mike carey

Just watched the film on my flight home. The story is harrowing and I thought the dark depiction matched that. I enjoyed the movie and the performances of the main character actors. I followed that up with the complete contrast of Love, Simon. Light but fun. Two gay-themed movies on an airline in-flight entertainment system!

@coriolis888 a quick search showed: https://www.rentboyaustralia.com/ (No .au at the end.)

I'm somewhat surprised by the rigmarole you ended up going through. (And it's not entirely clear whether you eventually obtained a visa or an ETA (electronic travel authority) but that's beside the point.) I googled 'US visitor to Australia' and the top of the search was a link to the ETA. That may have been in part because my search history would have skewed the results towards Australian sites. The ETA is basically the same as the US ESTA that we have to obtain (and the Canadian system), although I can't speak to the printable or hard-copy documents that you receive. Paper copies are a back up, the systems depend on electronic details available to immigration officials and airline check-in counters (unless you have the authorisation they won't let you board). I always carry paper copies but I've never needed them. [Note, if the ESTA is a guide, it is only valid on the passport you used in your application.] Interesting that your airline only provided vague details about needing a 'visa'. When I buy a Qantas ticket to the US the website tells me I need an ESTA and provides a link to the US government site to obtain one. Selling tickets to Australian travelling to the US is a bigger part of their business than trips to Australia are for US airlines but you'd think they would try to help their customers with important information like that. You're not the first forum member to travel to Australia and you won't be the last. Perhaps others will weigh in with how the process worked for them. For Americans planning to travel to Australia, unless you have a red flag of some sort, an on-line ETA is the travel document you need to go there.

Over my last couple of visits I've used Chase and Bank of America ATMs and both allowed me to select the notes I'd receive. BoA allowed $100s, $20s and $10s. Clearly neither of these is my bank and they charged a $3 fee but that's a small price to pay for being able to withdraw $100s. (My bank doesn't charge me a fee for foreign ATM withdrawals.) An added bonus for me (obviously not for Americans withdrawing USD) is that I got a 3 cent better rate on the AUD than either using a credit card or changing money before leaving Australia.

It's not that bad. As long as you're inside. It wasn't so much the temperature as the 50 Celsius degree swing from home to Washington.

An icebreaker? Just to be clear, are you talking 'data' or 'stats', Victor?

And I'm sure he'll be watching QF11 (A380) landing at 0600 on Thursday. Or not. (Not to be confused with the B787 QF15 from Brisbane or the other A380 from Melbourne arriving about the same time. All those red tailfins look the same.) (In Sydney, 16L/34R is always referred to as 'the third runway' in the normal public.)

Who knew?

Hey guys, looking forward to renewing old acquaintances and making new ones on MLK/MAL weekend in DC. Hopefully I'll also catch up with some old military buddies from when I was a young RAAFie in the US all those years ago. (No, I don't think they'll be reading this!)

From what I've seen, the Battery Park location is the default for NYC.

Clued me in as well, and for me it would only have meant a round-trip from Australia to Vietnam to make a cheap trip to North America. I wasn't ready to schedule an additional trip so didn't even try to book. Agree with @Benjamin_Nicholas that CX rocks and even without special offers (or mistakes) they are very competitive on fares from Australia.

I guess there are new (or forgetful or foreign) flyers who don't know this, but yes it must be mind-numbing if that's your job. At JFK I asked if an empty bottle was OK, and got a prompt, 'That's fine'. (Not a problem here on domestic flights, the 100ml limit for liquids and gels went away fairly quickly.)

This is curious. When I open the overall forum, the forums that have new content are in bold, likewise with the threads with new content in each forum. When I click on one of those bold threads it takes me directly to the first post I hadn't read.

I may have misunderstood but it appeared to me that the top three clients were the three who happened to be the top each year not the same three from one year to the next. (I'm not suggesting you meant to imply that it was the same three throughout.) So I suspect that a strategy would be to develop regular relationships with clients in general rather than a strategy aimed at three individuals. I await being corrected on this.

Me too. I'm so happy that it worked out as it did. As I've said before you have kept us entranced since you started this thread and today was no exception. I hope that you do make it to Palm Springs.

