very wide awake, having just unpacked and showered and talked to my parents. it's dec 19th 2.46a.m. singapore time, and i shall use singapore dates until i get back to school. the first half of my trip was an accumulation of small annoyances always with the appearance of potential disaster, and the second half was pure bliss. i left at 4.30 in the morning instead of at 7, because the shuttle company offered me a $40 discount if i could leave early, and as everyone knows, $40 is a fortune. of course, i was the only one who was on time for the ride; the other kids who had the 9 o'clock flights and had booked the early shuttle were a) late b) still unpacked when the shuttle showed up, and then one girl left her passport behind and had to go back for it. then when we got to dulles i got in trouble with the driver who said credit card payments should have been made in advance. this is such tosh because i've always paid them by credit card in the past and no one told me when they confirmed the booking that you had to pay the chap in cash. i look in my wallet and found only $43 so i offer to go to the atm in the terminal, but the guy said he hasn't got all day and has to drop the other people off and he was really rather rude about it. that really pissed me off, because this isn't even one of those multi-terminal airports, but a straight strip terminal, so he could jolly well drop the other people off and i could meet him further down the terminal. how long does he think it takes to get money out of the wall anyway? what's more, when i got inside i found he hadn't even dropped me off at the right entrance for my airline, so i had to lug my bag some way looking for it, and the heaps of construction in the terminal made it confusing. since i had got in so early the check-in counter wasn't open yet, and this airport doesn't have seats (!) so sat around for eons on a sort of air vent. and then (you see from the number of and thens this is going to be a long list of complaints) the flight was delayed by almost an hour, which is about as much connection time as i had to spare. the flight itself wasn't much worse than any other long flight, but not much better either. seats were cramped and the movies rather dated (watched road to perdition and minority report), and my seatmates weren't engagable in conversation. we got into narita so late that by the time i got to my connection gate there was only 16minutes to go. and THEN. guess what. because i had got there so late all the economy seats were taken, so they gave me a seat in business. *whoop* enough legroom for several elephants and tablecloth and real silverware at meal times. foie gras and cold cuts and unidentifiable but fancy looking appetisers and trays of cakes and truffles being wheeled up to you, exactly like on tv. few things could be better when you're flying. came home to find they changed our street sign to white on green (used to be black on white) and that the northeast line is delayed again. GROWL. the parents put in new shelves in the bathroom and got a new dining room table and rearranged some of the furniture and i found they'd also traded in my battered old phone for a sony ericsson t600. the keypad is arranged like an ericsson (sort of) but the interface looks like nokia and i think it's very ugly. i'll have to admit my old phone is embarrassingly antiquated and after so many years cracked in several places and in a word, laupok, though i was very attached to it i like plum coloured things. the only thing to be said for my new phone is that it's small (about 3.5 inches tall and just over half an inch thick) and has predictive text entry the lack of which used to be a pain. i wish, however, that they'd asked me because what i would prefer is an ericsson t29, like yeenteck's. oh well. and my phonebook appears to be gone i must have saved them onto the phone memory instead of onto my sim card this is very inconveniencing. maybe i can go and get a less ugly cover at one of those illegal neighbourhood shops. hah. okay i'm going to bed. till tomorrow!
i, my dears, am home! will probably not update so frequently because i'm having a lot of trouble accessing my web directory it is bloody unreliable of it although hopefully i can sort this out in the next week, or it would sort itself out. it is also hair-tearingly slow, and being frustrated once a day is enough for me, thanks very much.