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Old Musings - July through August 2006

8 August 2006

It has been a wet couple of days here. Luckily the skies opened up for just long enough to hold a wedding on Friday.

 

9 July 2006

Bugger. This was supposed to be just another business trip. Unfortunately I'm now in San Francisco airport waiting for my connecting flight to Seattle, only to find that the pen for my tablet PC has gone missing. I was using it during the flight from Auckland, so I must have dropped it going back through security. Oh well - gives me a reason to buy the next model up I guess. I believe I can buy a replacement pen with an electronic eraser at the other end. Perhaps this time I'll use the lanyard and won't lose it!

In any case, I'm off to Seattle or more specifically Redmond - home to Microsoft! Who knows? Maybe I'll even get to see Bill.

But for now I am still recuperating from the last flight. That was the 3rd time I've had the misfortune of flying in one of Air New Zealand's 'great' new Boeing 777. Here are some handy traveling tips for those that might follow in my footsteps:

 Gerard's TOP TEN TIPS for TRAVELING on a BOEING 777

  1. Leave your standard length arms at home. These planes are obviously built for dinosaurs. You'll need a tiny set of T-Rex arms to eat your food on this flight.
  2. Don't bother having a shower before you leave. Even though the 777 is still brand-spanking new, they left out the personal air-jets in the ceiling. Personal temperature control is sooo last millennium - you'll be sweating like a hog every hour, on the hour.
  3. Bring an egg timer-it will help you figure out if the entertainment centre is locked-up or if you didn't really push that button
  4. Learn to sleep with at least one piece of chair digging into you. These chairs might be new but seat designers only ever fly business class.
  5. Take time to savour your meal-that way it feels shorten before they take your tray away.
  6. Eat your meal as fast as possible so you don't have to smell it. (also see #5)
  7. The air in the cabin is a 50:50 mixture of fresh and recycled air. Sit on the side with the fresh air.
  8. Ask for a seat in the middle. The arm rests don't go up all the way, so even in an empty flight you're not likely to score some sleep - might as well be sociable.
  9. Bring a baby or two. Let business class get their money's worth out of the new noise-canceling headphones.
  10. Take a different flight/airline/route/destination.

As you can probably guess, I'm not too fond of this new aircraft design.

During my oh-so-long flight, I couldn't help but read some interesting factoids in the airline's mag: