Ah . . . what a confusion was today . . . time-zones, planes and airports. Rob got up at some crazily early time in order to go rowing along some nearby creek with his uncle, Dave. Rob thought they would be leaving the house at 6am, but failed to appreciate that Dave would be waking him up at 5am. I politely declined the offer. As it turned out, the creek they were heading for was pretty much bone dry, so they went rowing along Brisbane river instead. I got up some time between 8am and 9am . . . I'm not sure exactly, but does it matter? I had pretty much packed my bag last night, so it was just a matter of hanging around, waiting for everyone else to turn up. Today was our last day in Australia, so Dave and Gladys were preparing a huge breakfast.

Later . . . The plane left Brisbane airport at about 15:00 (local time), or 05:00 GMT. Brisbane is ten hours ahead of GMT, you see. About seven and a half hours later, and we landed at Singapore airport. I like Singapore airport - it just seems to go on forever. Does this airport have an end? It just seems like a infinite corridor of airport gates, and the usual plethora of airport shops (bookshops, cafes, god awful gift shops, strange water features, toilets, sleeping/waiting people, duty free stuff) . . . but also, free internet access, orchids everywhere and the duty free stuff is very cheap. Two one-litre bottles of Gordon gin, working out at about 7. So then there was a wait of about three . . . three and a half hours at Singapore airport, which pretty much flew by . . . a bit of duty free shopping (up to our limit - 600 cigarettes and three litres of spirits), a coffee, a quick e-mail check . . . and, yep, that was it. The next leg of the flight took about 14 hours, and meant crossing 8 hours worth of timezones, rather than the two we crossed going from Brisbane to Singapore. But, yeah . . . watching all those films, it never really seemed like 14 hours.

So I'm at Singapore airport and I have this receipt dated today at 21:52:40. Apparently I bought 200 Silk Cut (which M**** has since all consumed), 400 Marlboro Light (for Rob), a litre bottle of Absolut (please don't tell me this is now empty), and two bottles (one litre) of gin. This came to SG$102.80, or nearly 103 Singaporean dollars, which worked out at exactly 36.42. The vodka was 7.37, the gin 11.51, the Silk Cut 6.77 and the Marbolo Lights 10.77. Bargain- tastic. There should also be a receipt for the coffee we had somewhere . . . erm . . .