I managed to make it till 4am, but I think George stayed up the entire night. His flight left earlier, so it made more sense. Since my flight left at 3:15pm, which is 3:15 EST it didn’t make much sense for me to not have a nap, so I slept till about 7. Once I was up I headed to the coffee shop to check my flight info, and make sure everything was go for takeoff. I wanted to buy one last souvenir, but the shop didn’t open until 11, so I went back to the guesthouse, showered, and check out. At 11 I took the subway to the shop, made my purchase, then headed back to the guesthouse to grab my bag and head to the airport.
Airport bus was cheap, and I had about 2 hours to kill at the airport. Spent the majority of my Hong Kong dollars, which was quite lovely, then got on the plane. Middle row, middle seat, between two sniffling Chinese guys. Not much for conversation, but all in all not terrible seat mates. I think I was a little fidgety as I tried to sleep. I managed a couple of intermittent hours, which will hopefully allow me to survive the evening when I get to Toronto.
Watched a couple of movies ( “Vantage Point”, “Definitely, Maybe”, and about 10 painful minutes of “27 Dresses” before I had to turn it off), and listened to some inflight music as well. Even read, surprise surprise.
Touched down on time in YYZ, but had to wait about 1.5 hours to get my luggage, as there was lightning preventing people from going on the tarmac. Made it unscathed through customs, and out the gate, which kinda sorta brings this travelogue to an end.
I had a lot of time to read. At some point in Australia, I decided I’d only read books by author’s I’d never read before. Here’s the list:
Red China Blues by Jan Wong
Right As Rain by George Pelecanos
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Riders by Tim Winton
Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
Love and Free by Ayumu Takahashi
A Drink Before The War by Dennis Lehane
Hell To Pay by George Pelecanos
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
Total Control by David Baldacci
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
First They Killed My Father by Luong Ung
Next by Michael Crichton
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Collected Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Clockers by Richard Price
Black Cross by Greg Iles
The Girl In The Picture by Denise Chong
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
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