Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Arrival in Beijing
The same plane upon arrival in Beijing. The interesting thing about this pic is not the plane or the place (the new airport is huge) but the colour of the sky you can see: it's not the tint of the glass, nor smog -- it's actually dust in the skies thanks to a sandstorm. I could actually taste the sand when I finally emerged.
Labels: Air Canada, Beijing, China
Monday, May 19, 2008
Immediately Prior to the Long-Haul Flight to Beijing
At Pearson International, about to board the plane in the picture. Long flight (12 hours) and even though I was in economy I did at least have some leg room and the two people sitting to either side of me were pleasant. Still, was glad to land in Beijing the following day.
Labels: Air Canada, Beijing, China
Friday, April 27, 2007
I left directly from the office and headed to Pearson via the airport. I arrived at the international Air Canada terminal to see Erika and the girls (and Neda, our nanny who was also coming along for the trip) having just pulled up themselves to the curb in their own limo. Talk about timing. Dave and his wife Charmain were there as well.
Unfortunately there was an astronomically-long lineup in order to check in our bags for the flight. After getting our boarding passes printed up at the adjacent kiosks, Erika got into the line while I kept he kids busy and happy. They were both wearing their Healys/roller-skate shoes, and Pearson is a great place for doing that sort of thing. Erika and co. were in line for about an hour, so it is just as well we came early in order to get our flight.
Managed to have a pleasant, relaxing dinner in the hour remaining prior to boarding once we had got through customs.
The flight itself was simply long. We flew economy on an older plane, one which had not been fitted with personal in-flight entertainment systems. Luckily I had brought along a personal DVD player for the kids to watch movies on to help keep them occupied when they were not colouring or doing other things to amuse themselves. We all had seats in the same numeric row, but despite this the seating was staggered so that the seats for all six of us were not in line with each other. I managed to switch with a woman in the row in front of us so that at least one parent could sit beside the kids. Unfortunately this put me behind some bald-headed guy who perennially put his seat back, even wen he didn't need to for sleeping, putting the top of his seat about six inches from my nose. I had bought a blue flight cushion prior to the flight which wrapped around my neck, but even with this extra creature comfort, I still couldn't fall asleep. The girls thankfully managed to sleep for much of the flight, as did Erika and Neda. I ended up watching Dreamgirls (very enjoyable) from a tilt-down CRT situated a few rows in front of me, as well as part of The Red Violin, which was hard to watch as the video flickered out of synch every few seconds.
This time we flew to Munich, which, being further west, must have tacked on extra time to our flight over and above what we would have had if we had instead flow through Frankfurt or Paris International airports. Getting off of the plane was delayed substantially as Annie was sick just as the plane was landing, and Vanessa had lost her braces. No luck with the latter unfortunately, which will be a costly replacement when we return home.
Getting through Munich airport was not fun. One sick kid, and another customs check to go through, which was much more thorough than usual for us. Our connection time for the next flight was very close, and we thought for certain we had missed the flight thanks to the delays. But when we got to our gate we found that thanks to our friends, they were holding the flight for us. We got on the much more comfortable Lufthansa plane and flew the remaining leg to Nice Airport.
Labels: Air Canada, flying, Lufthansa, Munich, Nice Airport
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Today is the day I fly out to a conference in Frankfurt, Germany. I am co-presenting at the DITA Europe 2006 conference there, along with a colleague from work. He left yesterday, but I stayed behind an extra evening so that I could take the girls trick-or-treating for Halloween. Both of them look forward to the event and it didn't seem right not to have one of their parents around for the big day (Erika was working on a film and couldn’t make it). I will probably for it later in terms of jet-lag once I arrive, but it was well worth it.
The almost 8-hour long flight is aboard an Air Canada Airbus A320. I savour the relative luxury of being in business class for the flight there and back, and for the first time in ages I have appreciable leg-room and elbow-room. Champagne was served while we were still on the ground, and the food was definitely much better than average, but I most enjoyed the luxury of space.
While I had loaded up my video iPod with a number of TV shows and movies, I needn't have bothered, as this plane is equipped with a personal display touch-screen, and I have whiled away the time playing chess and watching "The Prairie Home Companion" starring Garrison Keillor and directed by the Robert Altman (while relatively low-key compared to previous films like Nashville or M*A*S*H*, it still very much shows his influences, and the solid ensemble cast makes it a fun thing to watch, though still it is ultimately not one of his best. Never knew before that Lilly Tomlin couldn't sing; now I know).
I picked up a copy of Dava Sobels' The Planets before heading out. I end up getting to the beginning of the chapter on Mars by the end of the flight. I very much enjoyed her biography on Galileo as seen through the letters of his daughter the nun, and considered picking this up when I first saw in hardcover. It was an immediate purchase when I saw the softcover version. She is a long-time science writer and has a certain verve for description and evoking vivid memories from her childhood that impinged upon her interest in the planets, though I find the occasional Christian religious reference (straying beyond the obvious ancient Roman personifications for the planets) jarring and cloying. I know the book is aimed at the general reader, but there are numerous times I keep thinking about other related things that she spends a bare paragraph on, or other interesting tangents which may only be hinted at.
After the first in-flight movie ends (some non-descript thing starring Keanu Reeves and a familiar-looking female co-star who end up emoting endlessly in and around a country house built by a bay; I didn't don my headphones for it but I suspect that this film’s silence wouldn't have been improved by dialog), the lights were dimmed and most people ended up putting back their seats and drifting off to sleep. I ended up having a look at the print-out of my portion of the presentation, cribbing notes to the pages, and was amused to look around me to see three others working on their own PowerPoint presentations, either by the glow of their notebook screens or on paper, like the fellow beside me. Thanks to the presentation text size I can make out that one young lady to the left and forward from me is presenting on a radiological test machine (medical? industrial?) of some sort, the fellow beside me is doing something relating to mining engineering, and a professorial-looking sort of man is working earnestly on something to do with improvements in electrical engineering processes (according to one slide, there have been significant changes since 1987, apparently).
Later, after watching the conclusion of the film, I try to fall asleep. Despite the relative comfort of the seats – they recline to a near-vertical angle, plus a motorized footrest – and the sleeping blindfold I brought, I just cannot fall asleep. I toss and turn for about an hour before giving up and returning to my book. The lights slowly come back on, creating a false dawn, and breakfast is served soon afterwards. The plane arrives slightly ahead of schedule at Frankfurt airport and I debark.
Labels: Air Canada, Airbus 320, conference, Dava Sobels, DITA, Frankfurt, Lilly Tomlin, Robert Altman, The Prairie Home Companion
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