Tag Archives: thank goodness I am not flying with kids

It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

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I feel so naked without a working cellphone with me when I am out and about. Vulnerable. I did not know how dependent I have become, at least psychologically, on having instant access to the world.

They changed the configuration of the plane: I was able to get a window seat in the Economy Plus section. After I settled into my seat, I started Instagramming. I stopped when I saw a long string of rosaries dangling near my face. No way.

Way.

It was a real Sister. I don’t know why I was so surprised. Sisters fly. My Sister immediately took out her well-worn Bible, with margins filled with notes in neat handwritings, and started reading silently to herself. When she put the Book away, I thought, what’s she gonna do now? She took out her rosaries and a tiny book filled with pictures of saints (I assumed) and continued to pray.

I felt so safe on this flight. And so content.

Sister is not going to steal from my bag when I go use the bathroom. Sister is not going to judge that I have not one ounce of makeup on. Sister won’t care that I have an erupting pimple at the base of my nose. Sister probably won’t judge me. Period. Besides Sister is all skin and bones and she keeps to herself physically so I have both armrests! Sign me up from now on!

Maybe it was as a test for me that soon I found out that my seat did not recline at all. And the new personal screen I was so psyched about was broken. Somehow I was not agitated. I probably would have felt really embarrassed if I threw a tantrum over something trivial like this after overhearing that Sister was flying to China to work in an orphanage. #TrueStory

Sigh.

Luckily I’d packed every single electronic gadget I have: Android phone, Kindle, iPhone, iPad, and a Mac, even though what I really wanted to do on the flight was to sleep.

So far I have seen the airport and the hotel.

I broke my glasses so I am in trouble at night after I take out my contact lenses. I have no idea what I am going to do for my return flight as I cannot wear those dastardly things in my eyes for 13+ hours. My eyes will be like dried plums.

Anyway, it is almost 2 am, and I am supposed to be up 4 hours from now.

 

But before I jump into this,

 

I need to take advantage of this:

 

 

Oh lord.

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Really, I should not be complaining. My original flight(s) to Beijing tomorrow had me leave the house at 4 am so I could catch the 6 am flight to SFO, with an almost 5-hour layover, and then on to my next flight to Beijing. I would have been in the back of the plane, in the middle seat, for both legs.

Last night as I was freaking out and crying inside about my 4 am EDT on Monday morning, I decided to see whether there would be a way for me to get on a later flight to SFO. What do you know? Up popped a non-stop flight to Beijing! Woohoo!

My original seat on this flight was 42F. After refreshing the page many many times, I moved up to 31F. Bulk seats do come with extra legrooms, yes. But they also come with increased chance of being seated next to a baby. (I am NO baby hater. But if I have a choice…)

More refresh. Refresh. Refresh. And now I am where I am.

I pray that 25E will be empty so I can fully recline (“Recline” in the cattle class is an exaggeration) without feeling guilty.

It is really sad that I will not be able to take advantage of free alcohol on international flights… (Drinking = Needing to “use the facility”)

 

Going Home. Again.

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Waiting to get on a plane that will take me to Tokyo Narita, and then onto Taipei. I am making my annual solo trip back home so I can pack 359 days of homesickness, guilt and filial piety into a 3-day visit. (I will spend 3 days traveling due to time zone change and the sheer expansiveness of the Pacific Ocean).

As my parents get older, the necessity of going home as often as I could becomes unbearable. The anxiety and sadness I feel every time I see them though becomes unbearable as well. I long to see the joy in my dad’s face as much as I dread seeing his tears. March on, little soldier. That’s what I have been telling myself since I gave the TSA agent my passport and boarding passes.

I will try not to talk about feeling like a Godzilla as soon as I land in Tokyo. But I will feel that way while stuffing my face with food that I have been missing all year.

And I will try and send in pictures to be posted here (and below if the Flickr plug-in works). Just in case you wonder what I have been up to. *Megalomaniac laugh* *Megalomaniac laugh*

Love and peace.

Please specify a Flickr ID for this gallery

Apology, Pet Peeve and Two Horses’ Asses

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Dear Internet,

I miss you.

Yes, in these past two weeks, you still see me coming around once in a while, reading articles online, sharing random pictures on Facebook and Twitter, and flirting with my lady friends with my witty one-liner tweets. It has been still only Drive-by Interneting, which in my book does not count as taking care of my second life, my Social Media life.

I have been a bad blogger friend. I am very sorry.

I had to get on the plane for a business trip the day after I got my root canal, which I later realized was only Part 1. The 3-day trip turned into a 4 day trip when I was assigned to a new project. I got home on Friday night, unpacked and then immediately packed for our trip to the Wisconsin Dells. In case you don’t know, Wisconsin Dells is where Kitsch is defined.

“Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists.”   Milan Kundera

 

A visit to one of the giant indoor waterpark complexes, actually Ginormous would be the right word used to describe these monsters, is a definite renouncement of hipsterdom, of coolness. Something that declares, “Resistance is futile. The middle America will get you.” A surrender to suburban, bourgeois, parenthood.

There ain’t no shame in that. I guess…

“No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.”   Again, Milan Kundera

 

Onward, suburban soldiers!

I enjoyed an hour under Novocaine and laughing gas this Monday to finish my root canal, and as a consequence, for the next couple of days I was keenly aware of the existence of my tooth that’s supposed to be now nerveless (Is that NOT the point of root canal?) while I did the road warrior thing again. On Wednesday night, my flight home was delayed and I have not slept in my own bed for a full night for almost two weeks by now. But of course. I found mouse poo in our pantry. All over. Even on the top shelf. WTF? Flying mice? I spent two hours cleaning and throwing half of the stuff in the pantry away. I set up a trap and yes, I have blood on my hand. Figuratively. The Horror. The Horror. Still, I took a picture, but of course. Maybe soon I will write a post about how I felt like the Mafia this morning and a serial killer by night fall. For now though, before I go upstairs to be with my bed for (oh shit now only) 5 hours, could I just share a pet peeve of mine with you?

 

This has been bugging me forever... Is it just me?

 

As for the two horses’ asses in the title… I should not have fact checked. Because I did, I now cannot in good conscience post this interesting FACT about railroad gauges, wagons, wheel ruts, Roman Chariots, horses’ asses, and then back to train tracks and space shuttles. SNOPES.com ruins all the spamming fun… FACTS are sometimes quite inconvenient indeed.  Sheesh. I am going to bed.

 

Affectionately yours,
Signed The Third Horse’s Ass

Fly Me Home

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I grew up in an area in Taipei right next to the then only airport. I have always been fascinated by and loved airports because to me back then, airports meant adventures and exotic places that I could only dream of, and more importantly, I only got to go there when my father came home from his stints abroad and we were there to welcome him.

Now that I travel for work on a regular basis, airports are now simply a transition place. They are simply some place I have to pass by, to tolerate, before I get to where I have to go.

Airports in general do not go through drastic changes. They stay the same for a long time. And that is why whenever I step into an airport that I have been to, even from a long time ago, I immediately get this sense of familiarity.

Yeah, I have been here. I am oriented. It is not scary at all…

Of all the airports I have been to, Narita outside of Tokyo occupies a special place in my heart.  Unlike the other airports, even O’hare my “home” airport, Narita is not simply a point of transition for me.  I must have come through here more than a couple of dozen times, half of the times on my way home. It is the same each time. As I step onto the wide walkway from the jetway, my heart starts pounding. It’s like before that I have been holding my breath, not sure that I would make it home. But now I am in Tokyo, I am only one 3-hour flight away from home. It’s real. I am going home. I get excited and emotional. And then quickly, my happiness takes a detour when I remember how soon I will have to go through this airport again.

It is a long walk of complex emotions as I move from the plane, through the security check point, and then to the gate for my flight to Taipei. Sometimes I dread saying goodbye so much that I have this irrational urge to turn back.

I want to show you the best thing at the Narita Airport: the automatic beer pouring machine. Look at the perfect foam on top! In order to make this video I had to have a second beer. Oh the sacrifice I made for you guys!

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I have made it a habit to take pictures of the view outside the window as I fly. Today as the plane was approaching the airport, the view outside so mesmerized me that I forgot to put my iPhone away. I ended up with 82 photos. I strung together these and the other photos I took on my previous trips to New York and Boston and made a 30-second video:

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As I was going through my photos on Picasa, I noticed the Geo tagging actually showed the landing path of the plane into Narita Airport. For a dork like me, it is beyond cool.

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Here is one of the pictures I took to show you the reason why I was mesmerized as the plane descended into Tokyo today.

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“Do you realize the people back here are getting cookies?!”

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Jerry: “I can’t go back to coach!”

This is from the 52nd episode of Seinfeld “The Airport”. The Hyperlink takes you to an 8-minute long collection of the best scenes from this episode. Watch from 7:20 for one of my favorite lines from my beloved TV series:

“Do you realize the people back here are getting cookies?!”

