Bowled out

The journey from Dubai to Tullamarine was a tiring one. Legs were cramping up. Back aches. I was feeling sleepy but could not sleep properly. Watched two movies – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Day the Earth Stood Still. The difference here with the previous flight is that the movies could be paused, rewinded etc here by the viewer.

During lunch, there was a dish which had a lobster and another piece of meat, which I think was pork. I had a nibble or two and didn’t quite feel like eating more of it.(Hope dida won’t be getting to know this)

We went against the sun, making the day shorter, so that after traveling for 14 hours or so, it was 10.30 in the night at Melbourne. Just before landing, a lot of announcements were made regarding declaring food and medicine items and we had to fill some forms. There was a quarantine team check or something after landing. The appropriate word to describe the action would be ‘dhong’. The baggage check didn’t turn out to be rigorous at all. By what they were announcing ever since I applied for my Visa, I expected them to open out all our bags to check for stuff, but nothing of the sort occurred.

It was at the airport exit that Jai Anand gathered up courage to come up and ask me if I was Arnab. We had seen each other at Dubai, but we were unsure if the other was the right person. He said that at Dubai he had come to the conclusion that I was not Indian since my watch showed Dubai time. I was more impressed by his eyesight since I was seated quite at a distance. He seems to be a jolly good guy. He seemed to enjoy calling himself a regular fraud IITian, but I did not like him professing the idea that all IITians are fraud.

A woman from Togoto took us in a large van to our residence. The drive was a smooth one as expected. The air was pretty cool. The city was quite empty although it was yet to be twelve. However it was well lit up. Looked nice, although an Indian might feel bad thinking of the millions without light back home. At one crossing I counted the no. of red/green signals for one direction to be equal to 9. Everytime you reach a crossing, it is almost like a screen of green or red facing you.

At 113 Flemington Road, we followed Dillan’s instructions, and got into our apartment. It is simply awesome. One couldn’t have asked for more. A living room with kitchen, a bedroom and an attached bath. Everything was so well furnished. The cooking area was the awesomest of all. A normal electric oven and a microwave one, a fridge, some food in it, lots of cutlery, hot and cold water everywhere, a television (and it aired IPL), an excellent bed, carpeted floors, ac, heater, electric iron, electric blankets (am yet to discover how it works), lamps. Everything was as best as it could be, well almost, - except for a certain feature in the toilet, - there weren’t any buckets or mugs in here.