Thursday, August 20, 2009

First day in Sydney

After a late night we got going around ten the next day and wandered around nearby our hotel before venturing to far into the city. Went around to nearby piers as we were across from the opera house though were still able to get some good pictures. Later that afternoon we walked across the bridge and into town and saw much of the city. Got a lot of good pics at day and night though didn't actually do much in the way of any guided tours at that point.
Below: Took a little time to walk in King's street and saw several car dealerships including this Ferrari and a Lamborghini and several others.















<-Sydney Opera house at night













<-I'm famous














<-Sydney bridge

A little well needed Vacay, after a loooong flight

Got to australia after nearly 2 days travel time, left Iraq on the 11th and flew military air to Kuwait where we signed in and waited for our flight. Our initial flight from kuwait to Dubai was scheduled for the next day, as we flew from Iraq in the evening and landed again within an hour, once we bussed from the post to the military terminal at the kuwait airport we waited a few hours until the people who worked there forgot us and didn't get us to our flight on time, so back to post and rescheduled for the next day. At kuwait we waited in several lines and security checkpoints, finally on the plane we flew for an hour and a half to dubai without an issue things looked good, with an 8 hour layover in dubai we got to our terminal with plenty of time to spare including time enough for a couple more security checkpoints. But once on the plane the plane suffered an electrical malfunction and were forced to wait 2 more hours before being told to go back to the terminal. Several hours later the plane was ready to go with the errors apparently due to equipment overheating due to the weather, at that point we left Dubai for Sydney, Australia finally or so we thought once the plane had reached the edge of australia we were informed we needed to make an emergency medical landing due to an ill passenger. And so we landed in Perth, Australia where we waited for several more hours due to a new crew needing to be called in from of all places Sydney due to the current crew reaching their max flight time for that day. Finally airborne again with a new crew we made it to Sydney within a few hours and after several failed attempts to call hotels we went to the internet and put in a reservation at a hotel. After that we looked to catch a train and found we just missed the last one less than a minute past, from there we went outside to catch a cab just in time to have one pull up, the first thing that had gone our way since we left a couple days and time zones past, we went to the hotel to find that the receptionist had already gone to bed as we had pulled in at near midnight, after getting in contact with the receptionist we were able to get a group room with promise of seperate rooms the next day. At that point was the turn around we needed to bright our trip.

<-To the Left: waiting at Kuwait City Int'l Airport











<-To the Left: Boeing 787 Our int'l flight from Dubai to Sydney grounded for medical emergency in Perth, Australia.



<-To the Left: The Glenferrie Hotel our home for three nights while we spent our time in Sydney.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Out of Touch (Again)

Been out of touch with a reliable web source so have been unable to maintain my site for those of you who have been looking in every now and then. In the past 5 months have been serving in southern Iraq, am now enjoying a little leave in Australia finally but here's a little of what's happened since my last post.
This is one of our housing units that we're all living in one trailer three rooms 2-3 people per room.

And here's one of our soldiers hard at work, or something like that, Twizzlers and office chairs it's a hard life. UFFDA!