Russia. My seat has a nifty video display that as well as having a choice of movie and other video programs also has a map and information function that is updated real time.
We took a northern route leaving Chicago and flying up into northern Canada, then skirting the north coast of Alaska. Surprisingly although we've flown for nearly 8 hours, we've been over land nearly the entire time other than for a brief moment between Alaska and Russia as we passed over the International Date Line.
The display now shows about 7 and a half hours of flying time remaining until we arrive about a half hour early in Hong Kong. Current speed is 604mph, temperature is -63F, and altitude is 35000 feet. The display cycles through maps with various levels of detail, then through the stats in various units, and both English and Chinese.
My body is very confused what time it is. Part of the reason is because according to the last place I was it is now 9:15pm, home is 7:15pm, and there will still be a few hours of sunlight left when we arrive. be pretty wiped out anyways.
After this I may try to nap a bit, but I have a horrible time sleeping on planes, even with a nice business class seat. Most of the others in my section are sound asleep or trying to sleep.
Last I reported was right before dinner on August 5. I went down to one of the hotel restaurants and had a Reuben and a chocolate shake. The cashier there also berated me for not using the full value of the meal voucher. My meal came to just shy of $10 while I could have gotten up United Airlines out of a few bucks. I guess other people have other priorities.
The next day I went to the same place for breakfast, this time I must have value of the $10 voucher. It helped that they charged $1.95 for orange juice.
I checked out and got a cab to the airport, arriving quite early. This gave chairs, drinks, snacks, phones, and even some "business" areas where you can plug in your laptop and do some work. The restrooms that look like they are cleaned hourly been cleaned once a month.
They also announce boarding for all international flights, so I kicked back and listened to Tori Amos "Little Earthquakes" until it was time. The gate was right next to the club so when they announced I just walked over and got right on board. (One of the cute flight attendants just came over to see if I was playing some fun game just now, and was disappointed that I was just writing stuff.) When I got on board they had orange juice waiting for me immediately.
AH! Compared to yesterday, everything was going so well today. Well, this to give up and try again later.
got out the laptop to write this. Hopefully I'm not so bored yet that I'm boring anyone reading this. Haha, too bad if it is! So far I watched the movies "City of Angels", and "The Wedding Singer". Both were pretty good. such a goofball. Also on the Disney Channel I spotted an ad for the English seeing Miyazaki finally get the attention he deserves in the west.
well with Ambient music. Morcheeba was just about right, a nice slow beat, not too fast to get you antsy, not too slow to put you to sleep.
The number of gadgets on the seats in business class is pretty amazing. The best thing by far is the lower back support. It is electronically adjustable, and one of the modes has it cycle up and down, sort of like a slow massage. Feels great! Another neat gadget is that the headphones have a noise cancellation feature. I dumbly used my CD player headphones for the first movie, then I read the booklet which explained all seat features, got out the real headphones and tried them out. The noise sound level from a pretty high level to be be quite bearable. Too bad
That's about enough for now. Next time I'll be on the ground in Hong Kong and might even have some photos to add.