diff --git a/htdocs/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/index.html b/htdocs/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/index.html index 547aee71af0b65223552c6856495c6fec8ca8719..d95de6081ffbc536710aac2ed794cc69901a9e53 100644 --- a/htdocs/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/index.html +++ b/htdocs/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/index.html @@ -1,39 +1,12 @@ -<!doctype html><html lang=en dir=auto><head><meta charset=utf-8><meta http-equiv=x-ua-compatible content="IE=edge"><meta name=viewport content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,shrink-to-fit=no"><meta name=robots content="index, follow"><title>Getting there is NOT half the fun | On My Mind...</title><meta name=keywords content="blog,in-china,history,work"><meta name=description content="October 14 -Zhong Guan Cun District, Beijing -3:50. Really? No, can’t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about. -I’m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end."><meta name=author content="Gary Allen Vollink"><link rel=canonical href=https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/><link crossorigin=anonymous href=/assets/css/stylesheet.min.043dbe50dd3b5aeece8e1fd6b52fdb9ce2bb5c714d321cc709b5e740e61345eb.css integrity="sha256-BD2+UN07Wu7Ojh/WtS/bnOK7XHFNMhzHCbXnQOYTRes=" rel="preload stylesheet" as=style><script defer crossorigin=anonymous src=/assets/js/highlight.min.6678583e8ba75836322e87f67e9501154da6e0be204902d2a38f301bdeb2ac0b.js integrity="sha256-ZnhYPounWDYyLof2fpUBFU2m4L4gSQLSo48wG96yrAs="></script> -<script>var terminal=(()=>{"use strict";return e=>({name:"Terminal Colors",aliases:["terminal"],case_insensitive:!0,contains:[{className:"deletion",begin:/\[[39]1m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"string",begin:/\[[39]2m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"literal",begin:/\[[39]3m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"title.function",begin:/\[[39]4m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"type",begin:/\[[39]5m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"regexp",begin:/\[[39]6m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"tag",begin:/\[3[07]m/,end:/\[0?m/},{className:"strong",begin:/\[97m/,end:/\[0?m/},{scope:"keyword",begin:/\[1m/,end:/\[0?m/},{scope:"emphasis",begin:/\[3m/,end:/\[0?m/}]})})(),existCondition;function do_plugin(){hljs.addPlugin({'after:highlight':e=>{if(e.language=="terminal"){var n,t=/\[[0-9;]*m/g,s=e.value.match(t);s&&(n=e.value,e.value=n.replace(t,''))}}}),hljs.registerLanguage("terminal",terminal),hljs.highlightAll()}existCondition=setInterval(function(){typeof hljs!="undefined"&&(clearInterval(existCondition),do_plugin())},100)</script><link rel=icon href=https://blog.vollink.com/favicon.ico><link rel=icon type=image/png sizes=16x16 href=https://blog.vollink.com/favicon-16x16.png><link rel=icon type=image/png sizes=32x32 href=https://blog.vollink.com/favicon-32x32.png><link rel=apple-touch-icon href=https://blog.vollink.com/apple-touch-icon.png><link rel=mask-icon href=https://blog.vollink.com/safari-pinned-tab.svg><meta name=theme-color content="#2e2e33"><meta name=msapplication-TileColor content="#2e2e33"><noscript><style>#theme-toggle,.top-link{display:none}</style><style>@media(prefers-color-scheme:dark){:root{--theme:rgb(29, 30, 32);--entry:rgb(46, 46, 51);--primary:rgb(218, 218, 219);--secondary:rgb(155, 156, 157);--tertiary:rgb(65, 66, 68);--content:rgb(196, 196, 197);--hljs-bg:rgb(46, 46, 51);--code-bg:rgb(55, 56, 62);--border:rgb(51, 51, 51)}.list{background:var(--theme)}.list:not(.dark)::-webkit-scrollbar-track{background:0 0}.list:not(.dark)::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb{border-color:var(--theme)}}</style></noscript><meta property="og:title" content="Getting there is NOT half the fun"><meta property="og:description" content="October 14 -Zhong Guan Cun District, Beijing -3:50. Really? No, can’t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about. -I’m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end."><meta property="og:type" content="article"><meta property="og:url" content="https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/"><meta property="article:section" content="in-china"><meta property="article:published_time" content="2007-10-15T12:00:00+08:00"><meta property="article:modified_time" content="2007-10-15T12:00:00+08:00"><meta property="og:site_name" content="On My Mind..."