An Introduction - READ ME FIRST!

Okay, this is the blog I kept while I was away in the US for my family. I've edited little bits here and there but most of it is as I posted. It's in 'reverse blog order' which means the post after this one is the first one to read, and onwards.

The pics I've got on Facebook are here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=112023&id=740693722

I hope reading this gives you some idea of what went on. And I hope its at least a little entertaining!

Sunday 9th August - Day

Ohhhhhkayyyyy...

We're here. It's 7am in Aus on Monday the 10th, and its 2pm on Sunday the 9th in the US.

First things first. Australia. Belted through customs and ended up looking through the shops on the other side - but not for long. Tried to find a notepad that wasn't terribly expensive (failed) and then got sore shoulders from our too heavy back-packs.

So we sat around in the waiting area til they opened the next area on (waiting area for gates 8 & 9) - we both had our bags searched (not very thoroughly), and our shoes, and a wave over with a hand held metal detector. Should mention that the bag scan on the way into the gate area neither of us took off our watches and the detector failed to go off. Nice one :/

Soon we were being boarded. Down down down to almost the other end of the plane - row 70 of about 75. On the window, we got the first row of two seats (instead of 3) so we didn't have to put up with anyone else.

There were a few kids on the plane, but there wasn't too much screaming. Though apparently there was when I was asleep :P

I'd taken a phenergan before I boarded and didn't bother with the wrist straps. They're supposed to fit the ball to press between the tendons in your arm, but mine are really close together so I didn't want to risk it.

Strangely, just one made me want to sleep pretty quickly. I was still trying to get used to being able to cruise without getting sick. After watching a movie and having "lunch" I zonked out for what I thought was 4 hours, JT tells me it was 5.5.

At one point during the flight we had the captain come over and tell everyone to get back to their seats (you have to be belted if you're sitting, no matter what). Just a minute later and we had some turbulence come through. Freaky.

After I woke up I watched a couple more movies and quickly got bored. It really hits how long you're sitting there for. It wasn't so much cabin fever that really got to me over all, it was the ache of sitting on my butt for way too long.

Anyway, 10 hours into the flight I got a little worried so I took another phenergan, which again made me want to sleep. I slept for about an hour or so before they turned on the lights again. Had to be the most painful 2 hours ever. Sitting there, sore arse, body just about shaking with the need for sleep and trying not to pass out during landing (I was feeling a little queasy even with the drugs). But I kept it all down, thankfully.

As we were standing there waiting to get off the plane, I stuck my customs/immigration forms in my mouth (between my lips so they didn't get wet) while I got something out of my bag. Unfortunately they did get a little wet, my lips fused to the paper and I ended up ripping a hunk of skin out of my top lip. Yeah, gross, I know, but effing painful :P It bled and everything. So thats really irritating.

Anyway, the line at customs took us at least half an hour to get through, I got mistaken again for a male, and we got our bags fine.

Found the shuttle relatively easily. Before we even got out of the airport and onto the freeway we'd seen 2 car accidents, airport police, blue uniform police and highway patrol officers. Pretty nifty.

The freeways are pretty efficient looking, at least for a Sunday.

As we pulled up to the hotel, a fire engine came blaring down the road...so many emergencies lol.

Downtown is weird. Its like what you see in Newcastle these days (looks dead as). Only a bit busier.

The lady at the counter checked us in at 12:45pm, pretty darn good considering its supposed to be a 3pm check in.

We found the Ramen place, and a stupidly long line to go with it. We're right in the little tokyo district so theres a lot of Japanese stuff around.

Unfortunately we were too tired and hungry to be able to think, so we went back to the room for room service. Not very nice. My "cheese" pizza also randomly had chicken, capsicum and pineapple on it, as well as bbq sauce.

So I've had a shower and now I'm lying in bed, finishing this post before I pass out!

Sunday 9th August - Evening

Update number 2!

We got back from Orochon Ramen not too long ago. It was pretty epic. Very salty, quite spicey. I had the number 5, which is two rungs up on the spice metre. So it goes 7 to 1, mild to hot. Then theres Special #1 and Special #2 - 2 is the hottest and the one that Adam from Man V Food took on.

I was getting the nice runny nose and my eyes were watering just from number 5! Weak :D

I've just finished off a video which I'll be emailing through. I look like a retard but hopefully it'll be worth the embarrassment...just don't go sending it to anyone :P

Things worth mentioning:

LAPD building must be just across the way - had the chopper land there a couple of times already.

First candy related purchase in LA was a box of Pocky...Japanese snack. lol.

Hmm...yep, I think thats it.

Monday 10th August - Day

This morning we got up (well, I got up and JT was already awake) and went for a walk to Philippe's. It was a fair way up, but worth it. It was so freakin' cool to be in there, I saw the woman that was on Man V Food, got a really great beef sandwich and I tell you that mustard is definitely as hot as the show suggests.

I got a little souvenir from there too (a bobble head!), which will be an awesome reminder.

This part of LA, downtown, is utterly dead. Its the working government district. All attractions around here are very much culture based stuff. So museums, art centres, that sorta junk. Crap that we find more boring than watching American TV.

Right now we're lounging in the hotel room. Theres no pool here, nothing to do...the closest train station is about a mile away and we really don't like the look of the area.

Bring on Quakecon.

Monday 10th August - Evening

So I slept for about...3 hours or so this afternoon. JT was out for about 5 hours.

We watched a bunch of WWE and then went off in search of McDonalds for dinner. 7pm and the damn place was closed! 95% of the street was closed, exceptions being the odd dodgy looking mexican cantina.

Its quite weird around here. We're in the midst of the Japanese Little Tokyo and yet when we went to Phillipe's we were right next to Chinatown and then this little Mexican alleyway thing with stalls and junk. JT bought a mexican wrestlers mask for Tim.

So we walked a little further after maccas and stopped short of some shifty looking people. Turned back and headed to the hotel again, hell bent on never getting room service here again. Yech.

We ended up at some Pizza joint, I had a pepperoni pizza which has to be the best one I've ever had. Not that I've had much to compare to :P

We're lazing around watching American Gladiators now. Its from the late 80s/early 90s and its no where near as sensationalised as ours was around that time.

Tuesday 11th August

Phew...what a day.

This morning we trekked out to the T Mobile store so JT could get himself a phone. He didn't set up his phone for international roaming for some retarded reason so he had to buy a prepaid phone to talk to his parents.

