Scrub-up

Brisbane is now eight hours behind us.

Changi airport reminds me of a bunch of dreams I have.  The ones where I know what I want to do, where I want to go, whether it's to get food or meet someone (usually get food), I have a clear objective.  Often I can even see that objective.  But somehow none of the paths line up; the escalators don't go to that floor, the lifts won't stop, they close the gate at the last minute.  And nobody seems to understand quite what I'm asking.

I told the liar that the last time I was in Changi, it provided travellers with a desk of tiny, energetic women whose purpose, was to answer stupid questions and help poor, lost tourists like ourselves find our way to goods and services.  This service seems to have been discontinued, likely due to a lack of small women, stupid questions or lost tourists.  We spent forty minutes wandering about terminal one until we found transfer information; our flight to London has been delayed by an hour.

My father is a wise man.  His gift to us, before we left Australia, was a fist-full of Singapore dollars; exactly enough to give us access to a lounge with showers, wifi and caffeine.  An energetic woman with a shaky grasp of English sold us a couple of passes, shoved shrink-wrapped towels in our hands and pointed us towards the best shower I have ever used.

The water pressure was nothing to write home about; the true beauty of these showers was in their height.  As a normal-sized person struggling to function in your world built for dwarfs, it is rare I get to feel a shower hit me much higher than my sternum.  These heads were set at eight feet, and a steady stream of clean, refreshing water stripped my layer of nerd-sweat.

Those showers may have saved a life today; there's a real chance I would have left the Liar lying broken in a duty-free store somewhere. As it is, he's perked up as well after a shower and a smoke.

For my part I am most looking forward to the moment five hours from now when our self-imposed moratorium on sleep is lifted.