><meta name=twitter:card content="summary"><meta name=twitter:title content="Getting there is NOT half the fun"><meta name=twitter:description content="October 14 -Zhong Guan Cun District, Beijing -3:50. Really? No, can’t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about. -I’m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end."><script type=application/ld+json>{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"In China","item":"https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Getting there is NOT half the fun","item":"https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/"}]}</script><script type=application/ld+json>{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"Getting there is NOT half the fun","name":"Getting there is NOT half the fun","description":"October 14\nZhong Guan Cun District, Beijing\n3:50. Really? No, can\u0026rsquo;t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about.\nI\u0026rsquo;m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end.","keywords":["blog","in-china","history","work"],"articleBody":"October 14\nZhong Guan Cun District, Beijing\n3:50. Really? No, can’t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about.\nI’m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end.\nI found an English speaking news channel on television. I love watching news from places where I’m not from. It seems like a long format news station (much like a news magazine). The perspective is not nearly as anti-American as American news is anti-Everyone_Else. It really struck me as to the difference in news styles. It was more like the BBC. It was more like, well, news.\nMy head is fuzzy, but I don’t feel tired yet. So I take a shower.\nI have to stop here, and say that – as you can tell, I’ve not felt very positive about my experiences so far – this shower in my hotel room is really, really nice. It has a double shower head switchable to a hand-held shower head. It just feels nice. The water pressure is really strong, too.\nI go down to eat the hotel breakfast:\n 2 steamed buns with different fillings 2 pieces of “baked bacon†1 Fairly McDonald’s style potato cake (they call it potato pie) 1 piece of very British tasting sausage 1 Hard Boiled brown egg 1 French style croissant There’s another American here that I’m supposed to be able to meet up with, and at 10 in the morning I call him up. Of course, he’s younger than me so he’s sleeping, and says he’ll call me back later.\nThis is the point where the jet lag really starts bugging me. I’m all restless, but tired too. I start to watch some DVDs that I took with me (there’s a DVD player in my room). About 1pm, I’m totally annoyed that I didn’t get a call back, and decide to go see what I can find.\nI’ll start by simply saying that I walked in the wrong direction. I didn’t know it then. I did find a 7-11, a McDonalds, someplace called Big Pizza, and a Dairy Queen - all along a road that was so wide it had pedestrian bridges across it at regular intervals. I totally didn’t bring the camera (should have).\nOn the way back to the Hotel, I stopped by the 7-11 and bought a can of Pringles, some Laundry Soap and a liter of “Coke Lightâ€. When I got back here, I puttered around a little, drank some Coke Light, ate half the Pringles, cleaned my dirty clothes (not much, but wanted to figure out how the machine worked) - it’s a “Washer / Dryerâ€, and all of the instructions are in Chinese, so I sort of guessed, and ended up with clean dry clothes two hours later.\nI ate some Ramen noodle type thing for Dinner (the hotel had a few items that they started me off with - including tea bags and bottled water). About 9PM, the other American called me back, and told me that he had fallen back to sleep, and didn’t wake up until 2, and that he had tried calling then. We made arrangements to meet up in the morning.\nTired and fuzzy, and having taken no useful pictures… I went to bed. Tomorrow is the first day at work.