I really wanted to get a Hiptop phone, but alas, I'm not willing to spend $450 on a phone I can't use on my current plan :P

Next we went to Maccas for some breakfast and found the menu a little unappetising. So we kept walking south til we found something we felt comfortable eating...which turned out to be KFC. Haha!

So I got a strip meal, which comes with 2 sides. This ranges from wedges to some sort of greens to corn on the cob to mac n cheese (theres about 4 more options other than those, too). I got wedges & mac n cheese. It also comes with a biscuit - exact same consistency as a scone, same taste only not as sweet. Pretty cool.

From here we kept heading South, walking along South Broadway St. Eventually we realised we were so close to the Staples centre, so we headed on over there. Boom, life was suddenly everywhere!

Somehow, as we walked from the Kyoto Grand side of 11th Street to the Staples centre side, we went from dingy scabby looking Mexican filled area to regular this-is-what-I-though-LA-would-be-like.

We found the ESPN building, the Nokia Centre, a bunch of massive advertisements and the Grammy Museum, which advertised a special on Michael Jackson and Neil Diamond.

So we went on in, $10 admission, and checked it out. It was a pretty cool museum. Not supposed to take photos in there but I took a couple anyway :P
The MJ stuff was a few outfits here and there, plus they were playing a concert in one section and his music videos in another. Not much, but the museum isn't too huge.

I got an MJ t-shirt there which is nice.

After that we went to the Staples Centre store, JT bought a stupidly expensive Hockey shirt - LA Kings. $135! I was going to buy a Lakers (Basketball) cap but I couldn't find one I wanted to fit me. Was $38 anyway. I want a Chicago Bulls one more, though I don't think I'll be able to find one >.<

We headed out to find a cab (there aren't that many around, surprisingly) and asked the driver to take us to the nearest Walmart. He suggested one only 5 minutes further (apparently) which was a Superstore (the nearest one was smaller, I saw that on the website) so we headed out. $50 taxi ride later we're there. It was freakin' huge, but really - not that much different to a Big W or Target. The only difference was size and what they sold.

I contemplated a few expensive items whilst there but didn't want to spend the money :P

We left Walmart and headed to a cheapish shoe store nearby so JT could get some new shoes.

$50 cab ride back and we were soon wandering back through Downtown. Its amazing how different some parts of the city are. It really is like walking from Circular Quay to Mascot within 3 blocks...only worse.

On the way back I got (what I assume is) a large coke from Maccas (after edit: pretty sure it's a supersize). $1.09 for a 42 ounce cup. Thats 1.2L!!!! Holy friggin crap! Hahaha...yikes.

Checked out the Sprint store after that, but unfortunately they don't sell Nokia phones so we left pretty quickly.

Next we went back to the Pizza place and had spaghetti and meatballs for a late lunch. Pretty sure we'll be going back to Orochon Ramen for dinner again tonight.

Wednesday 12th August

Soooo...an update.

We went back to Orochon Ramen one last time. Tasty tasty. I got a shirt from there too, says Orochon Ramen on the back in Japanese.

Went to bed at 12 and got up at 7:30 to get ready for the shuttle. Got sorted, buggered off and headed back to LAX. Trying to check into American Airlines is a joke. You have to check in on the computer before you go to the desk to get your bags checked and junk, and I'm not sure if its everyone or just us, but we then had to take our bags to the TSA baggage scan (or in JT's case, the non-TSA scanner as he didn't have TSA locks).

Massive waste of time going to 3 different things. If they were smart they'd just have everyone get checked in with the person and they could just have the scanning done from there instead of mass confusion everywhere. Highly inefficient.

Going through the metal detectors and on board scanner was eventful. Not just your belt and watch to take off, but also have to put your shoes through. I couldn't even walk through with my jacket on.

As we walked towards the gate there was a small place selling mags, chocolates and other assorted crap which had a t-shirt on display. I almost bought it. It had a picture on the front of Arnie in Terminator 2, with the T2 font saying "The Governator"

It was $28 plus tax. Just a wee bit too expensive for me!

I picked up a couple of Buffy comic books at the book store there that I've been after for cheaper than in Aus, and checked out the BestBuy vending machine - it sold digital cameras, DS's, SD cards, basically anything along those lines. In a vending machine. Unfortunately no pics - didn't want to risk that at the airport :P

Plus someone was using it.

Soon we were on the plane for a 2 hour flight to Dallas. I think I slept for about half an hour on the flight. Damn phenergen knocking me out :P

As we were boarding missingo came on the flight. He'd spent 10 minutes in LA going from his SYD flight to this one.

Got off the plane, got our bags and walked out into the humid humid Texas air. Crazy. We had to wait outside for the shuttle for about 15 minutes. I was fine, but the others were burning up.

About a 10-15 minute ride later we were at the hotel. Checked in and found our room. Very nice.

We ordered room service and its actually good! Theres pics up in the imageshack album, we paid the same at the Kyoto Grand for some really horrible pizzas as we did for these fantastic steaks.

After having only eaten a biscuit all day it was even better.

So now we're watching Man V Food and we're definitely going to the Nascar cafe in Vegas - the food looks great.

We were going to head down and check out the line but JT couldn't be bothered and I don't want to go on my own in case I get lost.

I keep taking photos on my camera without the memory card in! ARGH! I took photos of the Orochon Ramen winner wall last night - the one with Adam from Man V Food pic on it. And its on the camera. Lol. Its annoying the crap outta me :P Theres also the pic of the Philippe's building (and my sandwich) on it too.

Thursday 13th August

Holy heck. Finally QuakeCon is on and its nuts!

Got up this morning at 8am, showered and readied to leave. Wandered down to where they were all either lining up or just about in there for the BYOC (LAN) part. People were milling around and we weren't sure what was going on. Regardless, we needed breakfast.

I don't know if I told you this place is a resort. And I'm not sure if you've ever been to one - but let me just say its like a little city in here! It is inSANE. There are rooms and rooms and rooms - and then theres bars and cafe's and restaurants all over. Theres a 'riverwalk' which is this long walk around their man made stream thing. The area its in is one massive atrium and I do mean massive. HUGE.

So after a bit of a wander we hit up some cafe for an expensive breakfast consisting for me of an apple, a bit of cake and a chocolate milk.

After we left there we headed back to the convention area. Started lining up to register. Thankfully we were pre-registered (like the smart cookies we are), but there were still about 15-20 people in front of us. JT made the comment that we should have just waited til after 12 as it would probably be quieter then. When we came back around then the line had....well there had to be over 100 people. We were very lucky that we'd got there early.

