It's been a few days since I arrived in the UK, in Leeds. Jet lag has hit in a pretty bad way. The flight in itself wasn't too bad, actually. We left Melbourne at about 9:30pm so by the time they served us the meal, and watched a movie, it was bedtime anyhow. I was so exhausted from the late nights of work I've been doing, it wasn't hard to sleep on the flight.Going across that many time zones was a bizarre thing. It just felt like a very long night. Arrived in Dubai at about 5:30am and there was a big queue to clear security just to get into the public area of the airport. Once through, I got some money changed so we could get some coffee. Dubai International is a very busy airport, even at that time of the day. It was telling that the facilities weren't quite able to cope with the number of passengers going through. There weren't enough seats and there were lots of people just sitting and sleeping on the floor. The whole terrorist situation had just happened on the day of our flight and information was still scarce before we boarded our flight. Upon arrival in Dubai we found out a bit more and that for all flights to the UK, they were screening hand luggage more thoroughly, and making passengers check-in their hand luggage except for essential items like travel documents. This led to massive queues and delays with the boarding of our flight. We were in the queue for about 45 mins just to get through into the gate, and behind us there were many, many more people by the time the flight was scheduled to take off. Once in the boarding gate area, there was a lot of activity among the airport ground staff, and while we were bagging our hand luggage to be checked in, they suddenly told us we didn't have to do that anymore, and we could take our belongings on board. As we found out later, the UK authorities had issued instructions that the hand luggage ban was lifted. The rest of the flight was uneventful, arriving in Manchester, where immigration and customs clearance was pretty smooth except for a technical fault with baggage handling. Simon's friend Trish had taken the day off to pick us up from Manchester Airport to take us back to Simon's house in Leeds. The first night we had a curry dinner at an Indian restaurant where I met some of Simon's friends. Halfway through dinner, I suddenly felt very sleepy. Jet lag hit and as it was the first time I'd experienced it, I wasn't prepared for it. The next morning, I woke up at 4:30am, despite going to bed at a sensible time of about 10:30pm the night before. Tossed and turned for quite a while before settling down and caught another couple of hours more of shut-eye. This however had the positive side effect of being up and awake bright and early in the morning and being able to get things done. I helped Simon sort out some stuff he had and put them up on eBay to sell off. This morning, we set out to Doncaster by train to visit Simon's mom, and to bring her and her car back to Leeds. Simon's mom is a lovely lady and she made us lunch of quiche and salad while we were there. Back into Leeds we had a quiet night in, and just about to go to bed now. Feeling sleepy again...