I woke at 0530, half hour before my alarm. I let myself out of my aunt’s house and grabbed a taxi to Singapore’s Changi Airport, getting there about 2h30 before my departure to Auckland. The arrival card butt must have fallen out from my passport after check-in and the immigration officer asked me to go out to look for it. I checked with another officer who told me it wouldn’t be a problem and processed me hassle-free (apart from a couple of questions just to checked I’m correctly matched up).
Once through passport control, I had enough time to shower in the lounge and grab a salad and dumplings.
I had been upgraded to Premium Economy at check-in but was upgraded again to Business at the gate. I was actually happy with Premium Economy being a daylight flight during which I won’t sleep, and besides that section was empty. Both are “space available” paid upgrades and I would have preferred to keep the money and be in Premium Economy.
After breakfast, I watched a few comedies but spent most of my time catching up on all my Borneo blogs. I only managed a 30 min lie down after the midflight snack service. The flight went very quickly but it was a relatively short flight time of 9h.
It was a very pleasant way to finish and I’m off to work on Monday. I’m so lucky to have done this trip, get a job immediately which takes me till March but still allows me time off for Xmas and Chinese New Year (and school reunion) trips.
Upon arrival at Auckland airport, the pleasant end to the trip took a turn. Priority baggage for business class passengers were delayed severely by a mechanical breakdown. Naturally I thought it was the unloading machine but when it went on for an extended period, I thought the aircraft cargo door had jammed. Surely, if it was the unloading machine, they could have moved it. As it turned out, it was the unloading machine. It had stopped unloading and couldn’t be shifted either. That resulted in my bag being placed on the carousel 90 mins after arrival. By that time a few more flights had landed and it was a further 20 minutes before I could exit the terminal. All the feel-good experiences onboard for the previous 9h went out the window.