When we got in there was hardly anyone in there. Not as big as we expected but definitely awesome none-the-less.

To the left there were booths with QuakeLive & Doom 2 playable with XBox 360 controllers. Also in that section was a playable demo of the upcoming game "Wet" which was fantastic to play, though hopefully it'll be on PC as the controller was pretty crap to try and use.

JT immediately latched on to one of the Wet stations so I wandered off. First booth I hit, Coolermaster, a guy handed me a lanyard as soon as I got there. Got a ticket for their booth and checked out their stuff before I moved along.

I won't go into too great detail but soon I'd bought a great new shirt with retro gaming controllers on it for $20, which came with a free shirt branded with the manufacturer's logo (Glitch Gaming Apparel).

Also got a "Brink" shirt from the id software dudes (Doom & Quake creators) as well as a poster for "Wet" which is epic.

Got heaps of flyers and crap for products, a lanyard for coolermaster, gigabyte and wolfenstein, a Kingston light-up bouncy ball, a patriot memory bottle opener & pen, as well as some badges.

One is an intel badge you get on entry, if the intel team see you as they walk around they give you a card and you can go to their booth for a prize. The next is an nVidia one, which has a number on it. If someone else walking around has one with the same number, you both go to the nVidia booth, spin the wheel and you both get a prize. The last badge is just for the game "Global Agenda"

Some people have SO MANY nVidia and Intel badges. I mean - theres people with them all over their hats, so theres no telling what colour the hat is. Some people have them spotted on their clothes everywhere and there was even this dude with them on the front half of his shorts covering every patch of clothing. He was a big dude too so there were tonnes. I tried looking for my number but he didn't have it. I had 4420 and he had 4421 & 4422! Bugger :P

There are people on the BYOC chat telling each other what they have so you can search for someone with it haha

The raffles held at the booths are neat. You go to their booth and either fill out a form or a survey for a ticket, or they just give them out. They then tell you to come back at whatever time it's on, where a crowd forms around. The booth team throws out promo stuff like shirts and hats and pens and junk, which is fun to try catching. In between they'll call out ticket numbers. Those are prizes ranging from ram to notepad coolers to power supplies to network cards - good gear. Some of the higher end prizes - like the Antec case - were awesome. Unfortunately I just read the Quakecon forums and already the guy that won that is trying to flog it off. -_-;

So I caught a shirt at the coolermaster booth, but it was an XL and the brand was their sister company which I've never heard of. So I swapped some dude at the kingston memory stand for his two raffle tickets. Didn't win but oh well :) There is always tomorrow!

We ran into Matt and Missingo and they started following us around for a bit. We lost them here and there but the area is pretty small so you can't get away for long hahaha :P

Around noonish the Mustang was unveiled for all to gawk at. It's a damn nice car, bummer only US citizens can win it.

After this we went and had lunch at the "Texan Station" a short walk away, probably in the middle between our hotel room and the convention centre. I had a Pulled Pork Sandwich (its on a burger bun! call it a burger damn you! lol...nothing on a bun is called not a burger here unless its a regular meat "burger" pattie). It was absolutely the greatest pork I've ever had. Not necessarily on the flavour factor, Dad still kicks their ass on that because they smothered it in sauce so I couldn't taste it very well. Plus Dad's pork is win. Anyway this was ridiculously good because of how damn tender it was. You've heard of melt in your mouth - this is as close to that as I think I've ever had. Anywho enough raving.

Not too much longer after lunch was the "What will you do for..." fun 'comp' which had competitors doing crazy things for prizes. They tossed out heaps of QuakeCon shirts amongst these too but I still haven't got one! I really want one :(

The first comp was two guys on stage in an eating competition. Spam, covered in chocolate and 'hotcake' sauce. No utensils, face only. I don't even know what the hell they won.

I left to explore some more after this, and came back later to see 4 guys on stage with pegs attached to their noses, eyebrows, lips, ears, nipples, stomachs, etc...as they were told that to win they had to shake all the pegs off as fast as they could. Ouch! D:

Theres a booth here called GameSkulls. They have army style helmets with gaming headsets inside them. So you put on the helmet and you've got your headphones and microphone right there in the helmet. It's fantastic. JT has a pic of me wearing one which I'll get from him to post up. I'm thinking about buying one, they're pretty comfy and cost only about US$90 - which is really quite good for a gaming headset.

I got to try BAWLS! Haha! Energy drink I've been hearing a lot about. Very interesting taste.

So I tried a can of that, and I tried the frozen version as well (Snow BAWLS). I even got a packet of the mints - which actually bubble a bit in your mouth.

At 3:30 JT went off to the John Carmack keynote speech. I didn't really want to sit around for a few hours to listen to him speak - only because he speaks about what he is currently up to and its currently all management stuff. Not my cup of tea. JT said it was inspirational but so many people got up and left during because he wasn't talking so much about games development any more. In the end he had to leave as he got another nose bleed (got one during the night last night). He's on blood pressure meds...and diabetic meds...and he wears contacts. Yikes...makes me 1000 times more thankful I'm a healthy person (99% anyway :D ) - not that I wasn't already thankful. I'm a lucky bugger.

Whilst he was off I wandered around and ended up picking up a controller next to a guy playing Doom 2 co-op play. So we played through the levels available and I found out he's from Colorado. I can't remember his name though! I gave him my email so we'll see if he contacts me or not. He was a cool dude.

So...I think thats it lol. I've got another video to send to you as well as the one that didn't work the first time around. I have to make it smaller...it was 17mb the first time I tried to send it.

Tomorrow I'm hoping I'll be able to take a small walk-through vid of Quake Con and the BYOC, as well as the massive atrium thing here at the hotel. We'll see how that goes :)

Oh and I just heard that Matt got dared by some guy to eat a whole tin of BAWLS mints in one go, for a "Brink" t-shirt...which he found out later he could have got easily near the front of the con....he ended up with tears rolling down his face from the intensity of the mints.

Friday 14th August - Morning

Today bites, entirely.

I got back about an hour ago from a round-trip taxi ride to the Cowboys stadium. I paid $55 to take a taxi there with JT who thought it was completely necessary to bring a goddamn backpack with him. We get there, get told no backpacks and get told no, they don't have lockers and take no responsibility.

