Flight

The flight over here was eventful in two respects; one was that I was 6kg overweight when checking-in in Perth (and this was on top of the extra 10kg that I was allowed as well, meaning I was trying to check-in a total of 36kg), and the other was when I waited 90 minutes for my guitar to come out in Kuala Lumpur and it turned out it got lost in the baggage machinery. Luckily, both things got sorted out. I got past the check-in problem thanks to my Mum 'arguing' with the guy at the counter enough until the guy just relented and let us through. The other problem worked itself out when all I had to do was report the lost guitar case at the airport after the airport baggage crew 'confirmed' it was probably just stuck in the machinery somewhere. My initial concern that the guitar was on the way to Europe, because the flight was also a connection to Germany. Basically, in the end they located it during their maintainance period at 4am that morning and delivered it to my dad's apartment doorstep by 9am the same morning. Also just to show there's no favouritism when it comes to machinery faults, some Malaysian Airlines directors who had gone to Perth to take part in a corporate golf tournament at Burswood lost 4 sets of golf clubs on the same flight. It was somewhat satisfying to see that when one of the directors and I both reported our 'misplaced' baggage that we were both afforded the same degree of service and courtesy.

As expected, security was a little bit tighter at the airport. We weren't allowed to bring any sharp metal objects on to the plane with us. There was a warning picture on the check-in counter showing all the objects that were banned from the cabin. This ranged from penknives to safety razors! I also had lots of fun trying to cut my well-done steak with a plastic knife during the in-flight meal. There were also double the number of metal detectors (4 instead of the usual 2) to help speed up the process on the way in. I think this was because the first 2 were on a higher sensitivity, and if people set-off the first one that they went through, they could be searched and sent through one of the second pair straight away. That way didn't hold-up the line by having to go through one of the first ones again.