China Visit - Day 1 - Tuesday, August 10

Here are the notes I took from my first day of travels, typed on the iPad on my flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong:

The night before my flight, I stayed up all night doing chores, packing, playing games, and trying to avoid jet lag.

I left with Kimberly for the Flyaway at 5:30AM. I was at the airport and through security by a little after 7, with over 3 hours till boarding.

Ate a Clif bar for breakfast and joined the a conference call. I was even able to see the presentation with my iPad via the WebEx app. I got in a small nap before boarding.

I saw the San Fernando Valley from the plane after take-off. L.A. had a thick layer of fog/smog, and there was a legit fluffy white marine layer colliding with the basin way out into the ocean. As usual, the San Gabriels peaked up above it all, crystal clear.

It was otherwise an uneventful flight to SFO. The plane made its way between the marine layer off the coast and the dirty smog of the central valley. I did see the Romero Canyon trail snaking up to El Camino Cielo on the ridge of the Santa Ynez mountains behind Carpinteria, which we hiked once. I slept most of the rest of the short flight after that.

I walked a long way from the domestic to international terminal at SFO, but still had about an hour before boarding the plane bound for HK. The only food choice next to my gate was a little French/Italian cafe. I had a caprese sandwich, which I salvaged into something relatively tasty with some brown mustard and black pepper, and a conspicuously good no-name Italian-sounding pale ale. I found out when I was leaving that it was actually Sierra Nevada branded especially for their restaurant.

I'm on a 747 for the big flight. I slept for a bit after take-off, unfortunately missing a snack and drink of some sort, but before I could ask for something anyway they started serving lunch, which was lettuce with some decent sesame Ginger dressing, a roll, and very lackluster pasta with red sauce and too much cheese.

Iron Man 2 had just started whe I woke up, so I watched the rest of that. Other than that, I:

-listened to several albums
-read my book and magazines
-read an article that was still open on wikipedia on the iPad about the Frontier strip
-ate a couple granola bars
-did some training slides on the laptop
-watched a couple episodes of the anime Trigun on the laptop
-watched the movie Date Night with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey, also presented on the plane
-played games on the iPad
-watched the only movie on the iPad, the short part 1 of Wes Anderson's the Darjeeling Limited, called Hotel Chalier
-took a bunch of notes for my meetings in the coming week

All that and there are still four hours to go!

The laptop is nearly dead but the iPad still has 53% charge. I'll have to try to port some of my backed up DVDs to the iPad while I'm here so I have more entertainment options on the long trip back. Now they're playing some Miley Cyrus movie that I'm unlikely to give a chance.

Now I'm listening to Headlights, an album purchased at their show with David Bazan in Santa Barbara. I suddenly miss Kimberly and California quite acutely. We're almost done flying by Japan, though not close enough to spot any land, as far as I've seen. I dozed off when we flew over Tokyo.

Bleck. I was served rice and veggies, but the veggies are in some kind of sauce and there's no way to tell if it's animal based. Doesn't taste right to me. I'll have to plan my travel back a bit better than I did on the way out. I have a bunch of protein bars, but eating so many is doing a number on my digestive system. One can at least find some nuts and pretzels that are safe, I'm sure.