Not only that but the cab we took back from the stadium dropped us off 5 minutes away to another taxi because he had a fare that needed to get to the airport at 2:30, back at the stadium.

WHY TAKE US IF YOU CAN'T TAKE US THE WHOLE WAY?! Seriously, you screw us around to make $5? I hope your fair took another cab you jerk.

JT insisted I take the tour on my own and he'd wait for me. Yeah good idea, leave the lesbian alone in a tour group in homophobic Dallas. Brilliant idea.

The start of the day had me at QuakeCon, scoring 4 shirts with little effort, but its not really helping me see an upside to this mess. I was really looking forward to going to the tour and getting some merchandise. Worse than the $50 cab ride to the 7th closest Walmart back in LA.

Friday 14th August - Afternoon

Today has redeemed itself somewhat. It's now 1:30am and I've just got back from the Forum Whores meet. I met MissOwned, Ahab the Arab, Geno and Neocane and chatted for about half an hour. All very nice people.

In the space of that half hour I enjoyed hanging out with that mob more than I've enjoyed hanging out with any of the people I'm here with. Not very nice, I know, but it was all just chilling and hanging out and meeting people I spoke to online a bit.

I checked out the main stage when we got back from our taxi trip and watched the first heat of the BAWLS chugging contest, I think the fastest time was 9.4 seconds for a 453mL can.

Whilst in the crowd I caught a QuakeLive men's shirt. Afterwards I went and asked Spicey (from the forums - she's a nice girl - she was mc'ing the contest) how I could get my hands on a QuakeCon shirt. She told me at 5:30pm there would be a little stall thing out in the hall where they do swaps for sizes, and not many people know about it so the few of us lined up that didn't have shirts were able to get one! So I was pretty darn happy with that.

Earlier on in the day I managed to grab another Coolermaster-sister-company shirt which I'd traded for raffle tickets yesterday, scored an Alienware shirt by filling out a survey, and asked some guy with a stack of Asus/Intel shirts what I had to do to get one. He said "do you have an Asus motherboard?" and I'm like "omg no but I have an Intel! Thats rare from my part of the world! Pleeeeeeeease" lol and he gave me one.

So total, I have the following (lol);

QuakeLive (girls) - black

QuakeLive (mens) - white

QuakeCon - grey

Brink - black

Glitch Apparel - white

Alienware - black

Asus/Intel - black

Coolermaster ugly thingy - black

And there is possibility of getting more tomorrow... At least I'm giving one to Daniel and one to Nathan. And probably tossing the Coolermaster one away. I might take it with me tomorrow and trade it. I already tried once but the guy wasn't interested >.<

Oh. Breakfast I had an apple and a cookie. Lunch I had a steak. And dinner was another pulled pork sandwich. The sauce is way too strong! No more of those! Plus I tried Cherry flavoured BAWLS and it was GROCE! Like that horrible cherry flavoured medicine. Yuck.

So despite my epic pissed off episode where I didn't scream or shout or get violent or anything you probably think I may have done :P - I had a decent day. And now its 2am. I'm going to bed now!

Saturday 15th August - Morning

This morning I caught the third ugly ugly ugly cyberpower tshirt. Thats one caught every day I've been here. Damn they're ugly. And they've all been XL's.
But! I also caught a Coolermaster shirt, which despite being huge is a lot better looking.
I gave the ugly shirt to JT and that brings my tally entirely to 11, but 9 that I actually still have.

I stood at the Kingston booth, trying to catch one of their shirts because they're nicer, while they and coolermaster/cyberpower held a raffle. No luck, and 2 shirts from the other side of the booth area. Anyway, I stood there for 45 minutes waiting for the end of the raffle - the awesome airbrush painted case they had - they decided that they'd draw a raffle but the "lucky winner" would have to smash their case to bits...

So they had to first find someone in the crowd that actually had the ticket (so many tickets get drawn and people just aren't there), then they had to actually have a computer with them, then the organisers wanted them to smash their case. Which meant they would have to go back to the BYOC, take out all their components safely without destroying anything and then of course, go back and smash the crap out of it. I have no idea how many people were around for that, I left after the third person drawn still didn't have a computer with them. Laaaaaame. And completely unfair.

Now I'm thinking I'm going to go back down, grab a mini pizza and see what other crap I can score, if any, and then wait around for something else to happen. I'm looking forward to the BAWLS chugging semi finals - but I'm pretty sure the finals are on tomorrow and we'll most likely be gone by then. For some retarded reason we have a flight at midday - we leave here about 10:30am and the damn convention doesn't finish til 12. Not impressed.

Saturday 15th August - Day

I finally got a Kingston shirt. It's one of the nicer ones. Unfortunately its a Large but thats better than an XL.

They have the world's best guitar hero player there, they sponsor her (weird, as Guitar Hero is predominately a console game). I was watching her play someone else and one of the booth operators said to someone near me "if you let me draw on your face I'll give you a shirt!" so I jumped right in and said "yep, I will, go for it!" So she wrote "Hyper X" on one cheek (the perks of being female, she didn't have the heart to draw stupid shit like a moustache like she was doing to the guys :P).

Later on after that I watched Fatal1ty (gamer) take on some members of the crowd. He is the number one gamer in the world - if you've ever heard of Creative Fatal1ty sound gear, that's him. He has has name on Creative & OCZ (RAM brand).

They were playing Quake and he was just absolutely NAILING every guy he went against. He took it really easy on a few people, let a 7 year old kid win and despite practically standing right in front of her, still won against a girl that went up on stage.

They were tossing out shirts and dogtags but I missed out to the person next to me, about 3 times. It was driving me nuts :P

3:30pm rolled around and I decided to head over to the Antec booth. Their raffle started at 4pm so I thought I'd check out their Left4Dead set up (game I really like) in the mean time.

As I stood there they were packing up some stuff, so I helped them pack up a few cases and then stood back when they started the raffle.

I helped them display a case, as the girl couldn't lift it to show to the crowd. She thanked me and gave me a Multimedia Controller for my PC. I was pretty darn happy with that :D They continued the raffle and again an even heavier case was about to be given away, so I helped out again. After the dude won that prize I was about to walk away and one of their booth dudes gave me a spot cooler fan! So I'm pretty stoked.

I didn't end up buying the silly helmet headset thing. I tried it on again and figured my head would get a bit weighed down - but unfortunately the main thing here was the fact that the sound wasn't the best quality.