\n","wordCount":"596","inLanguage":"en","datePublished":"2007-10-15T12:00:00+08:00","dateModified":"2007-10-15T12:00:00+08:00","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Gary Allen Vollink"},"mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"On My Mind...","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://blog.vollink.com/favicon.ico"}}}</script></head><body id=top><script>localStorage.getItem("pref-theme")==="dark"?document.body.classList.add("dark"):localStorage.getItem("pref-theme")==="light"?document.body.classList.remove("dark"):window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme: dark)").matches&&document.body.classList.add("dark")</script><header class=header><nav class=nav><div class=logo><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/ accesskey=h title="Home (Alt + H)"><img src=https://blog.vollink.com/AllenWrench.gif alt=logo aria-label=logo height=35>Home</a> -<span class=logo-switches><button id=theme-toggle accesskey=t title="(Alt + T)"><svg id="moon" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentcolor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><path d="M21 12.79A9 9 0 1111.21 3 7 7 0 0021 12.79z"/></svg><svg id="sun" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentcolor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><circle cx="12" cy="12" r="5"/><line x1="12" y1="1" x2="12" y2="3"/><line x1="12" y1="21" x2="12" y2="23"/><line x1="4.22" y1="4.22" x2="5.64" y2="5.64"/><line x1="18.36" y1="18.36" x2="19.78" y2="19.78"/><line x1="1" y1="12" x2="3" y2="12"/><line x1="21" y1="12" x2="23" y2="12"/><line x1="4.22" y1="19.78" x2="5.64" y2="18.36"/><line x1="18.36" y1="5.64" x2="19.78" y2="4.22"/></svg></button></span></div><ul id=menu><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/post/ title=Posts><span>Posts</span></a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/ title=Tags><span>Tags</span></a></li><li><a href=https://home.vollink.com/ title=home.vollink.com><span>home.vollink.com</span></a></li></ul></nav></header><main class=main><article class=post-single><header class=post-header><div class=breadcrumbs><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/>Home</a> » <a href=https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/>In China</a></div><h1 class=post-title>Getting there is NOT half the fun</h1><div class=post-meta><span title="2007-10-15 12:00:00 +0800 +0800">15 Oct 2007</span> · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink</div></header><div class=post-content><p>October 14</p><p>Zhong Guan Cun District, Beijing</p><p>3:50. Really? No, can’t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about.</p><p>I’m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end.</p><p>I found an English speaking news channel on television. I love watching news from places where I’m not from. It seems like a long format news station (much like a news magazine). The perspective is not nearly as anti-American as American news is anti-Everyone_Else. It really struck me as to the difference in news styles. It was more like the BBC. It was more like, well, news.</p><p>My head is fuzzy, but I don’t feel tired yet. So I take a shower.</p><p>I have to stop here, and say that – as you can tell, I’ve not felt very -positive about my experiences so far – this shower in my hotel room is -really, really nice. It has a double shower head switchable to a -hand-held shower head. It just feels nice. The water pressure is really -strong, too.</p><p>I go down to eat the hotel breakfast:</p><ul><li>2 steamed buns with different fillings</li><li>2 pieces of “baked bacon”</li><li>1 Fairly McDonald’s style potato cake (they call it potato pie)</li><li>1 piece of very British tasting sausage</li><li>1 Hard Boiled brown egg</li><li>1 French style croissant</li></ul><p>There’s another American here that I’m supposed to be able to meet up with, -and at 10 in the morning I call him up. Of course, he’s younger than me -so he’s sleeping, and says he’ll call me back later.</p><p>This is the point where the jet lag really starts bugging me. I’m all -restless, but tired too. I start to watch some DVDs that I took with me -(there’s a DVD player in my room). About 1pm, I’m totally annoyed that -I didn’t get a call back, and decide to go see what I can find.</p><p>I’ll start by simply saying that I walked in the wrong direction. -I didn’t know it then. I did find a 7-11, a McDonalds, someplace called -Big Pizza, and a Dairy Queen - all along a road that was so wide it had -pedestrian bridges across it at regular intervals. I totally didn’t -bring the camera (should have).</p><p>On the way back to the Hotel, I stopped by the 7-11 and bought a can of -Pringles, some Laundry Soap and a liter of “Coke Light”. When I got back -here, I puttered around a little, drank some Coke Light, ate half the -Pringles, cleaned my dirty clothes (not much, but wanted to figure out -how the machine worked) - it’s a “Washer / Dryer”, and all of the -instructions are in Chinese, so I sort of guessed, and ended up with -clean dry clothes two hours later.