I still feel a bit embarassed, even though I shouldn't. United is getting more $$$ out of me than they ever have, who cares if I'm not staying somewhere else longer than a few hours or days.

on to the story (most of the fun of this thread is reading about reactions)!

I arrived in MEL for a nice 3 day Mileage Run. Clearing customs, I mistakenly told the agent that I had no idea what I was going to be doing (I was honest! No time to check tour books) for the 3 days (stretched timeline) I was going to be there. Luckily I had showered in SYD beforehand, so I didn't look/smell like I had just climbed out of an overhead bin. Imagine an Australian politely telling you to "talk with a colleague":

I ended up being interrogated for a further 5 minutes as I stumbled through a babbling mess of "well, see, there are these people on this cool website called 'flyertalk.com' who look for cheap fares to go places and get miles and get upgrades and stuff on airlines and well United had this great $500 deal to fly here so I picked this city and well I haven't had time to read a tour book but the forum said...". (not exact words, but I didn't have a speech on Mileage Runs prepared, but I did extoll Flyertalk to some degree)

At this point, I had thoroughly bored her to the point that I was not running a southwest Geek drug ring between SFO and OZ, thus was not in town to overthrow the local government or cause other duress (perhaps extinguish the Olympic torch that was running through town that day?). Clearly, I was nutso enough to fly 16 hours for a few days do what she admitted "was a good fare". She mumbled "I don't understand those bloody computers, have a nice stay sir" and let me go.

Now, I've been through LHR on a couple of these MR's, and I fully expected our British friends to be a bit more annoyed with frequent visits (they are used to tracking oddball patterns with their history of domestic terrorism, no?). Absolutely not, they don't bat an eye. The Aussies, on the other hand, just don't get many people in and out for a few days.