I felt happy knowing I wouldn't have to try and cart it around the rest of the trip, despite the $70 price tag (not bad for something like that, but shows how good the sound quality is....or isnt, really).

Some time before the Antec raffle/Fatal1ty thing, I caught the tail end of the ugliest keyboard and mouse comp in the BYOC area. Didn't manage to get one of the shirts they were tossing out there either unfortunately :P

And due to the Antec raffle I missed the BAWLS chugging but hey, free PC bits are better than seeing some people spill a drink down their shirt :P

This whole leg of the trip has been pretty damn epic. I'm staying at a massive and awesome and super nice resort, attending the biggest gaming party I've ever heard of, scoring free swag from some of the biggest names in computing and having a good old time amongst my fellow nerds.

My feet are killing me, my back wants to collapse and my shoulders are tight as hell but its all worth it.

So...I think thats it.

9pm is the drawing of the Mustang winner. I'll go check that out, hang around and see where life takes me :P

Saturday 15th August - Night

Finally at 9pm we headed down to the main stage at QuakeCon for the drawing of the Mustang.

Unfortunately, we hadn't eaten yet, and when we got there they were running the final for the QuakeLive open tournament. Once that was through at about 9:30pm they began the final of the Pro tournament.

It didn't finish til 10:30.

It wasn't til about 11:30 that we finally got to see them draw a name out - and the guy wasn't even freaking there!

You had to be lucky enough to have your name drawn out of the barrel and attending that draw during the convention and then win your 1 on 1 duel with the other gamer in QuakeLive in order to get a ticket for this. If you didn't get that, you might've been lucky enough to get one for volunteering. There were very few chances to get a ticket, and there were only 100 to go around.

So they redrew and found a winner - he had been a volunteer, been volunteering every year or 7 years. So a worthy recipient for a $52k car.

After Edit: Unfortunately due to crazy US taxes and insurances, he has since had to sell the car. We're talking you've just won a $52k car and now you have to pay $18k~ for the pleasure of owning it. Not cool.

Sunday 16th August - Day

We're here, finally. And although we haven't seen much its already ridiculously cool.

We left the Gaylord hotel room at about 10am, checked out and waited around for our shuttle. Once it arrived we headed down to the airport.

Not much to say about the airport junk. Fairly long line to get checked in - the stupid woman didn't understand the concept of us not needing to pay for bag checking. Thankfully someone else she called for help did (who spoke to her like she was an idiot, it was hilarious).

Got through check in, got through security (you have to take your shoes and jackets off here...can't remember if I mentioned that before) and had about 5 minutes to spare til boarding time.

The flight was relatively dull, they played 17 Again on the tvs that hang from the ceiling in the aisle. I didn't have my flight headphone adaptor with me though so I just watched while listening to music.

About 10 minutes before the end of the flight it started to get really bumpy and nasty (at least, compared to the other flights). I'm really not sure if there was anything wrong with the weather (no clouds in the sky, isn't windy in the city) or if the pilot was just shit (like suddenly tipping the plane to the right really quickly at one point, and constantly had to change his flight path) but it wasn't very cool. I figure the sickness I had came on from the stress and the movement rather than just the movement on its own. I held it together til we landed, though I'm not sure exactly what could have come up...it was 3pm Texas time and all I'd eaten was a small chocolate chip cookie at about 10ish.

Anyway so we walk out of the gate and there are poker machines. And shops. Eating places in this part, bookstores and other souvenir crap further down. We walk towards the signs that direct us to baggage collection and stop so JT can go to the bathroom. Star Wars pokies are about 5 metres away from me. Weird. I didn't get a photo, though.

From here we continued on to the baggage claim. We had to get on a small tram thing and jet over to the next terminal to pick up the bags.

Once there we got them easily and headed out the wrong door. Eventually we found the Taxi rank and hopped in.

There are so many billboards here! All shows and that sort of thing, everywhere. We could see part of the strip, but took the back way unfortunately. We got in and bam there was the arc de triomphe replica - damn cool.

I was wondering previously how the hotels do their setups with the casinos and stuff. I thought maybe you'd walk into reception and then off to another part of the building for the casino. Nope, straight into the casino, with reception off to the side.

There was a massive line to check in. I sat and waited with the baggage. After about 10-15 minutes JT came back and told me that we'd been given a room upgrade. We're now one floor away from the penthouse - crazy!

Oh and the view is ridiculously good.

I'm looking forward to checking out the shops and stuff in here, buying some souvenirs for everyone.

We just had lunch/dinner/something, room service. Too hungry to go anywhere and deal with people. I had a french dipped sandwich, which was reasonably good. They supply you with a small bowl of jus so you can dip it yourself - stops a soggy sandwich :P

Anywho, I think we might go for a wander downstairs soon. I have money burning a hole in my pocket.

JT wants to go to Fry's (electronic store of awesomeness) and they have ridiculously cheap laptops...I'm talking something you would spend $4k on in Aus for $1.5k here. Wtf. I'm almost annoyed I don't have more spending money :P

I've also got the M&Ms store/Coke museum on the list, as well as the Hard Rock cafe which is only a couple of blocks from here - I don't want to eat there, just buy a shirt or pin or something :)

Sunday 16th August - Night

This place...theres so much stuff going on I can barely contain myself enough to tell you. And I'm barely doing anything.

Last night we went downstairs and had a quick look through the stores down in the Paris Las Vegas complex. Every shop has "Les" or "Le" in front of it - even the toilets and stuff too. Kinda tacky but alright.

After that we wandered over to the shops inside the Planet Hollywood hotel - big centre and loads of stores. I couldn't shop much because it was going to close soonish and I had JT with me...he wasn't looking to shop.

Not only that but his eye had become infected between the airport and getting here, and got nasty real quick. He spoke to his Dad (who is an optometrist) and told him to see one here. So it was driving him nuts. He couldn't look into heavy or flashing light.

We got back to the hotel and he bitched...and bitched...and bitched....wouldn't leave his computer alone which was aggravating it and eventually he realised he couldn't do it. So instead of just relaxing he decided he'd go to bed sometime around 8, and told me he'd probably just get up at like 2am and go out on the strip. This really pissed me off that he was messing things up like that. His sleeping patterns have been the worst thing about this trip.

Anyway, after sitting around in the hotel til 12am, I went to bed.