</p><p>I ate some Ramen noodle type thing for Dinner (the hotel had a few items -that they started me off with - including tea bags and bottled water). -About 9PM, the other American called me back, and told me that he had -fallen back to sleep, and didn’t wake up until 2, and that he had tried -calling then. We made arrangements to meet up in the morning.</p><p>Tired and fuzzy, and having taken no useful pictures… I went to bed. -Tomorrow is the first day at work.</p></div><footer class=post-footer><ul class=post-tags><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/blog/>blog</a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/in-china/>in-china</a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/history/>history</a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/work/>work</a></li></ul><div class=share-buttons><a target=_blank rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-label="share Getting there is NOT half the fun on twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?text=Getting%20there%20is%20NOT%20half%20the%20fun&url=https%3a%2f%2fblog.vollink.com%2fin-china%2f2007%2f10%2fgetting-there-is-not-half-the-fun%2f&hashtags=blog%2cin-china%2chistory%2cwork"><svg viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M449.446.0C483.971.0 512 28.03 512 62.554v386.892C512 483.97 483.97 512 449.446 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It just wasn’t fun. 13 hours chasing the sun the whole way, and really not being able to catch any sleep. 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It just wasn’t fun. 13 hours chasing the sun the whole way, and really not being able to catch any sleep. I was in a middle seat of a 747 - row 60 (only two rows from the absolute back), and even with my noise canceling headphones in, there was just too much light, and too much going on."><meta property="og:type" content="article"><meta property="og:url" content="https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/"><meta property="article:section" content="in-china"><meta property="article:published_time" content="2007-10-14T04:00:00+08:00"><meta property="article:modified_time" content="2007-10-14T04:00:00+08:00"><meta property="og:site_name" content="On My Mind..."><meta name=twitter:card content="summary"><meta name=twitter:title content="Getting there is NOT half the fun"><meta name=twitter:description content="October 12 Minneapolis, MN, USA +So, I’m in China for the next few months, and getting there is not half the fun. +Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t an unpleasant flight - as flights go. It just wasn’t fun. 13 hours chasing the sun the whole way, and really not being able to catch any sleep. I was in a middle seat of a 747 - row 60 (only two rows from the absolute back), and even with my noise canceling headphones in, there was just too much light, and too much going on."><script type=application/ld+json>{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"In China","item":"https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Getting there is NOT half the fun","item":"https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/"}]}</script><script type=application/ld+json>{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"Getting there is NOT half the fun","name":"Getting there is NOT half the fun","description":"October 12 Minneapolis, MN, USA\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m in China for the next few months, and getting there is not half the fun.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t an unpleasant flight - as flights go. It just wasn\u0026rsquo;t fun. 13 hours chasing the sun the whole way, and really not being able to catch any sleep. I was in a middle seat of a 747 - row 60 (only two rows from the absolute back), and even with my noise canceling headphones in, there was just too much light, and too much going on.","keywords":["blog","in-china","history","work"],"articleBody":"October 12 Minneapolis, MN, USA\nSo, I’m in China for the next few months, and getting there is not half the fun.