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February 20, 2002
Tales from 33,000 Feet
I had intended to do two things on the flight to Hong Kong
- Play Baldur's Gate II.
- Splurge on the in-air phone time and send a post to the blog.
I had purchased a travel adapter the night before only to find that the G3 connector that came with it had a pin (the "male" part) that was too thick to fit in the slot (the "female" part) on the TIE Book. (Yeah, yeah, I know the nomenclature is usually TiPB or TiG4, but I like the idea of having two of them to slap together to make a TIE Fighter.) So... that means that all I've got is battery power on the flight. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to find one that will do the job for the trip back. If I'm luckier, I'll be able to return the one that I bought when I get back.
As for the blogging in the air, I couldn't find a port on the phone to which I could connect the computer to actually get a connection going. That's a damned shame. I guess I'll just have to find a way to upload this post when I get to Hong Kong. In the meantime, for the sake of the in-air experience, I am currently writing this somewhere over Baffin Bay, between Canada and Greenland. I think this part is Nunavit, but I'm not sure since I never paid that much attention to geography this far north; it might be part of northern Quebec. I don't plan to edit this post at all between finishing it and when I got on the 'Net next.
(At this point, I think I'll be jumping around a bit as I've had next to no sleep and, well, you get to read me as sleep deprivatIAN man.)
One of the things I did last night was some algebra. I don't know why I mention it. It think it's because it's been such a long time since I've actually done any albegra that it tickles me when I find that I can. Admittedly, it was simple stuff. Someone online asked me how long the flight was to Hong Kong. I had no idea and didn't feel like looking it up. I didn' t know what the different in time zones was, either, so I calculated it:
- Westbound: ( Time(arrival) - Time(departure) ) - Time(zone change) = Time(flight)
- Eastbound: ( Time(arrival) - Time(departure) ) + Time(zone change) = Time(flight)
- (17:00 + 1d - 12:00) - Time(zone change) = Time(flight)
- (15:00 - 12:00) - Time(zone change) = Time(flight)
The other thing I did was not sleep. Okay, I took an hour and a half nap, but that was it. This sems to be a trend for me. I don't think I've ever started a vacation fully refreshed. I figure it's because I'm a really inefficient packer, although, back in during the eight months of week-long client visits to Cleveland a year ago, I used to be able to be completely packed and ready to go in ten minutes. The shortage of sleep assures me of rather interesting travel. Perhaps it's better to say that it reall yassures me of a rather interesting perspective on travel.
My original plan to take public transit to the airport got shot out the door when I remembered that I had to deal with all of the stupid little things I'd forgotten to do the night before, like wash all the dishes and totally change out the litter boxes adn so forth. Fourty-five minutes later than my planned departure time, I hopped out to catch the cab to the airport.
Except the cabbie was outside my walkup with his hood up doing somehting to the engine. Now, beyond turnong on the car and driving it faster than I should, I know about jack-all about cars. I might be able to identify major parts, but what he was working on wasn't one of them. There were a lot of wires going into it and he kept on jiggling them. Figured it was something electrical because he couldn't even get the engine to try to turn. Once he jiggled it enough, though, that thing turned like a champ and we were on our way.
On the way to the airport, I finally got around to canceling my SprintPCS service, after sitting on it for a few months while I was working on Voicestream. I'm not entirely pleased with Voicestream, mostly because reception actively sucks the donkey's balls in my apartment. Step outside and I get four bars of signal strength goodness, but God forbid I can get a consistent reading anywhere in my apartment, where it's been known to fluctuate between nothing and four bars, though usually closer to the one or two-bar range.
In the cab still, my next call was to Voicestream to remove the restriction on my phone to make international calls. I discovered this when I tried to call Hong Kong. Well, that sucked because there some kind of international permissions thing that you have to request, but their processing unit is an 8/5 operation and needs a callback number. That does me little good since I need this thing set to even use my phone outside North America and I was about to hop on a flight within 2h of the call to Voicestream. Moreover, the nice lady (who was very patient with me) said that the unit could not call back an international number, so it means I can't even turn on international permissions outside the country, because my phone obviously wouldn't be able to receive the call. However, after I hung up, I realised that she was able to put me on hold and possibly call the processing unit, so on Monday, I'm going to try giving them a call internationally and ask to be put on hold while they put me in contact with someone at the processing unit and maybe I can get my phone hooked up so that I'm not without a stinking phone for the next three weeks.
