I don't believe in signs but-...

I'm starting to wonder if it is the best time to be travelling. Ever since we booked the flight:

- Thailand has had its biggest time of unrest in the past 15 years with travel warnings for some parts.

- Qantas (our airline) has had 3 separate incidents involving words like "passenger safety""torn fuselage""emergency landing" and "we don't know how this could have happened".

- The world financial crisis has reared its ugly head making everyone just flip out (in turn making the situation worse) . Just hoping my banks stay strong and that there is still enough work available when I get back to Berlin in January. It's also not an ideal environment for new graduates who will be looking for work in January 09.

- The AFL season finished.

- I've had some ongoing health issues that have led to me giving up smoking, cutting back on alcohol and eating a (relatively) balanced diet.

- One of my language schools has reassigned all my classes to other teachers because of my prolonged absence. This means I'll have to find all new classes on my return to Berlin.

- In Anne's ongoing battle with the university red tape and professors who don't reply to emails, it seems that she won't be able to finish all of her tests by the 4th November as we had planned. So she'll have to wait until January to finally do her last oral exams. The German university system needs to look up the word "system" in a dictionary,then "service" and then "yes that is my area of responsibility, how can I help you" and then "oh gosh, you've been waiting for 6 weeks for a reply so you can find out when you can do you exams and get on with your life,,,I'm so sorry, we'll do something about that immediately".