Monday 17th August

This morning I woke up at 9am. JT was already awake. I have no idea whether he went out, I don't think he would have. I didn't care enough to ask :P

So he was calling around to find an optometrist and I didn't want to stick around for his medical issues. I had a shower and when I got out he'd had to call a doctor up to the room. I told him I was gonna go explore downstairs while he waited for the doc.

I went downstairs and bought some Paris stuff for Mum. Brought it back up to the room and the doc was there, so I dumped the stuff and went downstairs again, this time across the road.

The Planet Hollywood shopping centre - which I keep forgetting the name of - was where I ended up again. Properly looking at stuff and wishing I had stupid amounts of money to buy shoes with! Theres so much range here and its soooo much cheaper!

Later on JT messaged me to tell me he had to go to Walgreens to get some eye drops. Instead of just going there and then meeting with me, he met up with me and for some reason thought I'd go with him. So I told him I'd meet him later on.

I finished up in the centre and went outside. The sun was SO BRIGHT! I had to go back up and get my sunnies, and then met JT back downstairs. From there, we went walking up the strip. I got loads and loads of pics of hotels and stuff.

There are guys down on the street that are handing out little flyers with half naked women on them that try and thrust them at anyone that'll take them. They're in little mobs every half block or so, usually Mexican and slightly unnerving.

In the end we walked to the Fashion Mall and went inside (JT had heard a store there had mobile credit and he needed it desperately). Straight away we spotted Hot Topic. Epic! It wasn't a huge store but they had some awesome stuff. I could have spent a truck load there. I really wanted a Little Big Planet shirt, but they didn't have any Small's.

In the same mall I got some awesome sport stuff. Found some small felt pennants, got one for Chicago Bulls (basketball), LA Dodgers (Baseball) and Dallas Cowboys (Grid Iron). I also bought some official on-field pro Baseball caps - Boston Red Sox, LA Dodgers & New York Yankees. And because I bought 3 caps my 4th was free - I'd picked out a Chicago Bulls cap so I saved $25 :D

In the Gamespot store I bought a copy of Lego Batman for Xbox 360 for $20! Its AU$70 at home! Their games are way cheaper here. Unfortunately the other game I want at the moment isn't out yet. Shame, its only $60 instead of AU$110.

On the 'way out' JT bought his Dad a really nice pen. I liked the idea, but not the $300+ price tag, lol.

Eventually we made our way back to the Paris Las Vegas and just about collapsed.

This evening we decided to head out to the Hard Rock for dinner. So I went to the website and got the address. Google maps directed me wrong, so we walked around a really big block to the new restaurant which they said had just opened. Well, they lied. The place was still under construction, though the merchandise store was open.

I had the shits by then, and decided to give up and go for something else. We went walking back to the Planet Hollywood hotel and on the way went to 7-Eleven. Found the double gulp cup... I bought a super-gulp to get the WWE cup they're doing a promo for - it was $2.15 including the awesome cup and a butt-load of drink.

We kept walking til we got into the mall and ended up eating at "Blondies" which is like a sports bar/cafe thing. They had all these TVs everywhere with Baseball, Grid Iron and Soccer playing. We had steak which wasn't bad.

After that we headed back to the Luggage place and got a new blue Samsonite case each, big ones. Now I can buy heaps of things! :D

Anyway, now we're really tired and sore and my legs are sooo chafed D: But I'm happy. I'm going shoe shopping tomorrow. Planet Hollywood mall again tomorrow haha! They have some great stores there for shoes.

We're also going to (finally) Fry's, M&M's store/Coke Museum, Nascar Cafe and at night we'll see if the Eiffel Tower tickets I've got are legit. Lets hope so.

So now, I'm going to sign off and probably hit the sack.

Tuesday 18th August

So, our last proper day in Vegas. It seems way too short but we've packed so much in already so its sort of alright :P

This morning we headed out to Fry's - this place is HUGE! Think like...at least twice the size of Big W Tuggerah. Its an electronics store and they specialise in computers. So you walk around and theres sections with big signs dedicated to hard drives, processors, RAM, cases, motherboards, and just about every type they sell is out on display. Like, attached to the wall (not cases though, those are all lined up on a long shelf). Its crazy cool.
Theres also lots of accessories, pre built machines, laptops and networking gear. Thats just one half of the store. In the middle is a little cafe thing.

On the other side theres more - dvds, cds, books, video games, consoles, dvd players, blu-ray players, audio gear, and then additionally, a section dedicated to small & large appliances like toasters and crap.

I found the entire Twilight series in hard cover for $45. Crazy. It was about half price by their standards too.

Reporting back on the bacon salt, I found none - unfortunately not at this store I don't think (though I forgot to look/ask after a little while, so maybe they did?).

After Fry's, we headed back to the hotel to dump our loot (JT almost bought a laptop, but then didn't, for some retarded reason - more later) and then headed down to the M&M store & Coke 'Museum'. They were pretty darn cool. Definitely a must-do-once thing.

We didn't buy anything as we don't want anything to melt in the HEAT (I'm pretty sure its 40+ degrees here every day in summer, even still in the late 30s at 9pm). We're going back again tonight, late. We know its open from experience of walking past at like 10:30pm last night!

Coke Museum we did the tasting thing. Some were not bad, some were down right horrible! All different drinks from all over the world, 16 total and only $8 - we shared one and didn't finish it at all.

They have SO MUCH Coke stuff there - it apparently used to be museum-like but now its pretty much just a shop with a small cafe thing that only serves Coke products.

They have these awesome glasses that are in the shape of cans. I think I'm going to buy a couple and hope they make it back :P - might pack them in my backpack. If they break, I'll have only lost about $10.

After we were done there, we wandered back along to the hotel. We were going to go to the Nascar cafe for lunch but decided to postpone til dinner, and ended up getting maccas instead. First time! I got this Angus Beef burger which was a 1/3 pound patty. You choose either mushroom & swiss cheese or bacon & regular cheese. You can guess easy what I picked :P It was pretty good too! The salt on the chips here is much better than at home. Medium sized chips is comparable to home, but the large is like our large + half again!

Drinks are epic. Medium is almost a large at home and the large is so big they need to be served in a plastic cup.

Also on the way back I decided to stop at the Hard Rock cafe store, despite my irritation at their misleading nature :P I bought a nice HR Vegas guitar shaped pin. I wanted a shirt but...yeah...I kinda have too many now I think :P

After lunch JT told me he was going to head back to Fry's for the laptop. He was going to buy one, a Gateway computer - but they were sold out and he was disappointed. So when he got back he thought it over and decided to get an HP he saw. So I headed back to the shops for shoes.

