The Very Sleepy Beagle Has Landed

Arrived in mid day today (it's Tuesday, or so they tell me... )exhausted, but really happy to be here! It's sunny and I'm guessingthe peak temp today was around 93 degrees or so. I am so white rightnow, I'm afraid going into the sun is going to turn me into deep friedgirl... but it's so nice to see the sun again! So far, I barelyrecognize this city from the one I visited 7 years ago. It's cleaner,feels a lot safer, and there are Starbucks EVERYWHERE. Ugh. My hotelis right in the middle of a very busy commercial district, that islike a maze.

My flights out were fine. The Virgin Airlines flight to London waseasy and went by pretty fast. The flight crew was a bit odd, sort ofa Backstreet Boys meets Spice Girls type of group. I was lucky I wassitting next to this cool girl from Newcastle. Getting normalseatmates on long flights is always a big bonus. Useless factoidabout Virgin Atlantic, they now have designer barf bags. They'recalled 'Design for Chunks,' (I'm not kidding) and they have differenttypes of artwork on them. Mine has this sort of alien lookingcreature on it, my seatmates; a Unicorn. Yep, you can bet I saved it.:-) Unfortunately, one of the people sitting directly in front of ushad a stinky flatulence problem that occured with stunning regularity.I found myself wishing I still had my surgical mask that I carried onmy flights home from Vietnam during the SARS outbreak! We found thatthe little eye masks that they provide for sleeping work almost aswell though.
The longer leg, from London to KL was 12 hours. The flight itself wasvery smooth, and the flight crew incredible. Unfortunately, on thisflight, in order to have my window seat, I was trapped in by twopeople, meaning everytime I needed to get up, I had to wake them andmake them move. Murphy's law being what it is, these people seemed tohave iron clad bladders, meaning I couldn't just get up and go whenthey did, because they never seemed to need to get up. I had to askthem to let me out, pretty much everytime, which seemed to be aboutonce every couple of hours. But as the sun came up this morning, Icould see out my wondow over the islands of Southern Thailand andthen, the mountains of mainland Malaysia shrouded in mist. Gettingthat view made disturbing my seatmates a zillion times, totally worthit.

So the next order of business is to get myself situated andacclimated. First, to get a good nights sleep tonight, so as to keepat bay the narcoleptic tendancies that seem to be developing out of my6 days with very little sleep. ( Sat down on my bed around dinnertime tonight, and when I opened my eyes next it was five hours later).I should have a cell phone number in a day or two and hopefully allof my accomodation details worked out by the weekend. Class startsnext week. Hope this finds you well... I miss you already