the interminable delays

I am currently stuck in Chicago airport waiting for my connection to Toronto. It is humid and hot, it is slightly chaotic here, although most of the officials and airport staff have been friendly so far. I find it strange to think that this morning I left London and now sometime in the middle of the morning London time, I am on the other side of the Atlantic in a country with a culture that is so different from the UK. From one English-speaking nation to another, I find myself having to make some rapid changes to my psyche to fit into the crowd. For instance, saying "sir" to everyone, and tipping at the bar. In the heat, I got a bottle of water and was charged 2 dollars. Despite the price, I gave the man 3 dollars, and then waved away the change as a tip. I have been told that I need to tip a dollar per drink, and I don't know whether I have been had. The bartender seemed appreciate though. Well, I would be too with a dollar tip just for getting out a bottle of water.

I am hoping that things will get better after July gave me two fingers up. There was a small incident with a fly infestation in my flat. After recovering from a mild bout of flu, I found myself spraying insect killer until I lost my sense of smell, vacuumed up flies that had dropped dead all over flat floor, mopped until my floorboards bled, and thought that the buzzing from my fridge was one enormous mother-ship fly coming to get me after wiping out the entire population of flies in my flat. At one point (i.e. the point of nervous breakdown), I had thoughts of just lighting a match of where I had sprayed insect spray and just letting it rip. Common sense prevailed after spending a nice afternoon out of the flat drinking coffee somewhere in a nice cafe in the West End.

To add to my woes was my continuing wait for my initial visa to come through. Having heard that the process was going to take 14 weeks for the first part, I was getting anxious that I would be home in Melbourne and nothing would have been approved. I still think that's going to be the case, but I guess I can't do much about it except curse the slowness of the Home Office. My misery was also compounded by my complete apathy in getting things done. Lists were made and the flesh was willing, but the spirit was weak as I sat there stewing in my humid flat.

However, there were some good days. One sunny afternoon I had finally persuaded Rob to join me for a drink at a Walkie (the Walkabout Pub which is a pub for Australians). Travelling down to Putney, I was again amazed at how nice some parts of London are. With the Thames as a backdrop, it was Woolwich without the grime and the attitude. Except it seemed that I had moved into New South Wales. Our first pint went down a treat, and we knew things would only get worse when we started on the 2-for-1 Snakebites (some concocted English drink for Australians consisting of beer, cider and something purple coloured). The Snakebites were surprisingly good, and we ended up staying for a couple more pints and a very cheap meal deal. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon, although we did wonder whether we were enjoying the guitar-playing singer too much, whose repertoire consisted of mainly vanilla anthems heard in every pub from Putney to maybe Putney.

Drinking clearly was my salvation another night when I met up Roxy for a few very expensive cocktails in London's West End. Rox was attending someone else's birthday drinks, and I was merely a gatecrasher to a meeting of the entire Asian Monash-or-Melbourne-University-student Melbourne community. While it was oddly reassuring to be surrounded with people that looked and spoke like me, they were all disbelieving when I told the group that I was "full Honky" when we went off for a very late supper in Chinatown. I believe the words "you can't be full Chinese because you have a hairy chest" were used. Yes indeed, because I am man. Hear me exfoliate.

After supper, I went back to Trafalgar Square to get the night bus home. After waiting an hour I was getting very fidgety and anxious that I would never get home. Some people around me started to complain about the mystery number 53 bus to Woolwich, and I told them that I had been waiting for an hour. Eventually a group of us decided to get a minicab to Woolwich - I was lucky - and saved. It was amusing in the cab, 2 French bartenders, 2 Romanian dentists, me and a rather cold New Zealand girl in a dress which was probably meant to be an ocean motif, but looked like something that had gone mouldy and had started to spore. Two hours later I eventually made it home, and I was thankful that I had only spent 10 pounds for a shared minicab rather than 60 pounds for a black cab.

Let me pause here for one moment to announce that my flight is delayed for 3 hours. Despite having changed to arrive in Chicago earlier from London so that I would have no problem getting my connecting flight, I will be enjoying the ambience of O'Hare airport for a good 6 hours. I hope my sarcasm is dropping. My dad, aunt, uncle and Rob laughed at me when they found out I was flying American Airlines. Ha ha. Hilarious.

In my last few days in London, I decided to do some London touristy sightseeing with Rob. Rob is leaving London in September, leaving me without a comedy-night wingman where we would laugh at the same jokes about a bear going "rawr" and a song going "Valerie Valerie". Clearly an inside joke. We have been to some good comedy nights though - our tried and tested formula for a good night out. A couple of pints to loosen the heckling vocal chords, and then off we would go. This last outing however, was my own idea in dragging Rob out to see a Frank Gehry architectural installation. The Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens has a temporary installation each year, and this year Frank Gehry had designed a large wooden structure reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings for an enormous catapult. Unfortunately I was a little bit disappointed with the structure after reading a glowing review in the papers, but nevertheless I was pleased to see another Frank Gehry building. By chance, I noticed that the Princess Diana fountain was close by, so we went to have a quick look to see what the fuss was about. While undoubtedly tasteful and lovely, I would find it hard to justify taking time out of my tourist schedule to actually come out and look at the fountain. It was nice however that the water was clean, and kids were dipping their toes into the currents of water.

Walking back through Kensington Park, we reminisced about our family outings to Gumbaya Park and Wobbie's World. Our experiences at these places were eerily similar - our complaints that Gumbaya Park wasn't Dreamworld in Queensland, our dads complained about the fact that the rides were an additional cost on top of the admission fee, and were were given cans of Coke to share with our siblings after begging for fizzy sugary drinks.

We decided to go for a pub lunch and took the first bus we saw away from Kensington Gardens. I usually don't take random buses in London but it the spirit of being intrepid, we ended up taking a bus to Victoria - literally down the road. We had a nice pub lunch with rather incompetent bar staff, and I bade my farewell to Rob. I spent the next day packing, and here I am. Sitting in a very quiet Chicago airport, bored, but at least with my laptop and something to do. Given that we were already delayed in London for an hour due to congestion at Heathrow, I'm rather nervous as I've got a long way to go. Two airlines down, 3 more airlines to go. Perhaps once August clicks in all will be fine.

It's time to fly. Exclamation mark.