G’Day from Down Under

SYDNEY — It’s raining here this morning, so I’m taking it easy, getting oriented, and catching up after a 10.5 hour flight from Honolulu. As usual, Hawaiian Airlines did a fine job. For one thing, they fly my favorite airplane, the Boeing 767. They also feed you — for free! — and the food is reasonably good. (It should be: their executive chef is Beverly Gannon, who runs the Haliimaile General Store restaurant on Maui, and it’s superb.)

The first noticable difference here: They drive on the left side of the streets. From the back of a taxi, your American driving intincts kick in and react almost violently as the cabbie swings into a turn on the “wrong” side of the road.

As we left the airport, we passed a McDonalds restaurant and a Krispy-Kreme donut shop, all ablaze in neon.

Their newspapers here are HUGE … at least the Sydney Morning Herald is … almost twice the size of our papers at home. Your arms actually get tired if you open the paper up to two inside pages and hold it up to read the damn thing.

Notwithstanding all that, I have discovered from said journal that Mozart’s The Magic Flute is playing at the Sydney Opera House on my last night here. Perfect! Now the question is, will they let a guy in wearing an Hawaiian aloha shirt?

More to come.