To Hong Kong

As I check in at Brisbane Airport for my flight to Hong Kong the attendant says: 'You know it's delayed don't you?' ' No' I reply 'By how long?' 'Five hours' she says. It takes a couple of seconds for this to register. I then ask why. Not that it matters. 'I don't know' she says. I'm now due to board at 4pm instead of 11am but at 4.15 there's an announcement at the gate that there are mechanical problems. The boarding time has now been put back to 5pm. I hear someone behind me say that the flight may be cancelled altogether. I start to become annoyed although thinking about this logically - do I really want to get on a plane with mechanical problems? On the positive side I have managed to finish my book, the brilliant 'Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood. We finally board at 5pm and I notice for the first time that the flight takes eight hours. On the world map Hong Kong doesn't seem that far from Australia so in my head I'd estimated three or four.

I'm sitting next to a psychiatric doctor. Having always been fascinated by psychology I ask him the differences between Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar Disorder and clinical depression. He says Bi-Polar is the new expression for manic depression, a term you don't hear that much anymore. He also says that an estimated 1% of the population is schizophrenic. Really? That high? 'That must mean that there are four schizophrenics on this plane', I say. He laughs and says that he's not sure schizophrenics would be flying. When he says that the percentage of people with Bi-Polar Disorder is much higher I cagily ask how they differentiate between this and 'ordinary' depression. 'Patient history' he replies.