Ngeh. I swear time in Dubai passes way more slowly compared to the rest of the world. Arrived here at 7ish with a good 24 hours to kill and yet, surprise surprise, the queue at arrivals was abnormally swift and the suspicious questioning person-at-counter was unusually indifferent.

The story is that Yuv spotted this awesome flying option where my transit time is only like 45min + the ticket was relatively cheap and me, thinking I had seen the same thing, had swooped down and grabbed the ticket. A good month later or so, I was in disbelief when I saw

Arrive Dubai Int 24th July 0700hrs
Depart Dubai Int 25th July 0745hrs

Shock shock horror.

That was why I was particularly nervous when the arrivals guy asked

"Where you fly from?"

tgo: Huh? Um. Er. Ummmmmm... UK...? Yea. Yea. From Birmingham.

arrivals guy: What hotel you stay in?

tgo: Ahm... No hotel

arrivals guy: *raises eyebrows*

tgo: Uh. Oh. I mean. I'm just transiting, but for- a long time. 24h I mean.

Ouch.

Normally that would have warranted a fairly high degree of suspicion, or at least I would've thought. Luckily the person just shrugged and said something like "Ngh." and let me through. Phooooo...

And this explains why I don't do well in OSCEs/when consultants are all nice and chatty and suddenly shoot, "So. Tell me everything you know about atrial myxoma."

So... I was kinda aiming to have finished checking out by... 9a.m. Earliest. But for once everything (even my luggage on the carousel) was quick and when I checked the time it was 8bloodya.m. :/ I had even taken the extra step of slowly going into the toilet, letting others walk before etc. ://

So for the past 4hours (omg it is finally 12p.m. 19 more hours to kill. oosh.) I have taken my time with checking back in again, hoping for a queue but again, no luck there. Check in person was being friendly and said, "So your flight is...... later this morning at........ nnnnaaaaiiiinne..?"

(polite smile) tgo: no. 7 something tomorrow morning. I know. I saw the date wrong.

And then it was 8 twenty bloody seven so I shopped. And the shops are really zzzzz. Milka chocolate? Random dunno what perfume? Wth?? I was done in about 3min. And I had made the effort to pick everything up and convert all the dirhams to pounds too.

Didn't realise how tired I was. I guess I had barely slept on the plane. Was feeling quite nauseous and almost vomited when I tasted the casserole. Which is strange because I usually have an exceedingly wide resistance to weird tastes. Plus I was starving 2hrs before boarding. Anyway, I managed to get internet (but not Whatsapp) and did the usual hotmail/fb etc. checks --> read shopaholic after that and kept falling asleep. Quite embarrassing coz I dunno if I am allowed to splay myself out at the main departure hall and sleep properly so I kept waking up. I was determined to stay at each spot for at least 3 hours so I wouldn't run out of spots and so I finally left for another long toilet trip at the furthest toilet and am now all settled in burger king with chicken fries (SIX pieces -.-), an apple pie, and the coffee that I need but spilt onto my pants. At least it dried up pretty quickly. And my pants are kind of coffee coloured. Thank goodness I decided to wear my long 3 random cats top.

Ah. I better go to the power charging point. Acer is dying again...