\nDon’t get me wrong, it wasn’t an unpleasant flight - as flights go. It just wasn’t fun. 13 hours chasing the sun the whole way, and really not being able to catch any sleep. I was in a middle seat of a 747 - row 60 (only two rows from the absolute back), and even with my noise canceling headphones in, there was just too much light, and too much going on. Drink service every 90 to 120 minutes or so.\nI was between two very nice women, Jennifer and Gretchen. Both of them were flying with people who had been given upgrades to business class. Jennifer was very friendly, and told me about her children and about her friend, who is an Ex-Pat on year two of her assignment. Gretchen was less sharing, but works for “the University†as some sort of Foreign Programs coordinator.\nI have an iPod, and had loaded several movies on it, so I watched some, but kept having to pause it for interruptions anyway. One of the interruptions occurred when the in-flight movie suddenly shut-off, and both Jennifer and Gretchen commented on how obnoxious it was.\nFirst Meal - another iPod movie on pause. “Our selections for this meal are Steak or Curry Chicken,†on the PA. 20 minutes later (remember, row 60)… only Curry Chicken left. It sort of worked out. There was so much curry smell in the air, the steak would have tasted like curry. It wasn’t bad for airline food, but it wasn’t “good†either.\nOctober 13 Flying Over North East Asia\nOn two of my leg stretching walks around the cabin - I took some pictures out one of the massive exit door windows. One of those - maybe two and a half hours out of landing, I got a picture of what looked like a forest fire, except on what basically looked like dark brown desert.\nI give up on movies after two and a half, and finally decide maybe I’ll try to sleep for real. 10 minutes later, snack time is announced. Chinese noodle bowl (pretty much Ramen Noodles with a few “actual†vegetables). After snack, I tried to snooze a little, and then more in flight movie problems made everyone restless.\nI slept for about 15 minutes. Pure exhaustion.\nMeal two (also lunch). Choices this time was a Turkey and Cheese on a Pretzel roll, or some sort of Chicken and Noodle thing. I got my choice, and … the Turkey and Pretzel roll were fine, but the Cheese was really greasy making the whole meal hard to stomach.\nI slept another 5 minutes - I think - then the descent starts.\n","wordCount":"468","inLanguage":"en","datePublished":"2007-10-14T04:00:00+08:00","dateModified":"2007-10-14T04:00:00+08:00","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Gary Allen Vollink"},"mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/2007/10/getting-there-is-not-half-the-fun/"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"On My Mind...","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://blog.vollink.com/favicon.ico"}}}</script></head><body id=top><script>localStorage.getItem("pref-theme")==="dark"?document.body.classList.add("dark"):localStorage.getItem("pref-theme")==="light"?document.body.classList.remove("dark"):window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme: dark)").matches&&document.body.classList.add("dark")</script><header class=header><nav class=nav><div class=logo><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/ accesskey=h title="Home (Alt + H)"><img src=https://blog.vollink.com/AllenWrench.gif alt=logo aria-label=logo height=35>Home</a> +<span class=logo-switches><button id=theme-toggle accesskey=t title="(Alt + T)"><svg id="moon" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentcolor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><path d="M21 12.79A9 9 0 1111.21 3 7 7 0 0021 12.79z"/></svg><svg id="sun" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentcolor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><circle cx="12" cy="12" r="5"/><line x1="12" y1="1" x2="12" y2="3"/><line x1="12" y1="21" x2="12" y2="23"/><line x1="4.22" y1="4.22" x2="5.64" y2="5.64"/><line x1="18.36" y1="18.36" x2="19.78" y2="19.78"/><line x1="1" y1="12" x2="3" y2="12"/><line x1="21" y1="12" x2="23" y2="12"/><line x1="4.22" y1="19.78" x2="5.64" y2="18.36"/><line x1="18.36" y1="5.64" x2="19.78" y2="4.22"/></svg></button></span></div><ul id=menu><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/post/ title=Posts><span>Posts</span></a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/ title=Tags><span>Tags</span></a></li><li><a href=https://home.vollink.com/ title=home.vollink.com><span>home.vollink.com</span></a></li></ul></nav></header><main class=main><article