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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Home Again

Current Mood:
CC is listening to: Her Boyfriend's Wedding--Craig Chaquico (Midnight Noon)

Ah, it's wonderful to be home :-). I actually enjoyed this trip's flying part more than usual. Usually the path I take is Memphis-Detroit or Minneapolis-Japan-Manila. This time though, it was cheaper to go Memphis-San Francisco-Japan-Manila.

I liked that route much more, for two reasons:
  1. Each leg was more manageable. It's 4 hours to San Francisco, 11 hours to Japan, 4 hours to Manila. The other flight is 2 hours to Detroit/Minneapolis, 16 hours to Japan, and 4 hours to Manila. Believe me, you feel those extra 5 hours :-).
  2. The plane for the international leg is better. Instead of a 747, they use an A330. When you fly coach on the A330, you get your own video screen and remote control. This means you can choose from a selection of movies and start and stop them anytime you want. On the 747 it's still the "Everyone in coach watches the same movie at the same time" deal. And not only that, on the A330, you get your own power port. You can plug in your laptop and not have to rely on your batteries. For some reason, only the front section of coach has power ports, but nwa.com lets you choose your seat so that's not much of a problem :-). Oh and another thing, you get to play games on your own screen, too. You can play single-player games like Bejeweled, or multi-player games like Trivia Challenges with other passengers. I had fun playing a few rounds with the passengers in row 33 :-).
Of course, the thing that makes the trip most manageable is getting a seat on the exit rows :-). That extra leg room makes a huge difference :-). During the flight I grab my carry-on from the overhead compartment, place it in front of my seat, and use it as a footrest :-).

I might come back November/December, it's not definite yet :-).

On the trip home, everyone that I dealt with at the San Francisco airport was Filipino. That's never happened to me before, and that was pretty cool :-). From the immigrations officer to the lady telling you where to go next to the guy re-checking your bags for your connecting flight, they were all Filipino. What was funny was that I didn't recognize that the immigrations officer was Filipino.

"Was your visit to the Philippines for business or pleasure?"
"Business :-)."
"What do you do?"
"We have a call center in Manila. We have an office in Memphis, but the bulk of our business is handled at the Manila office."
"Where in Manila?"
"Oh, Makati."
"Are you itchy?"
I wasn't sure I heard him right. "Sorry?"
"Makati." He then started scratching the back of his hand.

That was when I realized he was Filipino. "Wongk wongk wongk," I replied, imitating the horn you usually hear when someone says a bad joke :-).

For my non-Filipino readers, "makati" is Tagalog for "itchy," it's just pronounced a little different from the actual city Makati :-).

Anyway, today Steve has the day off. It's our first common day off in months. We haven't decided what we'll be doing yet today. It's a little chilly to go to the zoo, but we haven't been there in a while. We'll see :-).

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