I ended up with a pair of Globe "Sabre" shoes, which I had my eye on back in Aus but couldn't find them instores. I also picked up a pair of Nikes at Mum's/Hannah's request :) Unfortunately no blue! Can't believe it, they only put those up on the shelf today and only had 7.5's as the biggest. But they had pink (so did everyone else) so it wasn't all bad, I guess. I did try another store in the complex but they didn't have any at all.

Eventually, after something like 2 hours of decision making and purchasing, I trekked back to the room. My legs and feet are dead! They were dead yesterday!

I got back and JT was here. I asked him if he'd even left - he told me he got to the lobby and decided to do one more check on the laptop he wanted (and I thought I couldn't make up my mind!) and Daniel came online and told him to buy an Asus back home. So JT stayed in the room.

I should mention that I came very close to buying a netbook at Fry's. They were very cheap. But I figured I should save that money so I can actually enjoy my time in LA :P I will probably buy one eventually though, even if I end up giving it to Hannah. I'm a gadget whore.

I'm almost out of space already in my suitcase. Just enough room for some more crap from Hot Topic in LA (and maybe a baseball at the baseball? :P) - but JT has heaps of room in his second case so if I run out I'm not entirely buggered).

And on that note, my foot has gone to sleep and I'm hungry - dinner beckons (I think we're skipping Nascar and just going to hit up somewhere around the Sega place, we wanna play!).

Wednesday 19th August

Last night we headed back out to the M&Ms Store & Coke "Museum" to pick up some fun things. The glasses I bought survived the trip to LA today so thats good news.

We had dinner at the ESPN Zone bar/cafe/restaurant thingy which wasn't bad. We hung around or a little before heading back to the hotel.

This morning we packed up and headed out. Despite my panic, we ended up sitting in the airport for an hour. I forgot to charge my mp3 player, so I ended up playing sudoku on my phone's dwindling battery. Next time I go overseas, I'm taking the proper charger and not just my crap arse usb cable. It doesn't charge nearly good enough.

After a short flight we touched back down in LA. It took over an hour to get from the airport to the hotel, and I just about fell asleep 10 times on the way due to the phenergan.

Finally around 3pm dumped our stuff in the room and headed down the road to a cafe thing. Its called uWink - it was pretty cool. You have a touch screen or two at each table and you can pick all your food from there as well as play games. Just like xerts, only the waiters don't come over and double check your order. It was awesome.

I had these mozarella sticks, like the cheese had a crumbed kind of batter on it, it was nice. Then I had spaghetti & meat balls. Unfortunately I was so starving I ordered too much. Was good though.

After that we stumbled upon the Hot Topic I'd found online. Got a few more things, though they didn't have the Little Big Planet shirt I'd spotted in Vegas.

We wandered the little open air mall thing before heading out onto Hollywood Blvd - its exactly as they said, utterly dingy as hell, but theres an interesting vibe to the place. Still not as good as Vegas though.

After a bit of wandering and star spotting (the stars on the ground, that is), we've ended up back in the hotel.

We're now watching I, Robot. I'm about to go through the things in my suitcase to pack things a little better.

Thursday 20th August

So, Thursday.

We got up and headed out to the walk of fame again, intent on doing the whole thing this time.

This is where the recount gets boring - there really isn't much to say.

First stop was Grauman's chinese theatre. Its a whole lot smaller in real life than it looks in pics and on TV. We still have to get a decent photo from across the road. Anyway, we took pics of as many of the concrete hand/foot prints as we could - they were cleaning half of it and had it roped off.

After this we kept on walking to the 'beginning' of the walk, which was across the street. There were a couple of special stars - we assume they'd either moved them there especially or they'd been placed there especially to begin with as technically it wasn't part of the walk of fame, just in the area where the starting star is. These stars belong to Elvis, and the Beatles. The Elvis one had 2 vases full of flowers just sitting on it. Talk about respect.

After this we headed back along the road, getting all the stars on this side.

Theres this little movie theatre thing belonging to Disney, and a little store/soda stream (real 50s/60s looking 'bar' thing) place next to it. We were in here the day before to check out the merchandise.

So we kept on heading along, loads of little dingy looking shops everywhere. We got to a place that was selling apparent movie & tv props, I wasn't real sure just what was fake but JT seemed to believe everything they were telling him. Not exactly easy when they have a blank t shirt on the wall claiming it was Kristen Stewart's in Twilight. A blank black or dark blue t-shirt - seriously? Even if it was, why would you buy it? It could have been anybody's! :P

After this we found a store selling shoes and jeans, predominately. They had converse all-stars which worked out to be about the same price as back home, only they had ones I'd never seen before. I got some low tops - a pair in leather and a pair in pvc (patent, as they call it) - they're really nice.

JT bought some jeans and some jumpers and we were on our way.

A bit further along and we hit Skooby's - the hotdog place I'd seen online. Fantastic hotdog, and definitely the best chips I've ever had - though thats not hard when they make them themselves.

Eventually we got to a road that went south from Hollywood Blvd which also had stars on it. Intent on seeing them all, I began walking down. Halfway down this block and we'd not recognised any of the names (we were at the end of the walk that had all the old-school actors/singers/etc on it) and decided to come back up.

Soon enough we hit the end of the road and went across to finish up the side we'd started on. Nothing much to say here, we made no stops 'til we got to where we'd begun. Once here, we headed back to the hotel to dump our purchases.

Eventually we headed back out to wander around some more, hit the rest of the chinese theatre's concrete prints and went straight on in to Madame Tussaud's. For some reason I'd read online that it was really expensive - turned out only $25 entry. Anyway, we got loads of pics. It was really creepy walking into that room at first, but I got used to the mannequins quickly.

Strangely the pics make them look even more real. Some of my pics are just bizarrely accurate.

Thats most likely due to never having seen these people in person, I assume.

Eventually we headed back to the hotel to rest our tired feet & legs some more. We've done so much walking around since we hit Dallas, its painful!

After bumming around for ages we decided to make the trip to Amoeba Music - a bit of a long walk. We get there and they're doing some launch for the Inglorious Basterds soundtrack, looked like they were going to have someone there doing a signing. We walked in, realised there was basically no access to the aisles of music, and walked back out. Not happy! (Turns out Quinten Tarantino was there...what are the odds, huh?)