Life imitates art. [MEDIA=twitter]1078833811083821057[/MEDIA]

I have only just noticed that when a previous comment is replied to or quoted, the cited poster's name is hotlinked back to the relevant comment. I don't remember this feature being present in the old version, and I find it very helpful. It's only taken me three weeks to notice.

@WilliamM I took your comment to be about an overall relationship like the one Unicorn described, not just the vacation part and its related expenses. That's a different context again, and your wish to be repaid makes perfect sense.

I can see why you would not want to repeat the arrangement, but it seems to me this was quite a different relationship to Unicorn's (forgive me if I have misunderstood either). Because of the friendship and companionship you shared you were prepared to lend him the money. Repayment (in financial terms) does not appear to be part of Unicorn's arrangement, so the two arrangements were 'alike' but not the same. The only thing certain in any relationship is what each side is receiving now, anything into the future is an expectation or a hope, but neither is a guarantee. Unicorn is understandably nervous about the future of his relationship, in retrospect you are not happy with [the timing of] the way yours worked out and would not repeat it. It seems to me that if your happiness depends on the long term outcome and you cannot be happy in the day to day pleasure a relationship brings you, you need to re-evaluate what commitment to it you are prepared to make to it and/or your expectations. Expectation of or hope for future happiness and fulfilment in a relationship is reasonable but it's a recipe for disappointment if the 'success' of the current relationship depends on its future success. If you would resent the commitments, emotional and financial, to a relationship if it were to end. Far better if you could look back on it an be happy with the joy that those commitments brought you at the time, better still if you can be happy that what put into the relationship helped the other person both during the relationship and after it ended.

No matter how you celebrate or even whether you do, take a moment to think of someone else and mark the joy of the season for them as much as for yourself. Have a happy Christmas and a safe and prosperous new year. Having another glass of sparkling lunch-time wine (non-alcoholic) after our non-standard meal (lamb chops and salad). More glasses of bubbles to follow (proper ones). The heat wave has held off, at least for Christmas Day, some serious heat to come in places up to the mid-forties.

Yep, it's happened to me as well.

And at the risk of taking the airline analogy too far, legacy carriers (and others) that use this business model (rather than the low cost no-frills option) have varied approaches to how they treat the 20%. Some treat the 20% as a marketing option, seeing every steerage passenger as a potential pointy end customer should their circumstances change. Others show, how can I put this, less concern about those passengers.

I figured that (on the airport code). When I saw aus in isolation and the mention of a 24 hour flight to Mexico I assumed he meant Australia (as I might be expected to do, and as it happened, my guess - and that's all it was before I read the article - was correct). Hens' night is Australian (and I assumed wider) vernacular for a ladies' night out, and the referenced article talks about a hens' party attended by a dozen Aussie women.

Not sure how Austin came into this discussion - aus in Deadlift's post meant Australia not Austin. The article is from an Australian news site and it talks about Australian women going to Mexico City for a 48 hour trip. It doesn't, however say that they flew from Australia. Take it from me, a trip to anywhere in North America from Australia with a 48 hour turn-around is not worth contemplating. (Business travel aside, even then not desirable.) I inferred that they were Australians in New York who had made the trip - the article mentions cheap airfares from there. In the closing paras it mentions the 3.5 hour flight from LA as a reason for Australians to consider a trip there, but I took that to be a reason to go as part of a bigger trip to North America, not as a weekend away.

Not sure how Austin came into this discussion - aus in Deadlift's post meant Australia not Austin. The article is from an Australian news site and it talks about Australian women going to Mexico City for a 48 hour trip. It doesn't, however say that they flew from Australia. Take it from me, a trip to anywhere in North America from Australia with a 48 hour turn-around is not worth contemplating. (Business travel aside, even then not desirable.) I inferred that they were Australians in New York who had made the trip - the article mentions cheap airfares from there. In the closing paras it mentions the 3.5 hour flight from LA as a reason for Australians to consider a trip there, but I took that to be a reason to go as part of a bigger trip to North America, not as a weekend away.