I don’t know why. I just loved it even back in 1992 when I had no idea that I would be flying frequently. In coach, nonetheless…

This post could have been titled “WTF Wednesday: How the Other Half Lives”. But seeing how it is already Thursday and I have been cheating via backdating a lot lately, I will just skip a WTF Wednesday post. This should help with my image anyway: soon I fear I will only be posting WTF posts and nothing else. Since my life seems to be full of WTF moments. Or it could just be me: I am wearing WTF Goggles as I go through life…

It suffices to say that Karma delivered. After my not-so-satisfactory-yet-definitely-great-blog-fodder-and-therefore-I-should-be-grateful-all-considered flights to Taipei, I was upgraded to Business Class for the leg between Taipei and Tokyo.

Prior to this, I had ONLY heard of the Lie-Flat Business Class outfitted for the Trans-Pacific flights. (From my beloved husband nonetheless, who will certainly get it from now on if he ever complains about his air travel…) Oh boy, was I excited. When I got to the plane, I was really nervous: I would have been greatly disappointed if for some reason this plane had only the regular Business Class seats. (Yes, one does get spoiled very quickly…) Wait. How come I could not find my row? It went straight from Row 10 to Row 19. Is it a cruel joke? The flight attendant pointed UP and said, “Your seat is on the Upper Level.”

WTF? Upper Level? There is an Upper Level? I mean: I knew there is an Upper Level on a 747 but I thought that was for the super duper Secret Society First Class seats: where they have a hot tub and possibly a stripper pole or something.

As I ascended the stairs, I could hear the angels singing, celestial music playing in the background. “Ahhhhh—–” Much to the chagrin of my seatmate, I started taking pictures as soon as I finished putting everything away. Oh my. So many choices in WHERE to store my shit that it took me a while to figure it out… (He soon exchanged seats with his wife…) I did not know that I would ever, ever, wish for a flight to last longer. Alas. It was not meant to be. The plane actually landed early. I only got to enjoy my Lazy Boy home theatre for a bit longer than two hours. So why couldn’t this flight have been diverted to Alaska? I would have been HAPPY… Very happy.

CODA: Soon afterwards, Karma delivered again. This time to balance everything out my flight from Tokyo back to Washington D.C. was delayed for TWO hours. And of course this time I was back to my coach class for the 12-hour flight. The reason for our delay? AFTER the Christmas Underpants Bomber threat, AFTER the airports around the world heightened security checks by adding a second checkpoint right at the gates for US-bound flights, AFTER we had all been searched and padded down by hand, thoroughly, some Einstein decided that it was a smart move to make a joke about a bomb with the flight attendant. She reported his dumb ass and he was hauled off the plane. Subsequently the cargo area had to be searched to rule out any suspicious material in addition to locate this guy’s checked luggage. Police and security guards were also on board to search the plane before we were allowed to take off.

I am on the Upper Level baby! It’s like a secret club tree house! Elaine was right: Here is your new Classism…
Look at the space! Just look at it! It is bigger than my dorm room!
This is like your own private movie theatre: they even have new releases. Seriously. WTF?!
I want a basement home theatre that looks like this. Complete with flight attendants that smile. A lot.
Are we flying USS Enterprise or something? This thing and the console requires a manual. It even has an iPod dock that I was too embarrassed to tinker with
Between the seats are the magazine racks. You ever wonder where the GOOD magazines are?
Full-size remote control for the entertainment center. So many movies, so little time…
This was the 3rd movie I selected. I kept on changing it. Too excited about all the choices and I couldn’t make up my mind. Therefore I didn’t get to finish any. What an idiot…
It is not enough for us to have the overhead bins all to ourselves. The side is lined up with storage bins that I can raise chicken in…
This is ONLY the first course. WTF?
This is the main course: honey-glazed salmon. Check out the rice. It actually tasted really good. WTF?!
I was so amused by the fact that I could see my feet that I must have taken a dozen of pictures of my feet
I love being able to see my feet. I wish I were wearing Ho Heels. Actually, I wish I HAD Ho Heels…
I was lying down FLAT when I took this picture. Just have to show everybody, “Hey, I am lying down flat on a plane!” and not in the aisle!

In which I complain about my seat on the plane… *yawn*

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I finished reading the book that I brought with me 3 hours into the flight. What now? Should have saved the book for the trip rather than greedily starting it before Christmas.

With the detour to Sarah Palin’s homeland I now have an even longer flight with no reading material. And sitting in the middle seat of the exit row by the lavatory does not make it easier to fall asleep, and when I did fall asleep, to stay asleep, I have the opposite issue of a claustrophobic: I like to feel enclosed, better if squeezed into a corner like what they say about colicky babies. I know there is a great story of how I prefer to sleep like a gerbil all curled up but I will refrain and save it for another time… But here I am, sitting out in the open, with all the wide open space, and everybody and their uncle done come and stood in front of me at one time or another during the flight.

