Back in Sydney.

I managed to book a flight back to Sydney for Friday evening to arrive in Sydney on Saturday morning.

Here's a picture of a sign that I saw on an estate in one of the many high rises in Hong Kong. Thought it was mildly amusing and I wasn't quite sure of its exact meaning.

My flight back to Sydney wasn't the most pleasant flight that I've had. For a start it was a late night flight and arrived at 6.30am in Sydney so I had to try to get as much sleep as I could. Unfortunately it was a very bumpy flight throughout the night so I only managed to get an hours sleep at most.

I think I've had enough of flying log haul flights for now. After four long flights in the last two months I've earned plenty of Virgin frequent flyer miles but have definitely had enough of sitting in an aeroplane. Video on demand or not, I've seen nine movies and had enough of trying to sleep on a plane.

This is quite funny when I look back at it, but I was shitting bricks at the time. They are very strict on what you can bring into customs in Australia and because of this they scan your luggage when you pass though customs. When my large ruck sack was being scanned and I passed though the guy at customs asked me whether I had packed the bag and was this my signature on their declaration form. I said yes to both to which he asked me to follow him with my bags. He led me to one side and ignored my question as to what was up.

At this point I was quite concerned because my ruck sack doesn't have any locks on the zips so I thought someone could have put something illegal in it. He told me to put my ruck sack on the table and then asked me whether I had an electronic fly swatter. I said yes because I bought one for Paul in Australia as he was complaining about the mosquitoes here and I had thought it would be a good present for him. It's the size of a tennis racquet and had a metal gauze which can be electrified by batteries to swot mosquitoes. I thought it was quite safe as there is another metal layer over the electrified layer. Apparently there has been a case though where a kid had dismantled one and then used it to electrify other kids, so they are banned in Australia.

The customs man then confiscated the fly swatter and filled out a form for it for me, and that was it. Nothing else, just an innocent mistake on my part. Still it gave me quite a fright!

I didn't do much over the weekend except catch up on some much needed sleep and chill out in my flat here.

I managed to get nine hours sleep on Saturday night which is quite a lot for me. I also had a couple of Krispy Kreme donuts and felt too tired to visit the gym on Sunday morning. Quentin obviously won't be happy when I arrange to see him next Saturday.

Called Wespac (the Australian bank) today and they said that there is likely to be a problem if Barclays send money to a receiver with a different account name than the one that I have here. The woman from Westpac also thought that it was totally silly that Barclays wouldn't allow me to make an international transfer to a different named account.

I'm now trying to transfer money from my Barclays account to the Westpac account using an internet company called XEtrade which claims to have the best international transfer rates and an 'easy' way to move money around internationally. I'll let you all know how I get on with them. Hopefully they won't disappear with my money, they are based in Canada and their web site appears to be genuine.