class=post-single><header class=post-header><div class=breadcrumbs><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/>Home</a> » <a href=https://blog.vollink.com/in-china/>In China</a></div><h1 class=post-title>Getting there is NOT half the fun</h1><div class=post-meta><span title="2007-10-14 04:00:00 +0800 +0800">14 Oct 2007</span> · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink</div></header><div class=toc><details><summary accesskey=c title="(Alt + C)"><span class=details>Table of Contents</span></summary><div class=inner><ul><li><a href=#october-12 aria-label="October 12">October 12</a></li><li><a href=#october-13 aria-label="October 13">October 13</a></li></ul></div></details></div><div class=post-content><h2 id=october-12>October 12<a hidden class=anchor aria-hidden=true href=#october-12>#</a></h2><p>Minneapolis, MN, USA</p><p>So, I’m in China for the next few months, and getting there is not half the fun.</p><p>Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t an unpleasant flight - as flights go. It just wasn’t fun. 13 hours chasing the sun the whole way, and really not being able to catch any sleep. I was in a middle seat of a 747 - row 60 (only two rows from the absolute back), and even with my noise canceling headphones in, there was just too much light, and too much going on. Drink service every 90 to 120 minutes or so.</p><p>I was between two very nice women, Jennifer and Gretchen. Both of them were flying with people who had been given upgrades to business class. Jennifer was very friendly, and told me about her children and about her friend, who is an Ex-Pat on year two of her assignment. Gretchen was less sharing, but works for “the University” as some sort of Foreign Programs coordinator.</p><p>I have an iPod, and had loaded several movies on it, so I watched some, but kept having to pause it for interruptions anyway. One of the interruptions occurred when the in-flight movie suddenly shut-off, and both Jennifer and Gretchen commented on how obnoxious it was.</p><p>First Meal - another iPod movie on pause. “Our selections for this meal are Steak or Curry Chicken,” on the PA. 20 minutes later (remember, row 60)… only Curry Chicken left. It sort of worked out. There was so much curry smell in the air, the steak would have tasted like curry. It wasn’t bad for airline food, but it wasn’t “good” either.</p><h2 id=october-13>October 13<a hidden class=anchor aria-hidden=true href=#october-13>#</a></h2><p>Flying Over North East Asia</p><p>On two of my leg stretching walks around the cabin - I took some pictures out one of the massive exit door windows. One of those - maybe two and a half hours out of landing, I got a picture of what looked like a forest fire, except on what basically looked like dark brown desert.</p><p>I give up on movies after two and a half, and finally decide maybe I’ll try to sleep for real. 10 minutes later, snack time is announced. Chinese noodle bowl (pretty much Ramen Noodles with a few “actual” vegetables). After snack, I tried to snooze a little, and then more in flight movie problems made everyone restless.</p><p>I slept for about 15 minutes. Pure exhaustion.</p><p>Meal two (also lunch). Choices this time was a Turkey and Cheese on a Pretzel roll, or some sort of Chicken and Noodle thing. I got my choice, and … the Turkey and Pretzel roll were fine, but the Cheese was really greasy making the whole meal hard to stomach.</p><p>I slept another 5 minutes - I think - then the descent starts.</p></div><footer class=post-footer><ul class=post-tags><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/blog/>blog</a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/in-china/>in-china</a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/history/>history</a></li><li><a href=https://blog.vollink.com/tags/work/>work</a></li></ul><div class=share-buttons><a target=_blank rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-label="share Getting there is NOT half the fun on twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?text=Getting%20there%20is%20NOT%20half%20the%20fun&url=https%3a%2f%2fblog.vollink.com%2fin-china%2f2007%2f10%2fgetting-there-is-not-half-the-fun%2f&hashtags=blog%2cin-china%2chistory%2cwork"><svg viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M449.446.0C483.971.0 512 28.03 512 62.554v386.892C512 483.97 483.97 512 449.446 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