Thursday, December 13, 2007

15 1/2 Hours in the Tin of Death.


I arrived in Hong Kong about 4 hours ago, and had my first foray into the neon lit streets w/ street stalls of food. I got to eat pan fried dumplings with some coke... ah, but you ask, what kind of dumplings? I got mutton stuffed dumplings.. YUM! Fried food washed down by an ice cold coke after 151/2 hours on a plane is perfect.

Before i get to there though, i wanted to talk about the flight itself. I have not been looking forward to the 15 1/2 hours of being stuck on the airplane. My slim hope that travelling in the middle of the week would give the possibility of only a 1/2 filled flight was dashed almost immediately. THey didn't give out seat assignments until the gate and for whatever reason they seemed to want to make me specifically wait until the last seat assigments to give me my seat. I almost cried when the gate people gave away the last "aisle" and i nearly fainted when they gave away the last window seat. Apparently my small animal sacrifice the night before paid off as they ended up giving me the "exit" row deisgnation and an aisle seat at that. Leg room was not going to be a problem.

The flight itself was not too eventful. Exit rows are great with a couple of exceptions. They are the hub of flight attendant activity, which meant i got to hear all the drama the flight attendants were gossiping about. Apparently there were a few lazy attendants that some others felt the "put a boot up" their respective asses. The Exit Row is COLD.

I think they played out 4 different movies, "Transformers" (awesome even on an airplane), No Reservations (blech, i didn't bother listening in), The Ultimate Gift (an inexplicable James Gardner vehicle), and finally Santa Clause 3 (Ironically we were flying over the north pole during this movie that took place in the north pole... yes, life is a mysterious tapestry).

All right, i am exhausted and not sure what else to say atm, i will note that HK is a damn modern and cosmopolitan city. On the train ride a there was a young kid and his sister sitting behind me on the train. they were amerasian and had these OUTRAGEOUS british accents, and not only were they speaking with these accents straight out of Hollywood movie, but they kept quoting Chappelle Show skits to each other. ("IDoes Wayne Brady need to choke a bitch?"). What a small world we live in. (And geoff, the first thing i saw on the HK hotel tv is American Chopper.)

3 comments:

Marie said...

Never realized that planes flew over the north pole to get to China. Or that they flew over the North Pole at all. For some reason that sounds like flying past a black hole to me.

I hope you had music and a couple decent books to keep you company, if you're neighbor wasn't particularly talkative.

You're very brave for making the trip. Go You.

Unknown said...

Linus - make sure to take lots of pics! Too bad you're not around now...Mitchell Report's coming out today and I'd love to talk with you about the players named as having used steroids. I'll save it for when you get back.

Linus said...

The Mitchell Report was big news here. I am not sure why, since no one really watches baseball here. I have seen cricket fields (with a real live cricket match) basketball, as well as soccer, but nary a baseball field.

Roger Clemens is not a surprise, in fact, i thought there would be bigger names.