Happy to be in Hong Kong

Just arrived at Hong Kong airport, with the rising sun. It is an impressive place to be in transit for three hours, with views of hazy blue skies, distant mountains and close-by sea with container ships, visible from the huge plush departure lounge - although anywhere would be huge and plush after ten hours in a plane with what sounded like half of the population of China's very noisy mothers and babies as additional background noise.

We hardly notice the lack of frozenness at Heathrow on the morning of department, such was our enthusiasm to get going. Unfortunately the snow/frost was replaced with a cold for Phil, with a swift nasal passages decline which has continued throughout the flight. But she is a stoical girl and has dragged herself up off from a prone position to visit the internet. She may well revert to proneness if Humphrey continues to lecture her about the export of iron ore from Australia to 'the large manufacturing centres of South East Asia'. "That's a double width one, that is..." says H. "It's very clever", says Phil. They are both watching huge crates being unloaded, such is the fascination with life outside of living in a plane.

...except that they are now both giving a running commentary on catering items being loaded onto a Cathay Pacific aircraft (our airline), probably anticipating the next in-flight meal. Phil thinks 'Cathay' should be spelt 'cafe' and she wants to google its origins "when we get back to civilisation".

Humphrey is keen to work out how long the next flight will take. The outcome of his workings out have echoes of a maths reasoning question. We don't generally trust his haphazard responses to 'how long' questions, especially as he was three hours out for the last flight. Anyway... this is what he said, "We are in Hong Kong, which is 8 hours ahead of the UK. We are going to Melbourne which is 11 hours ahead of the UK. So, we're leaving here at 10.10am and arriving at Melbourne at 10.25pm, which in Hong Kong time will be 7.25pm. So 10.10 from 7.25 leaves 9 hours and 15 minutes." So that's the estimated next leg of incarceration.

The above was written approx. 20 hours ago.