And I only have myself to blame…

I have gone and changed myself into possibly. the worst seat on the plane. I reserved myself a window seat in the economy plus section when I first booked my flight. I got status on United. Yessiree.  I’d better, after the 40+ segments I done on flying United this past year… But not enough of a status to select the exit row. When I checked in on line the day before, I saw that there were empty rows towards the back of the plane. The plain old economy seats. But I am fine with less leg room if it means I can haz an entire row to myself. Earth to me: too good to be true… I switched myself out of Economy Plus. United.com actually flashed a screen with this question: Are you sure you don’t want Economy Plus? I pity the fool that didn’t listen to the robot…

When I got to the gate, I sashayed to the counter, flashed the agent my most charming smile:

“I am sorry for being a pain, but would you mind checking for me whether this row is still empty?” He laughed but did it anyway.

“The row is no longer empty. Would you like me to change you back to Economy Plus?”

“Oh yes sir please.” I imagined myself batting my eyelashes if I had any.

“Ummmm. Huhhhhh. All we’ve got left are middle seats now. Harrumph. Oh wait. do you want the exit row?”

“Oh yes yes please!” Why you even bother asking? Anybody ever said no? In my excitement, I failed to remember what Seat Guru said about this particular row: The seats are displayed in red on the website because they are right by the bathroom section…

The view from my thrice-changed seat

When I saw my seat I wish I had Seat Guru all memorized. Or that I had the thick skin to say, “Excuse me, I appreciate your help and all, but hold on, while I consult with Seat Guru. Oh no, the exit row you offered me won’t do because lookee here, these seats are in RED! It says here: do not sit here ’cause them by the bathrooms. Oh and this particular seat is in the middle. Why would you think anybody would want to give up their window seat for a middle seat is beyond me? I am sorry if I just sounded like am ungrateful bitch…”

During the excitement of the medical emergency, the three of us sitting in that exit row were asked to move to some other seats on the plane. Nothing but middle seats left in the back. Except one. The row right in front of the kitchen galley that is especially cramped, and the seats do not recline. I sat at the end, after the man on the other end woke his wife up and explained to her that I had to sit where her head was. The lady commented that these seats have got to be the worst seats on the plane, and I thought “I don’t mind sitting here all cozy and secure!” We got to talking and I thought we were having such a good time. I even offered to give her the book I was reading when I’m done. After perhaps an hour, she nudged. “Are you sure you can’t go back to your seat now? Will they let you go back now?”

People do see the empty seats next to them as a god-given right as soon as the plane is in the air. Don’t even think about moving into someone’s empty seats an hour into the flight. You will forever be known as the jackass that took THEIR seat.

Later the plane started making high pitched noise bbbbbbbeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppp near the exit door. It was so loud that the flight attendants noticed and asked us whether we’d like to move to other seats IF we could find one. So I walked to the back of the plane as I was told. Sure enough all the empty seats have been occupied by horizontal sleeping bodies. I walked back to my seat. Like a fool. I was not going to move from my seat again. Bathroom or not.

Dude. close the friggin' door! And yes, I got up and closed the damned door BUT not before I took a picture of it...

Ok, Sarah Palin, you got me! Now what?

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I am in Alaska. More specifically, I am sitting on the plane on the runway. In Anchorage. We have to make the emergency stop here because a passenger passed out en route to Narita. Although he looks rather young, he apparently has suffered a heart attack recently. He is also traveling by himself, with TWO young children. After they revived him, they decided that he needs to be checked out. So off to Alaska we go.

Sigh. I am praying so hard I don’t miss my connecting flight that I am on the verge of crying.

It must have something to do with me making fun of Sarah Palin. Or me making fun of my father-in-law getting the book Going Rogue as a surprise Christmas present. Or in fact, me making fun of him wearing a hat from Alaska this morning.

“So the hat. Are you wearing that to honor Sarah Palin?”

“Oh yeah. I even went to Alaska to visit her.”

“So did you see Russia when you were there?”

Well, I can tell ya, I cannot see Russia from where I am sitting.

Sigh.

Update: It is 3 am on 12/27 in Taipei. I have been here in the apartment that my parents live with my nephews since 11 pm. They wanted to feed me all sorts of food. I just wanted a bowl of white rice. And ramen noodles my mom cooked. Here is the view from the plane overlooking the snowy mountain when we flew into Anchorage. It is majestic. I guess this must be the silver lining if any could be found for the detour… I pray the man and his children are ok, that they also managed to find some silver lining to this awful and stressful experience…

The view from the plane when flying into Anchorage