Back in Orlando

(The following paragraphs were written while I was sitting at Newark airport feeling terribly bored and too bugged from travel to read anything.)

So here I am sitting at Newark airport at 8 AM on New Year's Day, waiting for a flight that will leave in two and a half hours. Having nothing else to do, I've found a convenient power outlet, plugged in my laptop, and decided to chronicle the last few hours of travel. I would have blogged straight from there, but in a display of startling silliness, they don't have free wi-fi!

I also have a strange feeling that my writing style is a bit off, for some reason. Perhaps my mind has just been scrambled by all those hours in the air, not to mention airplane food...

First off, I'm entitled to brag a bit, seeing as I'm now a member of the elite club of people who have celebrated the new year by flying west across the planet, extending the night several hours beyond its usual length. (Say, that's a great idea for a new vampire movie...) Unfortunately, instead of partying the whole way, I spent it in the confines of an uncomfortable airplane seat. Someday I'd really like to find out how much money they would lose by extending the leg room by a foot or so...

Anyway, thanks to Continental's amazing inflight entertainment system, I spent most of the extended night watching 4 episodes of House, an episode of Futurama, and all three Matrix movies. They've got an on-demand thing going, so instead of being forced to watch whatever they have whenever they have it, you just browse their list, pick whatever you want, and watch it at your convenience. This is obviously the way to go, and I'm a bit confused as to why I didn't have this on the flight I took to Mumbai. I didn't even realize Transformers was on until it was too late, or I could have watched that instead. I seem to remember vague plans being made by a whole lot of friends to see it when it came out, but nothing ever materialized.

I did sneak a bit of sleep on the plane, or at least I tried. I'm not entirely sure how long I slept, for a bunch of reasons. They had this flight map feature on the entertainment system which kept displaying a bunch of times - time at the destination, time at the origin, expected flight time left, and so forth. Left me totally confused, and I suspect I may have dropped off for several hours without realizing it. The stuff I watched only adds up to about 8 or 9 hours, which still leaves at least 8 hours unaccounted for. It did feel like my efforts to find a comfortable sleeping position lasted that long, but I can't imagine how I pulled that off without going nuts. What made it more annoying was the guy sitting next to me, who spent the entire triop in a state of blissful slumber, in the most astonishing positions ever.

Maybe I have gone nuts, and like any insane person, I don't know it.

At any rate, I'm fully awake now and not feeling particularly sleepy. My eyes don't feel strained, I don't have dark circles, I've got a fair bit of energy - whatever the case, it seems to have worked out. More on this when I get home.

Couple of interesting things - in the flight to Newark, I was seated in the last row, something which I've never done before. To be perfectly precise, it's not the last row for the center aisle - that has one extra row. So there are 45 rows in the center aisle, but only 44 in the left and right ones. Also, the last row has only two seats in the left and right aisles. Interesting bit of asymmetry, that.

And before I forget, it seems the ghost of Douglas Adams was roaming about Mumbai airport on New Year's Eve. The next time you get on a plane via an aerobridge, check out the numbers on the control display - it's just by the entrance to the plane, where the aerobridge connects to the airplane door. There's a little display marked speed (in cm/s, even). Now you'd expect that to be 0, but instead it kept on alternating between 00 and 42. Eerie, but in a funny way.

Verily, the Ultimate Answer shows up in the oddest places...

I'll end this here for the time being. I'm getting a bit stir crazy, so I'll probably move about, stretch my legs, do the Rubik's cube a few dozen times - that sort of thing.

(This concludes the Newark airport leg of this blog entry.)

I'm back in Orlando now, so all you keen minds out there are justified in concluding that the flight did in fact arrive without any problems. We left a few minutes late but managed to arrive on time, though I did have to wait a bit for my luggage. Interestingly enough, I was actually expecting this, and here's why. (Expect me to beat around the bush a bit - I love giving background information, for some reason.)

So anyway, I got home and immediately noticed that the weather was absolutely amazing. The clouds were out, so I didn't have to get annoyed by the sun in my eyes. Still, it was mid-afternoon, which meant the temperature was a very pleasant 21 C. There was a very slight breeze, so it was nice and cool too. In short, paradise. Also, the air was clean, so my nose was happy, or would have been if it were capable of human emotion.

Having noticed all this, I did the most obvious thing. I stayed indoors, checked my email, ate some noodles, watched some Eddie Izzard...

I avoided most of my jet lag until about 10:30 PM or so, at which point I found myself yawning. So I hit the sack and slept like a log until about 5 AM, at which point I woke up, watched the Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse, and remembered that I had a blog entry lying around, and so this came along.

It turns out that there's a cold front coming in - arrived last night actually. So, astonishing as it might seem, it's actually 5 C outside. Needless to say, in Orlando, this is insane.

I'm feeling slightly sleepy again, so I'll go lie down for a bit and see if I fall asleep again. Toodle-oo and all that.

Ah, and before I forget, happy new year to everyone!