Got through check-in without incident. Fantastic. Got through the security checkpoint without incident. Great. Noticed that someone haad left their VAIO behind. Tough luck, bud. That made me think back to something that Doyce or Dave Hill had written about a sign at Denver International in the same script as the Dairy Farmers of America ads: got laptop? I then proceeded to make an ass of myself teasing one of the milspec guys about why they wear forest camo in an airport instead of urban camo or mode a la vending machine.
Stopped by the duty free store to pick up some cologne because I'm almost out of the D+G Masculine that I bought in Toronto last March. I ended up picking up something of the Giorgio and Armani persuasion. I was approached by an older lady who wanted to buy a Clinique lip liner pen, but was only on a domestic flight and obviously didn't know how Dugy Free stores work. For some reason, I actually agreed to buy it for her, however unkosher that may be. It was all for naught, though, as Newark apparently has a very different modus operandi than any other Duty Free setup I've ever gone through. They take your purchase and deliver it to the gate when you board. Every other one I've been through has just let me take the purchase with me. So I bought a $12.50 lip liner pen that I couldn't pass off to this poorl lady who really wanted one to use then and there. Her flight left before mine so she couldn't even vulture around my gate to wiat for me to pick up my purchase. I'll have to see if anyone can use the pen since I have no need for it. The lady was nice enough to buy me lunch, though.
By the by, two slices of plain cheese pizza off of a 12" pie at Newark were $4.98. Two slices of plain cheese pizza off of a 16" or 18" pie around the corner from my office is $3.50. That's a hell of a lot more pie for only 70% of the cost. Bleurgh.
Later, I'm off by the gate talking to this guy who was connecting from somewhere else. We'd established that I was Canadian and I think he assumed that I was connecting, too. He says to me, lowering his voice lest others hear, "I heard these New Yorkers fold their pizzas in half to eat them." I thought to myself, "Hell, yeah! How else would you eat a pizza?" Then it occurred to me that no one else really eats pizzas this way. Before I moved to New York, I never folded my pizzas to eat them. Why is it such a New York thing to do?
Crust thickness. It's all about crust thickness. The most common slices in New York are all thin crust, whereas pretty much anywhere else I've had pizza, it's been a thick crust. Hell, back in Ithaca, I used to buy my pizzas "double dough" from Rogan's. So there you have it. New Yorkers fold their pizzas in half because of thin crusts. I figure this would probably hold true anywhere else where thin crusts are common.
I was selected at the gate for a ransom search, which meant that I was mildly groped by a large Black man, all the while making smart-assed remarks about how the beeping near my crotch was from my big brass balls. Sometime, after I've had some sleep and come back to read this, I'll probably smack my face with the palm of my hand and count my lucky stars for having made it through all of this stuff without being detained or questioned.
I flew on one of the new 777-200's which has a video monitor at each seat, allowing passengers to view whatever they wanted. The in-flight movie offerings worth mentioning, at least westbound to Hong Kong, are "Serendipity" (John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Jeremy Piven, Molly Shannon, Eugene Levy) and "Bandits" (Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett). I really liked both of these movies for totally different reasons. I liked "Bandits" a lot because it was an interesting twist to the sort of formulaic crap that Hollywood insists on churning out.
"Serendipity" was a romantic comedy that I rather enjoyed, based on the premise, and thought it was a lot of fun. Now, I don't know if that means that I actually like romantic comedies and just never watched them before, but I don't think that's the case. After all, I ha dno like for that film with Chris O'Donnell adn Drew Barrymore with "Mad" in the title or "Only You" with Marisa Tomei. I've noticed that a couple of other guys have quietly admitted that they like "Serendipity in the past as well. Here's my hypothesis: "Serendipity" is Indiana Jones with the Ark replaced by a girlfriend. Think about it. The movie isa bout this guy who's on a quest to find clues to where he can find this girl. He and his trusty, wisecracking sidekick travel all over Manhattan and across the country and back, trying to find her. The movie was mostly about these two guys on their adventure to find teh Holy Girlfriend. It wasn't about relaationshiops and agonizing over this and that, it was Guys Go Hunting.
Side Note: My one degree of separation from this film is that I sat in Kate Beckinsale's seat at Serendipity 3 (a fantastic dessert place, I might add) in the scene where Molly Shannon's character is trying ot tell Kate Beckinsale's character that she's crazy. It's also the scene wehere she picks up the fiver with John Cusack's character's name and number on it.
Interesting... it wasn't on the viewing guide, but apparently they're airing TRON, too. Kick ass.
That being said, this is all for now, 33,000 feet up in the air. I'll write again when I'm back on the ground.
Posted by KinCross at February 20, 2002 05:40 PM