Diversion

I took a flight from Manchester to London after bidding farewell to my father at the airport. My aunt and I caught the 1830 flight from heathrow. On the plane we heard from the captain that we would be following a new route that would actually get us to HK about 30 minutes faster. Great. The flight continued as smoothly as can be expected with not much sleep achieved and a couple of movies watched. V for Vendetta pretty poor British movie, but when you start watching some films you just want to see how it ends as predictable as it may be. There was some rom com film – Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Bates but because Matthew McConaghey is so ‘watchable’, I watched it.

We began our descent into Hong Kong after turning a mighty big loop over the South China Sea and were experiencing turbulence. I prayed for the pilot and that he would land us safely on the ground. He did … in Taipei. The winds were too strong in Hong Kong to land safely considering it is August and typhoon season. Hence I am currently sitting here typing this out when I should really be asleep in bed in Happy Valley. I’m also typing into word and will transfer this later as yet again I would have to pay for the internet. Why am I not doing that? Simply by the time I sort out payment and get the internet up and running on my computer, my battery will inevitably run out considering I didn’t have it fully charged.

I really hope this does not become an annual event. In the summer of last year after visiting Vancouver for a week in order to go to a friend’s wedding I was similarly delayed. The plane was taxing to the runway when the wing tip of our left wing knocked the tail of another plane parked at the side. This meant taxiing back, passengers were trooped off and the waiting began. It took a couple of hours to osrt out the wing rip, only to then test the equipment and find that a computer wasn’t working. Comp[lications. We also ran into the problem that we would be able to fly to Calgary but then the cabin crew and pilot would not have had the sufficient rest required between flights so we wouldn’t be able to fly back to Manchester. There was also mention of a hotel on arrival at Calgary. Unfortunatley by the time we got there, the people in charge announced that the hotel airport was full and the other hotel which was booked was too far away to make it worthwhile. So they prepared a room with drinks and snacks and people tried to get what little sleep they could. Oh…that is after having a large group of people have a major rant at the poor man making the announcements on behalf of the company.

We arrived at HK airport and waited at the carousel for our luggage. We were so happy that the luggage appeared - except that it wasn't ours at all. We were then told the luggage would arrive at 2:30pm - another hour to wait. The hour passed and our luggage didn't arrive. We were then told that the plane with our luggage would arrive at 4:10pm. After two nights where we had little sleep this was all we needed to hear. My aunt and I finally went out for something to eat, were escorted back in to wait at the carousel and were finally reunited with our luggage at about 6pm at which point I got on the train and fell asleep.