There are very few things that put me in a bad mood, but I suspect
that travelling alone is one of the things I do not do very well, and
I have a litany of things to grouse about to prove it. The constant
wail of infants spread throughout economy class made it difficult to
drift into sleep. The food was blah, although perhaps that’s just in
comparison to the deliciously spiced burritos I had for dinner. To top
it all off, the inflight entertainment system didn’t work for the
flight from Toronto to Anchorage, which meant that there was no way to
drown out baby cries or distract myself from what was probably a
decent pasta meal were I not already predisposed to grouse about it.

Fortunately, this complete failure of the inflight entertainment
system had the flight attendants feeling properly sorry for those few
of us who had the problem. They gave us two $25 gift vouchers in order
to compensate for the inconvenience. I flipped through the catalog and
didn’t really find anything particularly interesting. The flight
attendants promised that an engineer will look at the system while
we’re in Anchorage. There’s little point to watching movies on the leg
back. The 11-hour flight will land in Hong Kong early morning, so the
best course of action is to sleep throughout the Anchorage-Hong Kong
leg, which means tiring myself out during the Toronto-Anchorage leg by
alternating movies and naps. This, however, depends on the inflight
entertainment system, which has chosen this moment to vacation in
Bermuda.

I’m starting to realize that I can get by without the usual perks of
flying CX.

Also, I nearly lost my glasses. I usually tuck them into my blouse,
but I woke up without them. After minutes of frantic search and
paranoid ruminations on pranksters who pull eyeglasses off sleeping
passengers. Somehow, they ended up under the seat.

So now I’m sitting in the Anchorage airport, having realized the
futility of shuffling along in the queue. I am one of a few passengers
who have realized that there’s no point in standing around when we’re
all going to end up in the same place, we’re all going to have to pile
back in, and there’s no point rushing because none of the shops are
open yet. I’d rather write, thank you very much, all the while
mentally grumbling about the compulsive need of governments to ensure
national security by restricting the massive-scale smuggling of
toothpaste and perfume and checking the passports of people who would
rather not even go into the airport if they could. (Ah, the days when
you could just sleep through the long flight.)

When we pile back on, my giant of a seatmate wants to exchange seats
with me. It’s not his first long flight, so I have no idea what
possessed him to choose a window seat in economy class where his knees
will definitely dig into the seat in front of him. I suppose that in
the interests of world peace I should compensate for his bad planning,
but I suspect that this good deed doesn’t count for karma because I’m
in a grumbly mood.

This and the past entry have been uncharacteristically boo-ish, but I
*like* occasionally grousing, and flying is a perfect time to do it.

Maybe I’ll get $50 worth of chocolates to cheer me up.

Random Emacs symbol: gnus-article-strip-all-blank-lines – Command: Strip all blank lines.