We headed back along Hollywood Blvd (Sunset Blvd was a bit dodgy) and tried to find someplace to eat. We ended up back at uWink - the waitress thought it was hilarious that we were back so soon, she really liked us - pretty sure it was because we tip well :P

After ordering way too much food yet again, we ended up back in Hot Topic. I bought a nice shirt for myself, as well as some other goodies.

After getting back we watched a bit of TV before heading to bed.

Friday 21st August

So, Friday morning we headed out about 11am and went to Amoeba music.

They have a new cd section and a used cd section, and they have so much stuff! Its crazy! And you can pick up some great bargains.

I managed to pick up a couple of cds to fill gaps in my collection for about $4 each, which was pretty good. And there are a lot of used cds that are in great nick - I was thoroughly impressed.

After Amoeba we wandered back to Hollywood Blvd and had Popeye's Chicken for early lunch. It was very similar to KFC in set up. I wish we could pick the sides like these guys have, instead of fries in every combo back home!

After a bit we wandered back to the hotel and watched TV for a while. We couldn't get over how we'd done mostly everything there is to do around here in so little time. Next time I come to LA I'm staying in West Hollywood where all the nicer people live. It may be infested with Yuppies but I'm sure I'd feel safer 'round there!

At about 5:30 we left for the Dodgers game. Walked down to the station underneath the shopping mall on Hollywood Blvd and jumped on a train to Union Station - back in Downtown LA. Price: $1.25. From here we changed lines and got on a train to China Town, the closest station to the stadium. Half an hour walk up a big hill later and we were finally at the stadium. Found out where to pick up our tickets and then walked half way round the place to get to where we were sitting. On the way we picked up some merchandise, I bought a big jacket, a baseball and a mini bat.

After collecting a bucket load of dodger dogs, nachos and peanuts, we finally found our seats and started to watch the game.

The great thing about baseball is theres this fantastic atmosphere, everybody is friendly (and if you're not, you're thrown out QUICKLY) and theres plenty of rev up music going on. It didn't feel like we'd just sat through 2.5 hours of baseball.

There was a little gap between our stand and the next one over, and some of the Cubs were down in that gap, practicing. At one point, a Dodgers fan in the next stand, who seemed to have had a little too much to drink, started shouting at them about how much they suck. The players took little notice, but security definitely perked up. Within about 10 seconds of him starting his tirade, about 10 security guards came down and guided him out.

There was a couple in front of us, and the girl said "aww thats pretty sad" - she didn't like that they threw him out - her boyfriend simply said "we don't need people like that here" - I thought that was fantastic.

There was a real family atmosphere in our stand. We had the Mexican wave go round a few times, booed plenty when things didn't go our way and eventually won the game 2-1. I was surprised how little scoring there can be in a game.

After the game, we trudged back down the hills as the Friday night fireworks went off behind us and eventually got on a train back to Union before the switch to the red line for Hollywood. Total trip cost $5.

Over the course of the day my sniffles went from that to a proper blocked nose, and this morning I woke up at 11:30 feeling like a truck has run over me. Sore throat & gross nose, the works. Lovely!

I think we're going to head off to the International House of Pancakes (ihop) now. Catch you all on the flipside.

Saturday 22nd August

Well, this had to be the most dull day of all - I guess thats what happens when you have a cold.

I woke up this morning at 11:30am, showered and eventually got ready to head out at 12:30pm. We walked down to ihop (pancakes) and I had choc chip pancakes. Dry as hell, still needed maple syrup! Was alright though.

We walked back to the room and I was just about dead already, by then it was about 2pm. Got in, fired up the laptop and promptly fell asleep.

2 hours later and I woke to the sound of an sms...

We didn't leave the room again til about 6, went down to uWink for the last time. I had spaghetti again - we had the same waitress again, and it was all good again.

Afterwards we took a quick look at whats on at the Chinese Theatre (we'll probably be spending some time there tomorrow) and then walked back to the room.

Since then we've been watching TV and bumming around. Woo hoo?

Can't wait til I'm home.....

Sunday 23rd August

Well I'm sitting here in the hotel lobby waiting for the plane.

I think this hotel must be where all the Aussies end up, there've been a few come through since we sat down about an hour & a half ago.

I have about 15 minutes to go before we get on the shuttle. No idea when we'll get to the airport, I'm kind of hoping it'll take about an hour this time, kill some time. As long as we can check in by 7:30pm I'll be happy.

This morning we got up, cleaned up and bummed around for a bit til 11:30am. We checked out, checked our bags into their little lock-up room and headed down to see Harry Potter at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. My first Digital movie, and the sound was fantastic I must say. The tickets are about $10 here, but my popcorn/drink/ice cream combo cost me about $15, so its pretty comparable to our prices, obviously not including the exchange rate.

Anyway that killed a couple of hours, and I got to watch HP again so all good.

Afterwards we wandered a bit before JT decided he'd go see District 9. He said it was on at 3:20pm...5 minutes after he left he came back. He'd been looking at the HP movie times, and the next screening of the other movie wasn't til 4:20pm.

So we wandered some more, then headed back to the hotel. Across the road is a mini supermarket thing so I went in and bought some chocolates. They have way too many peanut-themed bars. STUPID! Didn't get too much stuff, it cost me about $25 for what I did get and I couldn't really carry anything else to the register (not enough range, really).

Anyways, I'm going to get going and pack up my laptop again.

BYE!

After edit: I had about 10 minutes left til our shuttle was due to arrive, and then I was told that the couple that was sitting with us in the lobby who had been packed up and into a shuttle already were on the same one as us - so I literally had to hit the "publish post" button on here, hit the off button on my laptop, jam everything in my bag and run out. It was rather irritating!

So we ended up on a shuttle full of Aussies, and then finally at the airport. We checked our bags in without any issues with overweight bags and set off to the security check in. Heaps of shops and food places were in the main area where everyone could go. We thought "you know, every other time we've been to an airport on this trip, the better shops and food places have been inside after we get through security." So theres no doubt, we walk on through. And you know, once you get through you can't get back out. Of course, there was nothing on the other side. And what there was - nothing was open. Except one little cafe shop that was charging $10 for a pre-packed sandwich.

After this, not much to say. Found a power point to plug into and played Doom til we could get on the plane.

I slept for 10 hours on that flight. The plane touch down was nasty when we got back in and once we finally got through customs, my Mum was waiting with my Dad on the other side. It felt good to be back.