I’m back in the UK, for a couple of days at least. Will have to head out to Singapore, Bangkok and Istanbul over the next few weeks as part of my project. I’m not sure I’ll see anything besides the inside of the office and the hotel, but at least I’ll collect a few frequent flyer miles for my trouble.

International jetsetters that we are, Aude and I met at the airport yesterday morning. She was flying in from NY, I was flying in from Singapore. After spending most of the day in a jetlag-induced haze, we went out to dinner to celebrate her birthday. Given that our body clocks were 12 hours out of sync with one another, we spent most of the meal with me falling asleep into my plate (and without any appetite) and Aude absolutely ravenous because her body thought it was lunchtime.

Back to work tomorrow (boo!)

“Confirmed first class” — the happiest words a business traveller can hear!

Singapore – London is one of the busiest air routes in the world, with limited capacity between the two cities. I’ve been desperately trying to get home for a long weekend in London but have not had much joy — there were 27 people reportedly ahead of me on the business class waitlist.

With some arm-twisting back at the office, I managed to get our MD to approve travel in first class — which was also booked solid. So I went onto another waitlist.

But all’s well that ends well — after several days on the waitlist I’ve finally cleared into a first class seat and will be back on my way to the UK in time for the weekend!

It’s been a very full weekend. Headed out to City Airport on Thursday night to fly to Edinburgh for my friend Mike’s wedding. I’d deliberately booked City to avoid the chaos at Heathrow – it’s a small, city-centre airport which traditionally advertised ten-minute check-in.

Well, that was clearly in the pre-terrorist days. We arrived an hour and a half in advance of our flight only to be told that we wouldn’t be allowed through security until 30 minutes before. The airport was absolute chaos – it’s designed for people to clear security immediately upon checking in, and therefore has no place to wait landside – all the seating is airside. We gave up in the end and found a restaurant to grab a bite of dinner.

When we finally made it to security (putting our liquids of 100ml or less in a clear plastic bag, for whatever that accomplishes), I managed to get selected for secondary screening and a bag search. Which was a disaster (check back in a few days to find out why!). Bag search complete, we were finally through to the lounge. Our flight was called shortly thereafter and we were on our way. I settled back into my seat and began to relax.

Then I heard the dreaded “[Bing] Would passenger [me] please make himself known to the flight crew?” I pressed my call button and was asked to escort the flight attendant to the front of the plane.

“I’m very sorry, sir, but your suitcase appears to be vibrating,” she said.

A quick march onto the tarmac and a search of my bag revealed a rather over-enthusiastic baggage handler had managed to switch on my electric toothbrush. “Terrorist incident” resolved, my bag was loaded back onto the plane. I passed two chuckling pilots and a handful of laughing cabin crew on the way back to my seat, where I sat with my tail between my legs.

Excitement over, we had an uneventful flight to Edinburgh and landed just a few minutes behind schedule, thanks to a certain passenger with luggage issues. I collected my rental car (a VW Jetta TDI – a cracking little car) and we were off on our Scottish adventure. We stayed overnight just outside Edinburgh, in a room overlooking a field of sheep.