austin_dern (austin_dern) wrote,
austin_dern
austin_dern

I fly around the sky in a big jet plane

Home again, safe and sound, if phenomenally tired. I had the sleep gap going in to the travel, and over a day on airplanes, getting only that sleep that doesn't make you less tired (why is it so perfectly un-restful? Shouldn't it be about as good as sleeping in one's chair in front of the TV?), and coming out of it somehow on the same day I left (it's an International Date Line thing), just isn't healthy as a long-term occupation. You know I'm getting jaded to these things when I don't start packing for spending the better part of the month on another continent until twelve hours before I leave for the airport.

I had slightly more than the average number of moderately amusing incidents and events over the course of getting to Changi Airport and flying back, though at the moment I'm too tired to put them into coherent form. I'll bring them out as time allows (I don't want these little essays to be too long). On the second leg of the flight the woman sitting next to me spent the first half-hour of the flight occasionally lifting both armrests on her side up about forty-five degrees. I didn't mind that particularly. I'm big, and so subject to the torment of design engineers, a bunch of short and very bitter people. Lifting the armrest is necessary to fit the earphone jack in without digging into my leg, since obviously putting the plug on the front of the armrest would cheat the designer of the chance to inflict pain on people with big legs. But after the woman (remember her?) lifted the arms up and let them drop back several times she finally turned to me and asked: ``How do you get the seat to recline?'' Mystery solved.

The sad part about being back in the US is I'll miss the next few weeks of developments in the allegations against David Rasif, a lawyer who's reported to have disappeared with S$16 million of clients' money. This has been decorating the evening news a while now, with the extra couple million tossed on to what he's accused of stealing every few days. The most recent allegation was that he'd gone shopping for diamonds just before disappearing, buying enough to pay S$100,000 in Goods and Services Tax alone. Law firms have been saying how it's important that they tighten up their standards particularly in letting individuals transfer large cash amounts around.

Trivia: Newark Airport handled 4,000 passenger flights in 1929. Source: New Jersey: America's Main Road, John T Cunningham.

Currently Reading: Dust: A History of the Small and The Invisible, Joseph Amato. It's a frustratingly vague book; the whole thing reads like the introduction to itself.

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