Overnight Flight

25 Nov
10.20pm overnight flight to Gold Coast on Scoot

Plane was serving supper (to customers who ordered ahead) at midnight, and only turned off the lights at 1.30am. Babies cried and there was a mother who walked up and down the aisle to rock her boy to sleep. Meanwhile, every time plane experienced turbulence, the seatbelt signs would turn on followed by pilot announcement. And then the air stewardesses would walk down the aisle repeating "please put on your seatbelt" to no one in particular. Ethel put on her eye shield and travel pillow and fell asleep almost immediately around 11pm. Calder fell asleep only at 3.30am. Guess what? At 4am, the lights turned on again and the plane started serving breakfast and inviting purchase of merchandise! Which woke Calder up. Morale of the story: never take overnight flights. Not only do they interrupt sleep, the travel pillows take up space in the luggage when not in use.

Other observations:
Being long-legged, Calder had to be constantly reminded to sit straight so that he wouldn't knock his knees against the seat in front.

I gave the children almond Hershey's to chew to ease any discomfort with ear pressure during takeoff. Later I noticed that Calder was pursing his lips in a peculiar manner. Was he holding his breath? So I instructed, "Open your mouth." That was a mistake. He obeyed and out spilled a whole stream of chocolate saliva - for some reason, he was afraid to swallow during the takeoff.

After this, our worst fear came true - Calder started laughing and we had to keep him from waking the sleepers around. Fortunately the episode was short.