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Waiting out a storm in Hong Kong.

It’s nice to be home, but it wasn’t achieved easily and now we’re here we’ve had a few ups and downs (which I won’t go into - yet).

We had the usual hours of waiting at Hong Kong airport last Thursday afternoon, although we softened it by buying a few hours at the Plaza Lounge. Not cheap, but a nice respite from crowds and plenty of free stuff to eat and drink.

We got our money’s worth, as a spectacular thunder and lightning storm delayed our flight by two hours.

The consequences of that became apparent somewhere over the Philippines. It’s astonishing that you can be 10km up in the sky yet still connected to the internet and finding out what’s happening in real time down on earth.

The truth was that the delayed takeoff meant we’d miss our noon connection on Friday back to Nelson. Well that had been in doubt anyway, as the horrific weather in Nelson had threatened the cancellation of the flight.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, we discovered that we’d arrive in Auckland at about noon and board a flight to Christchurch at 4pm, followed by a delay of another couple of hours before heading back to Nelson.

That all seemed a little too much, so we engaged in conversation with Air NZ’s chat bot. After a bit of to and fro Mr Chat decided we may have mistaken him for a human being so eventually someone called Ian took over the conversation.

We’d also been in contact with our friends Keith and Anne in Auckland and we knew there was a sanctuary there, not to mention a jolly Friday night of talking and doing what we do best - socialising with friends.

Skipping Friday, Ian offered us flights back to Nelson on Saturday at either 6.45am or 5.20pm. We weren’t going to raise our gracious hosts at 5am after a noisy night of carousing, so we opted for the latter. That meant that on Saturday we could meet another friend who’s about to walk the Camino.

Juliet seems to have it well under control.

And so we went home on Saturday - not at 5.20pm, that would be too much to ask. The flight was delayed by two hours, so it was after 9pm when we walked into our own cosy home.

Oh Joy. We were wound up and jet lagged, so it was after midnight before we fell into bed.

Since we’ve been home, a lot has happened, including the aftermath of the worst floods in recorded history for our region. That hasn’t affected us much, but we’ve had mishaps of our own, which may be the subject of a future post.

But first I wanted to just make some observations on the human condition.

Old people are renowned for being grumpy and crotchety. Why is that?

From my perspective, I’ve spent nearly 77 years establishing my place in the world. There are ways of behaving - manners and morals that I’ve concluded are the best ways for people to co-exist and most people have tended to behave the same way.

Now people have started to behave in ways that are foreign to my expectation of the world. How dare they change the rules of behaviour when I wasn’t looking? No wonder we fogies are grumpy. Don’t they know the rules?

I like Japan for the general sensitivity of the Japanese to other people. They are aware of where they are in relation to other people. They bow slightly in apology if they invade your space.

We’ve found in large cities around the world that people lack this awareness.

In large groups of people, I think it’s incumbent on us all not to invade the space of other people - it’s only polite.

At Auckland, in our final few hours of inhabiting airport terminals, we were sitting in the departure lounge, alongside a few hundred other people, trying to focus on reading our books, when the young chap opposite began to engage in a phone conversation.

He probably thought it was fascinating for us to know how he’d handled the airport parking. Not only that, he thought he’d confound the odds by betting on France for the test against the All Blacks - only a couple of hours away.

The more he talked, the more enthusiastic - and louder - he got.

In the end my jangled nerves could take it no longer.

“Excuse me,” I said. “EXCUSE ME,” (louder).

“Would you mind taking your phone call somewhere else?”

The poor boy was astonished.

“What’s the matter with you grandad?”

He told his mate that some old coot objected to his conversation, eventually rang off and told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t a crime to have a phone conversation in public. Then he slunk away.

It wasn’t the poor boy’s fault. All of us absorb the culture we find around us.

Led by the orange peril, it’s become more and more acceptable to be unkind, unpleasant and selfish.

In common with many right-wing governments around the world, the party that leads our own country cares more about business than it does about people.

And that’s got a lot to do with what’s wrong with the world.

Travel is over. In future posts I’ll have different subjects. Can you handle it?