Open Disastrous

I bought the Australian Open tickets last October so last week I took my wife and son to Melbourne. It was my first one-week break in more than a year. I deserved it as I had worked on my own for 3 weeks whilst the lady doctors here all took off around Christmas time.

Was it a good break? Hah!

Sydney airport

The check-in blonde hurried us through and somehow managed to tag our bags to go to Hobart! We had no idea until my wife got a bit concerned. The girl said gate 49 but the display now said gate 50. The wife asked me to check. Of course, I told her to stop being silly. She kept nagging, so I went and checked the sticky notes on our boarding passes. "SYD-HOB". "Hmmm, how cryptic! May be the luggage are sent by ... hobbyist courier?" I rationalised. As I told the stewardess on boarding, she quickly ran about yelling some cryptic words. I felt terrible because the flight to Hobart was also delayed after that. As it turned out, the Tassie-bound woman checking in just before me was supposed to have 4 bags. She changed her mind and only chucked in 2. Maybe her new husband did not tun up. So we somehow got the 2 spare tags heading for Hobart. And yes, the entire Sydney-Melbourne flight time was for a lecture of how horrible life would be if the wife's commands weren't heeded to.

Shitzu's bite.

Not sure of the spelling but this breed of dog shoud be banned. The wife's long time friend has 2 of these and one of them didn't like me. She jumped up and aimed for my face. Unfortunately she was so fat and could only got to the level of my crotch. Wham! I turned quickly and got a huge bite and bruise on the upper part of my thigh - about 3 cm from the most sensitiv bit of my anatomy. Phew!!! During the taxi trip home, the lecture was on how to behave about other people's pets. What? I was just reaching over for my drink when the monster got me!

Lost seeds

Nadal lost to Ferrer. "What is going on here?" I asked. I paid a lot of money to see Federer and Nadal in the final. I was certain it was written in the contract somewhere. Then I saw Federer got knocked out by a guy who looked almost exactly like the kid who beat me up daily in primary school. I am sure there weren't many Serbian kids in my school in Saigon, but this Djorkovic really looked like the thug I used to fear and hate. No lectures for few days, the professor was too busy shopping.

"I AM CALM!!!!!"

When we got back to Sydney airport, our booked maxi-taxi got ... lost - or rather the booking was "not confirmed". We - 12 people and all (yes, I and all the in-laws) - had to drag our luggage back to the end of a long taxi queue. I was fuming! The lecturer was kind and gave me a "calm down" hug. Yep, she was the one who made the shonky taxi booking.