The Plane

12:05AM January 16th: The 747 finally departs the airport, complete with the obligatory screaming child 2 rows away. You can imagine how happy i was.

It began with the obligatory saying goodbye to parents for several minutes, and the continuous waving as i proceeded through the security checkpoint. I slowly made my way to the gate, in no hurry to sit down for two hours before the plane left. After two hours of uninteresting nothingness boarding finally begins. I get settled on the plane with ease, finding an easy spot to store my luggage before sitting for what i know will be a very long trip. I started off reading a Popular Mechanics and quickly finished before dinner was served. After dinner, which I would like to add is somewhat difficult to eat with the short space between my seat and the one in front of me, I began to experiment with the multimedia system on the plane. This was probably the most interesting part of my trip. each seat had its own TV built into the seat behind it, so i was able to choose from around 90 movies playing at any given time. About this time they turned the lights on the plane off to allow people to sleep and so I began by watching the last part of Rush Hour and channel surfing. At about 5 AM West Coast time I decided i should get some sleep, for the reason that my intent was to stay up late that day and get sleep on the plane to orient myself to the proper time in Hong Kong. It didn't work. Remember that comment earlier about the obligatory screaming baby? Well, everytime i managed to finaly get to sleep one of several factors conspired against me. First, the plane seats are less than comfortable and the cramped leg room was a significant obstacle to comfort. Second, there was the screaming baby which screamed through most of the flight. Third, the man behind me got up every few minutes and proceeded to shake my seat each time. Fourth, the same man also, for a reason unknown to me, found it necessary to turn his seat light on for several minutes before and after he got up. Now, the term "seat light" would imply to most that the light only shines on said person's seat. This is not the case. It illuminated the better part of his entire row as well as my row in front of him.

Please allow me to say that it is not my intent here to sound as though I am complaining, as that is not my goal. In fact, i found the whole situation to be rather humorous at how many stereotypical events occurred to me on that flight. I tried several remedies to prevent the aforementioned problems including ear plugs as well as one of those eye patches to block out light. If you have ever heard how loudly babies scream on planes, you will most likely understand when I tell you the ear plugs did not work. To make matters worse, both of the passengers next to me slept quite soundly for most of the flight, precluding the chance for me to get up and walk around.

I also found that I had the peculiar ability to catch movies about 20-30 minutes before they ended. On the plane, a single channel would have a single movie that would repeat itself when it finished. In between times when i tried to sleep I watched movies and I was able to see the last 10 minutes of The Matrix a total of three times. I think I ended up watching Rush Hour again, as well as The Matrix, The Terminator, and also a Chinese movie which was very good.

In the end, I managed to get a grand total of about 2 hours of sleep. The entire plane flight was in pitch black, because we left during the night and arrived at 7AM, so I was unable to even look out an enjoy the scenery. Oh, and I forgot to mention that if you ever travel on a plane flight as long as this, don't bring a backpack and put it under the seat in front of you. Trust me, it quickyl takes up what little leg room you have. Still, it was a good experience and I was filled with eager anticipation of what would await me in Hong Kong when i arrived. We touched down shortly before 7AM local time and my 14 hour plane flight of fun was finally over.