Thursday, July 1, 2010

In the air, over... clouds 12/31/09

So this is what I know at this point:

1) The flight from Massachusetts to JFK is boring. It always is. I guess that I can only get so excited about forty minutes of flying time and forty minutes of sitting on the runway. Upon landing, I found my next gate, which was hosting a flight to Rome prior to mine. After two hours of sitting across from two engineer barbies (they were engineering graduates from U. Penn whose voices just rose and rose and rose in pitch and volume as they discussed cell phone ring tones and other things that I didn't care about) I went for dinner, which was actually very tasty.

2) Superfreakonomics is a very solid sequel to Freakonomics. I know that because I was able to get through all of it in my extended time at JFK. Also, I was skeptical about using an electronic reader as opposed to you know, a book. Call me a convert. The Sony Reader is very pleasant, and seems to be reaasonably easy on the eyes.

3) I forgot to bring a pen in my purse. I have several in my suitcase, but that is currently not accessible. This means that the puzzle books that I brought are slightly less useful than I might have hoped. But, I have my computer and I have my ipod, and I have my brother's reader. It could be worse.

4) It's better to fly first class. I had more legroom on my Boston to JFK flight than I do now. Also, when I passed through the first class section, I noticed no children. Not so of coach. I am in seat G. In seat E, one row ahead of me, there is a woman who has a little girl on her lap (old enough to seem to be pushing the idea of infant in arms concept). This girl goes has gone into hysterics about once an hour. When she's not bawling/screaming, she's running up and down the aisle and hitting people with her pillow. I am not a fan.

Those are the things I know for sure. Around twenty minutes into the flight, several women, including the one with the child, started absolutely screaming at each other in what I assume is Arabic. This incident was about three rows ahead of me, and lasted for a good ten minutes. It took three flight attendants to break it up. The lady sitting next to me and I were both a little fascinated. A bit remaniscent of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. And small child is screaming again.

The top of my list of things that I don't know for sure is the time. Egypt is seven hours ahead of the Eastern time zone. My computer is reading 5:10 PM, Eastern Standard Time 12/31/09, which is impossible. We left at 11:00 PM on 12/30/09. It's an 11+ hour flight. I'm supposed to land in Cairo around 5:00 PM local time, which means 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. So I'm thinking that maybe it's really 5:13 AM, which would mean that I got around 4 hours of questionable sleep. But I can't really be sure about that. I certainly did not get 17 hours of sleep. Oh, good news, the movie ended and they're playing maps. We are almost over Portugal, with four and a half hours to destination.

These are some nice clouds...

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