Sunday, August 29, 2010

A Quick Layover

One sixteen hour flight later and I'm in Hong Kong. I'm here at the airport for four hours before I get on a flight to Dhaka. I've quickly discovered that the entire terminal is networked which is great. The bathroom stalls probably even get wifi. Figured I'd slip in a quick update since I have internet.

Some highlights from the trip so far...

I got through security at JFK and went to get breakfast at a Balduccis. I'm scanning their shelves, looking for something to eat... OJ, sandwiches, salads, ham, bottled water....wait, ham? Keep in mind this is a Balduccis at an airport behind the security checkpoint. For some inexplicable reason they're selling full hams--like the several pound piece of meat you usually see behind the glass at the butcher's. What traveler would need or even be remotely moved to purchase airport ham? Mysterious.

In-flight entertainment. Let me go ahead and seriously recommend that you not watch "Clash of the Titans" nor "Hot Tub Time Machine." Given the number of movie options available, I didn't. At least not for more than three minutes each. After that brief excursion into bad movies, I settled down into "The Godfather." Other key forms of entertainment that sustained me for 16 hours: in-flight tetris and a live video feed from a camera attached to the bottom of the plane. 

But the best entertainment was the pilot's name. Cabin speakers go on. A thick British accent blares out..."Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for flying with us today. I'm Maurice Mudhummer and I'll be your pilot today." He probably had a tough childhood...

And here I am in Hong Kong. For some reason, Sarah Palin is on all the airport tv screens.Time to get a bite of non-airplane (read: real) food and settle down to wait for departure to Dhaka.

Also, I am aware that there are no photos in this post. Please don't let that alarm you. There will be photos, hopefully a bountiful number of them, in future posts. It's just that today has been spent mostly in airports, and that means paranoid airport security. I didn't want to risk being tackled by some burly TSA dude because I was photographing airport ham.

4 comments:

  1. Ha! If anyone tried to tackle you they'd bounce right off.

    Welcome to Hong Kong, and hope stage 2 of the trip has slightly better movie selections!

    Love,

    Marina

    P.S. The word that your blog has asked me to type before posting (to show I am a person and not a virus-toting robot) is "opreps."

    Good one!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nick, greetings from your Northern Virginia family. We LOVE your blog and are very excited for your trip. We hope all goes well wtih the travel and keep the news coming, we will keep reading. The ham gave us a good laugh and stay well - much love, Aunt Mary, Martha, and Charlie.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Agreed. That ham was most amusing. Mr. Mudhummer made me laugh as well~ Cheers, Cathy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You neatly avoided telling us whether you were, in fact, in a bathroom stall when writing this post.

    That live video feed under the plane must have been AWESOME.

    ReplyDelete