Off to Singapore

An ungodly start in the morning, just so that Sarah can be at the airport over 3-hrs before scheduled departure.

I had already checked us in online, so all we needed were bagtags. Our experience with this little detail in assorted European airports suggests that this may hit a snag or two.

Not so much. We went to the bagdrop area, and studied the machine. 

• Scan the passport to find our booking: tick
• How many bags do you have: tick
• Put heaviest bag into the machine to weigh: tick
• Printing bagtag, put it onto bag, bag gone: tick
• Put next bag into the machine to weigh: tick
• Printing bagtag, put it onto bag, bag gone: tick
• Put last bag into the machine to weigh: tick
• Printing bagtag, put it onto bag, bag gone: tick

All went surprisingly well, but this was different. With the first tag, I tried to figure out how to peel the backing. There was no obvious tearing off point. The little graphic on the back wasn’t helpful, it just said press them together. Yes I know that, but I have to peel the backing away, for it to stick. 

Then I saw the fine print on the machine. Do not peel the backing. What?

Just press the two dots at the end tog. What?

OK, then, I’ll play your silly game. I press the ends together, and they stick! What?

Fucking genius!!

No stickiness, no wasted bits of backing paper to throw away. Print it out, press the ends together and you’re done. 

Witchcraft!! Fucking genius!!

I have no idea what kind of coating these tags have, and if they need to be on a roll to keep the surfaces from touching, but it’s next level.

Security still requires that I take out the laptop, so not the latest there.

After that, things went off the boil a little. Signage is not the best. Same problem in almost all airports.

Our gate is in terminal C, about a 5-mile walk from where we are. Sarah wants food, getting hangry.

There is food and a shop she wants to see nearby, but we’re who knows how far to our gate. She wants to find food closer to our gate. It had better be there, is all I can say. Luckily it was, but the shop she wanted to see wasn’t.

Will this become my fault? We’ll see.

 Food seems to quiet the monster, so the lack of decent shops nearby has now become a them problem. Lucky escape.

Boarding was interesting. They are using biometrics to help the flow of passengers, but not for everyone. When I dropped the bags, it asked me to look at the camera for biometrics, which I did. It didn’t ask Sarah. Odd. When we got to the gate, we just scanned our boarding pass, and looked at the camera. I was confident that it would work for me (once I take my glasses off), but thought Sarah might get spit out to an attendant. Nope, she went through too. Maybe they had stored her passport somewhere in the system, so why the scan at checkin. Don’t know.

As we went down the airbridge, I noticed 3 bridges. 

Most aircraft use 1, and in Christchurch we got used to seeing 2 bridges on the Emirates slug. But 3? Go figure.

And 2 of them are for the main deck. Premium Economy must get their own bridge for the nose.

The flight is uneventful, except for the meal tray. It slides out from the side like a guilotine, unforgiving of any kind of stomach. Maybe this is a middle east style of weight watchers. If you can’t fit behind the tray, you don’t get any pudding. The waitress apologises for this being an OG A380. And here’s me thinking an A380 was pretty new. That’s perspective, I guess.

Now on the Paris to Dubai leg, I had decided to watch Star Wars Episodes 1-3. I gre up with 4-6, but didn’t pay a lot of attention to the bookends. So this was my chance. A 6-hrs and change flight should get that done. I fell short on Episone 3 by about 30 minutes, so jumped straight into that once I boarded in Dubai. Then it was on to Episodes 7-9.

Final credits on Episode 9 with 15 minutes till touchdown. Perfect.