There is always a sense of drama arriving at Sydney airport. And it's almost too much for Yeoh Siew Hoon.
First there's the uncertainty of not knowing how long it will take you to clear immigration and customs – this airport needs serious upgrading.
Then there's the knowledge that this airport is always embroiled in some scandal or other ¬ the latest being its starring role in the Corby drug case in Bali.
Then there's the suspense of wondering what political storm you will be arriving in the middle of. Compared with Singapore, Sydney's politics are as multi-coloured as a rainbow on steroids.
Sydney airport's immigration queue is divided into "Australia" and "Others". I go into "Others" including all the others. A cute little beagle sniffs my bags. He finds nothing to excite him. This time round, I clear immigration and customs in 30 minutes, a record.
My taxi driver is from Serbia. He's been here 15 years – a civil engineer who fled the civil war in his country to start a new life and now has to be civil to foreigners in his foreign home.
He came alone, a young man. Now he's middle-aged, with a wife and two kids, and a mortgage. He dreams of going home to Serbia.
Australia wasn't his first choice. Canada was. "I love this country but it's so far away from anywhere," he says. He's not been able to afford the airfare home.
"Maybe one day when my kids are grown up, I will go home," he says.
Well, if aviation developments go the way some experts say they might, he may well get to see Serbia before that.
Someone who attended an airline symposium in Sydney recently said there's a possibility that when the A380 comes into service, my taxi driver friend could fly from Sydney to Serbia for 300 Euros return. He, and 700-plus others, could well be on the first low-cost long haul service between Australia and Europe.
I sweat just to think of flying with 700 people for 25 hours, cooped up in a plane, no matter how big.
I am not sweating as much though as the streams of protestors who dared to brave Sydney's warmest winter yet to protest against "the masters of greed" and "corporate whores" who were attending the Forbes CEO conference held in Sydney last week.
Called the A30 network (the conference opened on August 30), hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered at the Sydney Opera House, mobilised by Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson mobile phones –united by the very brands they hate.
I am told more than 300 CEOs paid US$5,000 each for the privilege of rubbing shoulders with Steve Forbes, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard and former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani.
I wasn't there but I could smell the stench of their wealth and power from where I was holed up at the Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney.
But the stench from the Forbes gathering wasn't as strong as the stench emanating from the New South Wales state opposition Liberal Party whose chief, John Brogden, was forced to quit after a scandal in which he called former New South Wales' premier Bob Carr's Malaysian-born wife a "mail order bride" and admitted to groping a couple of female reporters at an Australian Hotels Association dinner in August.
The next day after his admission and ousting from the party, the 36-year-old once-promising politician who had been tipped to be a future leader of Australia allegedly tried to kill himself in his office amid rumours that more of his past misdeeds may come to light. I left just as news emerged that he was recovering from self-inflicted wounds after having downed a bottle of gin.
I had been in Sydney just 48 hours. As I landed at Changi airport, I saw a greeter holding up a sign saying, "Mr and Mrs Bob Carr".
Perhaps, like me, the Carrs were fleeing steamy Sydney for safe Singapore – after all, a girl can only take so much excitement.
The SHY Report
A regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry by one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, Yeoh Siew Hoon.
Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her company's mission is "Content, Communication, Connection". She is a writer, speaker, facilitator, trainer and events producer. She is also an author, having published "Around Asia In 1 Hr: Tales of Condoms, Chillies & Curries". Her motto is ‘free to do, and be'. Contacts: Tel: 65-63424934, Mobile: 65-96801460Check out Siew Hoon's new website, www.shy-connection.com, which features a newly-launched e-zine with a difference. 
