Flat Ass – the journey: day 0

After feeling my legs weak for the last 3 days in Bologna at my parent's place due to excitement linked to the coming experience, the D-day had finally arrived.
But what was my physical state? Wrecked. In Ireland I had to close down the Irish chapter under the Christmas holidays in 8 days; I worked until 31st December, cleaned my flat, ultimated the luggage, celebrated New Year's Eve with Polifemo and Ulysses (cool party guys!), slept 3 hours and flew to Bologna to meet up with dozens of relatives and friends. My agenda was steadily fully booked but managed to make everybody happy and myself too of course: this Italian spell was absolutely necessary to me. I feel refreshed and recharged!
The night before the D-day I slept 2 hours also due to the early flight to London, leaving at 6:30 am.
I come across the first destabilizing surprise at the check in: the very kind Italian lady remarks the fact that I had to change airport in London. Yes, yes I know.....WHAT?!?! Airport?? Correct, landing in Gatwick and taking off from Heathrow. Damn me for assuming things (is Mr Sandler – me – on a downwards spiral?!) and damn the agency for not extra mentioning it, uff. How to face this? Panicking or defiantly taking it as an adventure? Come on guys, Super Luke fears nothing!
Negative remark on British Airways for hiring an extra person (in addition to the usual -sic- security checks) to inspect your personal effects. Again?? Once more you want to sneak into my personal life, once more you want to fool me with your security placebo while removing my rights to the privacy? Oh yeah, a strawberry yoghurt containing an H bomb has not been detected by Italian carabinieri, strategic move British Airways!
In the meantime, paying passengers were freezing in the bus with open doors in the cold and foggy Bolognese dawn while the nuclear genius was performing her inspections. Don't you wonder how I dressed up? Winter jacket to handle European winter or flip flops to be ready for Australia's summer?? Son of the compromise and mediation, I dressed up in a springish way ;-)
While taking off and listening to an english steward putting the accent always on the last WORD of the sentence (Welcome to British AIRWAYS; please fasten your seatBELLS; I wish you a pleasant FLIGHT...very annoying) I devoured the sandwiches made by mamma....salame and prosciutto with soft corn bread: I was in paradise. Grazie mamma!
To prove you that I did not panic at the idea of running through London against time, I fell asleep in the plane ...dreaming about more sandwiches :-)
In order to buy the bus ticked for the connection between the 2 airports I had to withdraw pounds...and of course after 12 days Italy I forgot my Irish PIN....aaaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!! Ok ok: I panicked there!
Anyway, my contacts with the British people made me come to the conclusion that they are mutating and became a new mix between germans and portuguese: precise but extremely sloooow!! !They were taking it easy and chatting while I was risking to miss my flight! dai cazzo! I got there just in time, yes!
At least I did some running...because for the next 20 + hours I would be renamed into “Flat Ass” that unfortunately has nothing to do with the movie “Kick Ass” by the way a very nice one.
My situation in brief: the plane was massive, the 2 storey Airbus 380, but the economy seats are kind of small, so definitely not comfortable! Also because we were provided with pillows, duvet + all my belogings but no place to put all those things! I was surrounded: in front a woman whose seat was steady laid back leaving me even less room; on the right a guy whom nobody told about the existence of tissues: he kept on sniffing without cleaning his nose :-S but the real problem was the left side, my only access to the “outer” world: a man who never said a word nor smiled and pretended not to see that he had to stand up when the sniffer or me had to go to toilet. When he was forced to because we raised our voices and touched him he puffed air from his mouth like a 4 year old unkind child!! simply amazing.
To conclude was my “automatic pilot”\survival mode in full power: when for example food was offered and I woke up just 2 seconds before the hostess turned to me, I tried to spot at least ONE word among the options and just replied: “the second you said” due to the incapacity to formulate a full sentence!!!.............
The checks at the Australian custom were better than I expoected, pretty smooth, not invasive and fast.
And then..........and then guys I exited the main doors and let the Australian air surround me.....man I'm really here!! so much talking and organizing and I really made it!! Temperature was 23' C with some warm wind...so perfect!
I was assigned to a Chinese taxi driver extremely kind who gave me the names of the neighboorhood according to the major concentration of the different minorities (example: Little Italy is called Laika, at least so I understood, need to double check anyway).
The hotel is located in Chatswood, Chinese neighboorhood, is very nice and most impressively my room is not a room, is a flat!
I took a walk around and what mostly stroke me was the smell in the air: full, warm, almost sweet and incredibly similar to the one in San Diego, CA, an air of summer, an air of happiness and adventure.
Ettore: I thought at your speeches about the Dublin air, wet, rich with many smells, thanks for underlining this aspect of a city.... however this is belongs to another league :-)

ps: pictures refer to: airbus 380; me with "nothing to declare but my genius" at the Australia custom; entrance of my hotel.