Hopping on Jetplane Heading Home: A Pictorial.

Prologue: Home is where I want to be. The best place that anyone could ever be at. Aside from the lack of internet though. OK should be doing reading now. Stop slacking, me!

7 November 2010 (Sunday) 7:45 am: Packed and ready to take a leave from Pearl Island. These are the usual combination of luggage, lappie bag and handheld bag. Waiting for my cousin to pick me up around 8am. Luckily messaged him a few days earlier to ask for his favor or otherwise I would have to call a cab hence spending extra money, inadvisable act while living on a tight budget.

8:15 am (or something). Look at the early morning crowd! And ohh there's some expansion construction going on right beside the terminal. Hopefully they can get rid of the relatively tired and stuffy 80's style design and get itself a respectable facelift.

Same thing for the AirAsia's side too. Waited in line for about 20 minutes before it's my turn. Checked in my bag. 8kg of clothes and books.

They installed this huge rotating LCD screen thing for advert in the middle of the check in area. Head over to McDonald on the other side of the terminal, hoping to catch a lil B&O even though I had instant noodle earlier. Walk around a few times. No table = no luck. Decided to head to the airside instead since they have wireless over there. Went through X-ray. They confiscated my lil scissors that's resting in my pencil box which I put inside my handheld bag. CRAP. That lil trusty scissors of mine has accompanied me for the past three years, helping me cutting through papers and tapes and instant noodle packet. And now, he fell into the hand of strangers because of inflight regulations. Goodbye my lil scissors. You served me well and I will miss you. And screw inflight regulations.

Gate 13 looking towards the waiting area. Still pretty quiet by the time I reached there. Settled down over a little bistro located there, turn on my laptop and checked my Facebook while waiting patiently for the plane to come. (especially for Restaurant City. Claimed lots of prezzies there!)

9:25 am (or something): Plane arrived. It's the AT&T Williams F1 Racing Team jet! Passenger coming from this flight disembarked while passengers bound for Kuching started to form a long line. And thus we waited. And waited. And waited. Then the annoucement: "Flight AKXXXX bound for Kuching will be delayed due to unscheduled maintenance." Collective groan and sighs and almost every passenger went back to their seats waiting. And waited. And then announcement: "The flight is ready for boarding." Checked in and board the jet while wondering what's the unscheduled maintenance for anyway? *shudder at the possibility*

Flying skyward and fast. It was drizzling when we departed from Penang hence slightly bumpy ascend (complete with exciting banking act!). Reached flight level 30 and there's nothing outside but WHITE. We're basically flying in the cloud/beside cloud formation for a good hour. More bumps as the pilot speeds away. And this picture is the moment where blue sky and clouds afar finally appear in my relief.

AirAsia wants your money! They hate LOLCATS. And once again, I am trapped in the middle seat again (23B) which means lack of privacy and even less room to move about. I wanna get an aisle seat or window seat for a change!

Back to scenery. The sky and the sea are merging into one as cloud floats by.

Land! Finally we're at this side of the pond. Descend is yet again rapid true to AirAsia's pilot reckless style. More bumps. Flaps deployed to full. Landing gear deployed. Rapid descend continues. Yet another steep banking turn while everything deployed to descend to the Airport. More BUMPS. Among the bumpiest landing approach that I had before. Houses and landing looking closer and closer. Passed through swamps and housing estates and kampungs. Airport compounds. The landing gear hit the ground with a rough thud. Reverse thrust too full while breaking...and the plane rapidly glide to the apron and stand. "Tuan-tuan and Puan-Puan. Kita telah mendarat di Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa Kuching...". And how much I glad to hear this line again. Grabbed bag, walking across the apron as usual of AirAsia's flight and reached inside the terminal.

Sunny days indeed. Called mom. Mom surprised I already landed in Kuching even though I told her that my flight has been retimed. Nevermind about that though.

East Malaysian's idiosyncrasies: A separate arrival hall for Domestics (outside Sarawak) which is the same as International flights.

Separate immigrations rules for Sarawak (and Sabah too, for that matter) all thanks to the gentlemen agreement upon formation of Malaysia. How long will this arrangement last? I don't really mind though (oh isi hati seorang perantau yang girang setibanya di tanahair tercinta) while West Malaysian continue to feel like and outside and scheming to scrap the remaining vestige of the Malaysia Agreement.

Grabbed my bag from baggage reclaim, plopped it on the trolley and head out to my usual waiting place for my parents car to pick me out at the outer lane. And as I look skyward towards the blue sky with undulating cloud, I know this is where I want to be.

And immediately during that evening, Taukelip dropped by 7th mile for a teh-c-peng. Oh it has been too long since the last time I met him and oh boy, he's as dark as charcoal and tadbit too slim for swimming every evening! Oh gosh! It's time to amp up the food intake to regain some weight! And dad cooks his famous curry again like what we usually do for Sunday, accompanied with glutinous rice. Oh it's HEAVENLY. How much I missed homecooking. No more feeling guilty of eating expensive food. No more unhealthy MSG packed instant noodle diet, just plain good and homely family homecooking for the next one month plus.

-Today, 8 November 2010 Monday. First 24 hour back in Kuching-

Bought KongPiah for my youngest brother to be brought to school for recess. And the SISTAHoods went bonkers when I tagged them of this KongPiah goodness. Be envy of me as I ate 3 of them today! OMNOMNOM. Want me to tapao back to y'all? *wink wink*

Epilogue: One thing about coming home though is that my mom will delegate some of the housework for me to do since that I cloistered in my home almost all the time as usual. Drying the laundry outside, cook rice (with rice cooker), wash clothes (using washing machine), buy breakfast/lunch/packed food for recess for youngest brother ans basically as the guardian of the house. Hmm. Not that I mind too much though. These are the things that makes me feel at home and at ease. And my parent is getting more obsessive with craftwork these days! All in the days of devotee's work!