Personal Dork Assistant

September 3rd (or is it the 4th?): Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, south of Vladivostok, 5 hours to Taiwan

I'm cutting it a little close with this trip to Taiwan. However, the ticket is $200 cheaper if I waited until September, and another $100 less if I waited until after the long weekend, so here I am. Another perk is that mom (and her travel agent) helped to bump me up to an aisle seat in EVA's Deluxe Class, which is more like Economy Plus, or Business Minus, depending on your view about water in glasses. The extra seat pitch is a godsend, the difference between claustrophobia and working room.

The plane is new enough, with the video screen in the seatbacks, so I can obsessively watch the kilometers tick away. Have to whip out the Powerbook and write this as the iPod needs a mid-air recharge. Found it interesting that EVA does its annnouncements first in Taiwanese, then Mandarin. Gives me enough time to notice that something's going on so I can pause the music. I'm usually okay with political correctness and I recognize that stereotypes can be bad, but I don't really mind that they insist on hiring thin, attractive females for flight attendants.

The meal was a little bit of a leap-of-faith. The salad had honest-to-goodness shrimps in it. They were tiny, but they weren't overcooked and they actually tasted kinda shrimpy. Decided to go with the beef for the main course, which is usually dicey anyway, but Hungarian goulash on a Chinese airline? It wasn't as awful as it could've been. Reminded me of the good old days of elementary school cafeteria food.

The airline isn't perfect, as I had to check in my wheelie. 7 kg (15 lbs) limit is ridiculous. The overhead bins are echoingly empty, since most people are checking in massive suitcases. Eva made its name in the freight biz, and its passengers are hauling cargo of their own, with presents for family, etc. Nobody's packing light here. People are packing cup-o-noodles for a midnight snack, and the smell is grossing me out. All the kids on the flight would be bothersome, except for the miracle that is the Etymotic ER-4.

It's all about killing time on these flights. Actually, it's more like a slow, torturous strangling rather than a clean kill. Just got through Fast Food Nation, which doesn't make me feel any better about that beef goulash. Hey, at least In-N-Out is still okay. What I really want to do is to get some sleep, but that would just make the jetlag worse. Not that I can sleep on a plane.