Mid Flight Update!

Wednesday May 5^th (3am Toronto Time)

Im writing this from a little metal tube 37,000 feet up in the air somewhere over Greenland. My watch says it is 2am, but I can see the sun coming up when I look out the window, or out of the camera that they have on the front of the plane! Our flight started with a Travel Prayer from the Holy Quran, unfortunately it was in Arabic and I didn’ understand any of it.  I just finished watching Avatar, we each have our own touch screen TV with tons of different movies, music, and apparently also games.

As usual I did everything last minute, so Tuesday in was filled with getting a haircut, buying a couple last minute clothes, and (hopefully) waterproof hiking shoes. The nerves began to sink in as I realised that I needed to think of everything I would need for the next six weeks right then. It is not like going back to London where I can ask a friend to bring the stuff I forgot. It is even different from going somewhere like England where I could easily go buy stuff that I forgot. In the end I think I managed to bring most of my stuff.

I met two friends at the airport, one planned and one a nice surprise! I bumped into a friend from university, Natasha, on my flight! She is going to visit her family in Jakarta! It is a small world! I think she had a nice laugh thinking about how I am going to find the heat and rain there. And I also met Ross at the airport, he is one of the execs with me from the Microcredit club at Western. We left Toronto at 10:45pm on Tuesday, local time, and it is a 12 and a half hour flight to Abu Dhabi. Then we have less than 2 hours before we are off on a 6 hour flight or so to Dhaka. We arrive in Dhaka at 5am local time on Thursday, and I got an email from the bank telling me to come in to the office at 10am! No rest for the weary. I am going to try to stay awake until noon Toronto time, which is 10pm their time. So I think that will mean sleeping most of the flight from Abu Dhabi to Dhaka.

People from the hotel are going to come meet us and pick us up and take us back to the hotel. Then we get a couple hours to get settled before heading to the bank. In Bangladesh their workweek is from Sunday to Thursday, so Friday and Saturday are their weekends. Which actually works great for us, it gives us a day or two to explore a little bit and get over the jet lag.

I am quite excited for the hotel, it has a rooftop pool and patio, a little fitness centre / gym where I will be attempting to keep up my biking and running on their stationary bikes and treadmill! They also have a restaurant serving Bangladeshi, Thai and Chinese food as well as a convenience store or sorts. No steak and potatoes here!

So now, I will attempt to keep myself awake for another 8 hours until we land! That should be plenty of time to watch a couple movies and read some more of my book.

Cheers,

Mike

PS – It seems like they have blocked me from being able to post new things on my blog... I can see it but can’t post new things, so I am going to try emailing stories back to Canada and my friends there can post them – Thanks Omar!!!