Home in about 14 hours or so.

Checking in was a pain as always. Unexpectedly, I had 43kg to check-in - even though I've shipped most of my stuff back home. Most of the weight could be attributed to the electronic items I was carrying though - like all my chargers, et al. Well, they ALMOST fooled me into paying the excess baggage by saying that "ah, you're 43kg, which is 13kg over what we can give you, which is already 10kg more than what it says on your ticket (which is 20kg). BUT, we'll just charge you 5kg of excess baggage." And I thought, well, not bad, good bargain eh, buy 5kg, get 8kg free. Then they said it was gonna cost £126 for 5kg. WTF.

Obviously I wasn't going to pay that. So after removing 3-4kg, I went back to the counter, and tried to reason for 40kg, since that was the allowance we came on - and they said we could get 40kg if it was our first or last flight home. As it is, it would be my last flight after my studies. This time, the lady was a little more helpful by saying that 40kg is only if you've got a student ticket (which I don't - i have a FULL fare ticket, which is £520 one-way for goodness sake). And apparently, she's not the boss so she can't decide.

So off I go to try and figure something else out. And then we were told, if we put stuff into a "laptop bag", we could technically carry TWO hand-carry luggages onto the plane. So that's what I did. Took some of the electronics out of the check-in luggage, and put it into a "laptop case" and went back to check-in - this time weighing in at 33kg. (well, they said they might consider not charging me if I only had 35kg, and i'm under that this time). And because it was a different check-in counter this time, the guy let me in. But not without asking me to put my hand carry luggages on the weighing scale first. That came up to 16kg apparently for my "laptop bag" + rucksack. He mumbled something about that being too much still, but let me go anyway. Bless that guy.

So off I went to have my coffee, and cool down from yet another check-in episode. Many thanks to Xi-lin and Leon for coming all the way down from London to send me off, and a million thanks to Fraser for picking me up from my place and sending me to the airport! :)

I shall now try and make myself as invisible as I can when I board the plane - mostly because i'm sure they've put me beside a fat lady, or a crying baby. (if you've read Air Babylon you'd know why...) In about 14 hours' time, I shall hopefully be sweating it out in the living room at home!