Snot en trane

The big day finally arrived. My god. After counting down since July 11th last year! Well, it was a bit of an anticlimax and at the same time very emotional.

Let's see. We were at Sameer's rents until about midnight then went home to pack. Sameer and I couldn't squeeze everything into our little bags and started to get a bit short tempered with each other because it was late, we were tired, and we were all emotional too. Se he went to bed, and I stayed up because I knew I wouldn't be able to wake up early enough to finish what needed to be done. By 3:30am I had packed the last of our stuff into our bags (after chucking a load of stuff I just couldn't fit in), taken a shower and got into bed. I had this sneaking suspicion that I would be moody and depressed come morning.

Well, my cellphone went off and - naturally - I put it on snooze. But then I heard a voice - Razia's! So I hopped out of bed and jumped in with my parents to hear what she had to say (on speaker phone). When my parents were done chatting, we spoke and by that time Sameer was up too and he also had a few words with her. It was such a strange coincidence (fate?) but it put everyone in an upbeat mood.

Shortly afterwards, Faizal turned up to help Sameer with the bags and AG came over to greet us. Then we went to Sameer's parents to greet. Sameer's dad asked him if he had his passport and according to Sameer, this was proof that he was trying to reach out and show his feelings because obviously he had his passport. :P

Off to the airport and checkin. Ho-hum. Nothing exciting there. Then breakfast at News Cafe until boarding. Here's a pic. Detect a hint of emotional stress here? I was hiding behind the camera. No pictures of me will be posted at this point because I looked terrible throughout.

At 7:20 I started hustling people towards the gate because whenever we fly long distance, I always have this paranoid fear that we will miss our plane. Also, I knew someone was going to open the floodgates any moment. So we got to the gate and everyone was just standing around and I decided to just take the leap and make with the hugging and kissing before people started bawling. I was very proud of myself. I only shed a few tears. The same cannot be said of certain other people. (Nuran, Ferzana - I mean you two!) I think my mum held up quite well under the circumstances but I also think she was holding herself back for the same reasons that I was. We'd spoken about my leaving before the time a couple of times so I didn't think that anything more needed to be said. It would just make both of us bawl anyway. :(

Moving on swiftly! We got to the gates and after a double-take at our boarding passes, the BA people moved us up to World Traveller Plus. It wasn't first or business class but there was a lot more leg room, and the seats were wider and extended more than usual. Also, there were fewer people in the section we were in. Sameer wasted no time in inflating his little pillow thing, putting on his shades and falling off to sleep.

This was our first day flight and my first BA flight. Apparently Virgin flies over the Atlantic most of the way but on BA today, we flew through the center of Africa and because it was day, we kept looking out to see the land below. Seeing the desert and mountain tops and dried out rivers was really, really cool! I know I should be more descriptive but really pictures here would tell more than a thousand words. My camera sucks so I couldn't take any good ones but this one shows a bit of what we saw. I think this was from over the Sahara.

There were a lot of movies but I didn't see anything good. I watched Hairspray in fastforward then watched about ten minutes of High School Reunion just to see more of Zac Efron. (He was much better in Hairspray, although the film sucked on the whole.) Oh, I watched Shrek 3. Ho-hum.

Oh, and we played Scrabble. (Thanks Khadija! I see the Travel Scrabble set getting lots of use.) I sucked badly, had to chuck my tiles about four times coz I kept getting consonants only and we played ourselves into a corner. We quit the game when the plane started to descend.

Ohmigod I forgot how big London was! As we landed I just kept seeing lights, roads, cars, highways, housing estates. It just went on and on and on as far as the eye could see. And planes. Dude! (I mean "For Real!") As we descended, I spotted four other planes around us. And as we landed one plane took off alongside us and another in the distance, and then another landed. Why did I not notice this the last time I was at Heathrow? Anyway, we were 20 minutes early but after the planes taxiing/parking/landing system quit on us, we had to wait 20 minutes to get a tug to drag us to the terminal.

Anyway, then there was passport control, which was fine except that we had to have xrays taken to rule out TB. (VFS didn't tell us about that. Take note all you prospective work visa peeps.)

Lamiese fetched us from the airport, then we went to pick Hooman up from Watford Station, and then we came to their home and had a very large dinner. (The area they stay in is very much like Pinelands - our own "Garden City". I'll take pics tomorrow.) We are now watching the wedding video. We're exhausted but we don't have anything planned for tomorrow so I think we'll have a lie in. :)