fighting game) and realised i'm very out of practice. actually, i rather hope i'm just out of practice - i'd hate to think that my hand-eye co-ordination is decaying so badly!

the gate lounges are very clean but a bit spartan. i don't think i've ever really noticed that before. after having spent several hours wandering (pleasantly) around san francisco airport, my expectations of what a good gate terminal should be like have risen - perhaps unrealistically. given melbourne is meant to be such an artistic and cultural mecca in australia, it seems a shame that there's no art displays to speak of around the departures terminal. when i was in s.f., there were a series of display plinths along the centre of the corridors showing crockery (i know, a little boring, but...) from different eras in post wwi american history. i found it really interesting, especially the accompanying stories of the designers and their lives.

later...

arrived in sydney ahead of time if that can be believed. we left melbourne ten minutes late and actually hit the tarmac here in el norte just a little ahead of schedule, around 10h35. refreshing. so i'm sitting here, enjoying a gloria jeans coffee and whiling away some time while i wait for my pay to be processed by my bank. i'll buy my new myzone multi2 ticket (which i've just learned has replaced the previous travelpass series of tickets.

i find it a little ironic that i've just left melbourne, in a state that has wasted something to the tune of $1.2 billion, and touched down in sydney, where the nsw government has implemented a ticketing system that looks and smells a whole lot like the metcard system that myki is meant to be replacing. not that i'm complaining - i think it's about time that the private bus companies in sydney were finally brought into line with the rest of the transport system's ticketing - i just hope that when the time comes for government to waste the public's money on the public transport system here in new south wales, they'll throw money away on improving rail infrastructure and not one a white elephant smartcard that is more difficult to use than the system it's meant to supersede.

still what would i know? i don't drive or have a mortgage or a credit card, so why would my opinion count for anything? (oooh... bitter much? just a little bit, maybe...)