I’m in Australia for the rest of the month. I’m out here on business doing some work for the Office of State Revenue – New South Wales, which is basically the tax man. The office is located in Parramatta, which is a fairly generic suburb of Sydney, but I’m only about 30 minutes away from the opera house by train and 50 minutes by ferry.

I wasn’t looking forward to the trip out here. The last time I was in Australia was 2004, and I traded in my business class ticket for two coach tickets so that Andrea could come. It was a fun trip but the 15 hour flight from LA was hell. This time I figured I’d fly business and not kill myself, but when the ticket turned out to be US$19,000 I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So I scheduled a few extra days to recover and headed out on Wednesday. This was to put me in Sydney about 6am Friday morning.

The flight from RDU to DFW was uneventful. I fly American pretty exclusively and this is usually on MD80 aircraft. I like seat 21F, which is the window in the second exit row (the window seat in the first exit row does not recline). The layout is 2-3, meaning that seat E is the only middle seat, and in the rare cases that the plane is not completely full it is sometimes empty in the exit row.

This was the case for my first flight, which meant I had a little extra room (the nice guy on the aisle was huge – not fat, just tall and muscular – so I was glad we weren’t elbow to elbow). The second flight was completely full, but the seat next to me was occupied by a rather petite woman which is the second best thing that can happen after an empty seat.

I had some time to kill in LA, so I went to the Admiral’s Club. Qantas doesn’t assign boarding passes through American, you have to get it just before the flight, and since Qantas and American share the lounge I was able to meet a rep without having to wait in line. I asked him about Business Class, and if at US$19K a seat it was full, and I made some other jokes. The line from my work blog was that for a difference of US$17K I could fly out a few days early, stay in the most expensive hotel room in Sydney, dine on endangered species and still save US$10K.

He laughed and set me up with three free drink tickets and gave me my (coach) boarding pass.

I don’t drink before long flights, so while I was eating my sandwich at the bar I gave one to the lady next to me, and I gave the other two to a couple from Australia who sat next to me afterwards when I was working on the laptop.

When I went to board the plane, the agent said there was something wrong with my boarding pass and it had to be reissued. I didn’t dare hope for an upgrade but when she came back …

w00t! I was in business. I almost cried I was so happy.

I’m not sure if it was my flirting or the fact that the noon flight on Thursday was cancelled, but I was extremely glad for the upgrade.

Well, it wasn’t worth an extra US$8500 but it was very nice. I watched “Iron Man”, had a decent meal and with 12 hours to go put the seat in “lay flat” mode. I remember waking up quite often but when I finally felt I could sleep no more there was less than 5 hours left on the flight. I got a snack, watched “Narnia: Prince Caspian” and “Kung-Fu Panda”, ate breakfast and it was time to land.

Business class people get express tickets through customs, and I made it to the Courtyard in Parramatta around 8am.

I had asked for early check-in, and not only did they have a room for me they upgraded me to an “Executive Spa Suite”. Not bad since I plan to spend pretty much the entire month here.

So I took a nap, and then headed into the city to meet an old friend of mine from Raleigh. I made it back to the hotel around 11pm and slept in until 8 this morning, so I think I’m adjusted to the local time.

This evening I’m off to visit my friend Michelle and her family over in Curl, Curl. I’ll update more tomorrow.