i barely slept last night. i was worried about a lot of things including not getting up in time and mainly my suitcases being too heavy. i was fine. thank whatever idol you wish that i was fine. very relieved i did not have to take anything out because i was sure i was going to need to. my bags were 30.1 kg, 29.8 kg and 21.2 kg. the little one is full of papers. beat that on your next trip.

i had issue checking in because of the 3rd bag thing. apparently the nice friendly lady i spoke with at qantas about 2 weeks ago wrote a comment attached to my ticket to read 'will have 3rd bag'. but it did not read will have 3rd bag and is not to be charged for it. i had to get a supervisor over to the check in counter because the guy there would not budge, completely by the book. then he had an issue because the ticket was LAX - MEL return and SYD was not listed. rolls eyes its a continuous ticket. anyways. knock on wood what has been set up to happen in los angeles will happen flawlessly and i will make my connection.

im in the lounge in sydney at the moment. the girl who is supposed to welcome people in was absolutely lovely to the two males in front of me asking them how their weekend was and what they are going to phuket for. then she looks up at me with "yes?" i asked her if there was wifi and her response is a flat "no we have broadband".

the flight from melbourne was quite good. i was starving by the time i got on the place so the not the best food to chose from was quite appetizing. we landed into SYD from the north doing a U around the city. from my side of the plane was a perfect view of the harbour bridge then the city as the plane proceeded south to the airport. ive been taking mental images all week, that was another moment to the mental vaults.

added:
Sydney CBD from the Airport

what ive been looking at (when i turned away from the laptop screen) for the last 2.5 hours

okay, this is lame. its $6/ hr for broadband internet at the qantas domestic terminal in sydney. like im going to pay. shit house and cheap ass. im writing this waiting for my flight back to melbourne and will post from home, assuming my dependent internet is working there. my flight is fucking 45 minutes late.

i am so depressed. i want to go home. to canada.

asia was awesome.

the quick wrap up of it.. i had a great time in hong kong for the first 5 or so days of my trip. i did everything. literally everything i could, except go to disneyland because, well, ive done that in america and even the locals say thats its not that big of a park. causeway bay, wan chai, kowloon, new territories, lantau, aberdeen. i even made a wish on the wishing tree that locals go to when they need to wish for something. it only costs $10 HKD per sheet of wishing paper.

korea was fun. i dont know what i was expecting from going there but i dont think i was expecting was i got. its hard to explain how i viewed the country in a few sentences so i went try to do that yet. overall seoul was very american with a language barrier. mcdonals, burger king, pizza hut, starbucks.. the works of chain fast food places. but, there were also street meat vendors that sell very korea local things. the items that i bought one day for lunch were some sort of rice cake total stoge thing. i found thing out after trying to describe in detail to a tour guide what i had bought. the pancake and egg guy i was so impressed by on my first day there only had one more visit from me. it was so good, but i craved real food at some point.

because i had done so much in hong knog i was really tired by the time i got to korea. i took it a lot easier and only did a few morning/ afternoon tours and stayed in the vincinity of the hotel the rest of the time. my first hotel was awesome and had a gym and provided gym clothes and everything to guests. i used that a couple of nights. after 3 days in seoul i was sick of being a tourist. i really just wanted to go to the shows.

the day of the seoul show gaby flew in in the afternoon and we met up at the hotel we stayed at that night. the hotel was a let down. i picked it because it was close to the venue and in the olympic park zone. it seemed like it was a short distance to the venue, which turned out ot be a 15 minute walk through a nice greenery area. the hotel was stuck in the 1970s. lol. funny, because it was built for the 1988 olympic games. it was fine since we were only there for one night and only needed to sleep and shower etc.

the show in seoul was great. i think this was my favourite show of the 4 that i just saw. i have the wrost bruises from this show too. maybe they just got worse with subsequent shoving. there were a lot fo japanese girls that i met there. most of them spoke english really well. they managed to get the fan club people in early by talking to someone.. who looks like henry rollins.. on the nin crew. he was funny because he wanted someone to translate his english into korean for the locals. except no one there was korean. just two white girls and a slew of japanese people.

the next day we left to go to the airport, and sat on the bus for over two and half hours. the first hour was spent in traffic in seoul doing the bus route lap around the city then finally going to the airport which is quite far from the city center. it was good that we left with a lot of time since it took a lot longer than we thought to get there. we had planned to go online at the airport and hang around before the flight but time was cut short. we bumped into a few other girls from the show flying out around when we were. we also saw them again that night in hong kong at victoria peak. we had lunch as the "western" food court because all the other food was so unappealing. netiher of us was impressed by the selection here either and just had fries from the very popular burger king. (edit: i has cheezeburger? lulz.)

uneventful flight. we got to sit right new to the toilets. awesome. i think we had just had a conversation about how we hated sitting at certain spots on the plane. aisle seats when people grab your chair back as they walk by was one of them and the prime spot of this is the damn line for the toilets.

hong kong the first night was slow. we didnt get into the hotel until 7 or so. we went into the city and to victoria peak. sitting on a bus and a plane all day was tiring. i left gaby and took the ferry back to kowloon to sit and look across the harbour. best city sky line view in the world. i could have sat there all night if i didnt need to get the mtr back to the hotel. i knew i would really miss hong kong.

in the morning we went shopping since the hotel was basically attached to a shopping mall. emma joined us that morning and we met up with another one of her friends before the two of them went into the city.

the show that night was good. i didnt like it as much as seoul and that was because i hated the crowd. i am completely of the opinion that places that dont get shows often do not know how to act. this goes for the fans and the venue. the people behind me were just stupid, then theyd get pushed out and some worst person would be there. the venue has a lot to learn too. from where the line up was they took tickets then let people run down escalators to the entrance on the other level where the doors to the hall were. really, really safe. they didnt seem to care that people were running either. i guess thats china for you, people are a dime a dozen.

venues outside of big cities, generally in north america, dont have a clue of people lining up for half a day before shows. even though i dislike arena shows, its so much nicer to go to a venue where they know whats going on and the staff are there 5 times a week for events and hockey games and whatever else. everything in my head is compared to st john's in 2005 where i got in an argument with venue staff. just no idea.

i got up ridiculously early the next day to get to the airport and use the free wifi. it was not as good as it had been the week before, slow. i had issues connecting, then so did emma. i got bored of sitting there. partly because i was so tired so we went for a walk around the terminal and ran into a few people we knew. very fangirl of us since they were on the flight right after ours.

my ipod battery lasted as much as i needed it to flying to australia. the flight was boring, i watched oceans thirteen two and half times and part of some dumb lindsay lohan movie. i was glad to just get there by the end of it. i basically ran off the plane because i didnt want to have to wait in a line a customs. turned out there wasnt one. but, i was lucky since within 20 minutes, while we were waiting for our bags 2 more large flights arrived. the security check point where you get your bags x-rays had a huge line when we joined it but neither emma of i was in a big rush to go anywhere. i finally got into my hotel around 10pm. so tired.

live from hong kong airport..

one wing of HK airport, terminal one. im leaving from gate 71. i take a train to get there. this place is HUGE!

oh, and i was able to check in from the train station, a 30 minute ride away from the airport. no need to lug around my checked luggage. i was on that train yesterday, while hiding from the humidity, and wondered why so few people had large items with them. now i know!

there are about 700 different restaurants, that are "normal" prices. aka no more $6 dinners. i just purchased a coffee and an american muffin for $49 ($6.5CAD). there is ben and jerry's too. but it is morning so once again i had to resist going for ice cream when i dont need ot be eating it. if only there was a tim hortons..