h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm sitting in Narita airport departure lounge. They had an inch of snow yesterday, so naturally everything has completely ground to a halt. The Japanese have much more in common with the British than we realise.

Today was already going to last 34 hours for me, given that en route to Newark I would be crossing the international date line. Now it looks like I'm going to feel every one of those 34 hours. Bugger.

The interesting thing about the place is how calm it all is. If there was the kind of backlog there is here in a UK airport, there'd be riots. Here, people calmly queue up in the stifling heat for small complimentary bags of rice crackers. (Why the stifling heat, anyway? It's zero degrees outside, but in here it's like f**king sauna.)

Conclusion: international travel - not all it's cracked up to be.

On the upside, yesterday I ate fugu so fresh it was, I kid you not, TWITCHING ON THE PLATE, and survived. Top stuff.

SoRB

I always thought the Japanese and the British had a lot in common. Island nation and mentality. Not really *getting* the mainland. Ancient traditions. A joy in cheesy stuff. Love to queue. Actually quite insane as a people.

Being a Brit in California I can confidently say that zipping around the globe sucks. Cattle class airline seating especially (I'm 6 foot 3). To me, it's torture. I much prefer roadtrips on a smaller scale. Just went from Southern California to Northern CA to Arizona and back. Wonderful stuff. 3,000 miles on my trusty Honda and 2 gigs worth of photos.

Fugu eh? I always wondered why the hell they sequenced the genome of that thing. Are you now considered a MAN in Japan now?

What does it taste like? Is it good at least? I mean you ARE risking your life here...

Have fun,
Ste

< Narita> Clang!

Clang!



Probably for similar reasons to why the Swedes have darn good central heating. Just because they live in a f**king cold place does not mean they get used to it. So, when inside they make darn sure they are toasty warm.



Because they know that the person who *should* have been on top of getting the runways clear committed sepuku a few hours ago hence their inner anger has been tempered by knowing no-one is going to shirk the responsibility like they would do in Blighty.

< yesterday I ate fugu> And yesterday i was posting on this site why Chemical engineers are risk averse. Top man! Did you get the tingling sensation?

I'm assuming that fugu is a type of sushi?

Yes, Alfster is right that Swedes (and Canadians) have toasty warm interiors - a lot to do with triple-glazing and other proper sorts of insulation and (at least in Canada) relatively inexpensive natural resources for energy.

Newark England or Newark New Jersey?

None of this explains why Canadian airports continue running more or less efficiently in spite of SNOW conditions. Well, except that snow in Japan/UK isn't the constant occurance that it is in Canada, so they are probably less prepared to deal with it.

az

It is blowfish. It has to be prepared by specially trained chefs due to the poison they contain. A good chef can leave a littl poison on the fish so the diner gets a tingle in the mouth. THere are deaths from it every year.

http://japanesefood.about.com/cs/seafoodfish/a/fugublowfish.htm

Newark New Jersey. SoRb will be a 20minute drive from where Kevin Smith filmed Clerks.

How bizarre. Did it actually taste good, SoRB?

I've heard that eating a certain part of a lobster's brain can also be quite poisonous and even cause death.

So one has to wonder if it is the amazing taste of this blowfish that makes people take the risk, or if it's just a sort of 'risk challenge thing'.

Heck, I don't even like raw oysters (though I've quite enjoyed well-prepared sushi). But raw oysters sliming their way down your gullet? Also with the risk of making you terribly sick if they don't happen to be totally fresh.

Thanks for the link, Alfster.


az

I hope you have my kimono

I can't wait for you to come back!!!! The house is looking completely different thanks to My mum and a clever paramedic/plumber .

Oooh and P. has bought a puppy which has pooed all over his new carpet. J. has had to clear it all up because she persuaded him to get it before moving to their new house. Kids are in puppy heaven.

And here I bounce in a righteous rage because Alfster let it slip that you're IN MY COUNTRY(about) NOW, and you didn't even bother to tell me. And I walk in and step in quivering blowfish and puppy poo.

*sigh*

Not quite the scenery for Righteous Outrage. Damn. And I was looking forward to it.

However,(quietly now) since you *didn't* bother to let me know that you'd be here, and I *could* have nabbed a pre-planned flight for under $100 to mitigate your stay in New Jersey with some MoGly sparkle, I bequeath unto you all the essence that *IS* New Jersey. Seriously, though, I hope you don't base your opinion of the whole country on that place. Everything about it is the designated armpit with all it's bacteria and effluvium.

Bon voyage!

Well, he is visitng a chemical plant so your last sentence sounds reasonable.

Alex

New Jersey *is* a chemical plant, Alex.

With an extensive travel history that includes a literal circumnavigation of the globe (13 timezones of which was by air in 3 days) I feel your pain. Flying cattle-class is a special kind of hell. The old cliche of asking someone how their flight was seems retarded to me, but luckily nobody seems to do that in real life. I think they know that they really don't want to know.

I spent a year just outside Chicago, and flew in and out of there for Christmas. There's a city that barely even notices it's buried in several feet of snow. Landing in a blizzard is a fairly interesting experience for the uninitiated. The low cloud cover conceals how far you've descended until all of a sudden you see lights and buildings just a couple hundred feet below you, which makes for a pretty good "Holy f--k!" moment. But then the pilots ruin it by totally failing to skid off the runway and into a refueling truck. They turn the whole thing into something tragically commonplace, which, of course, it is.

That reminds me of a business trip my father took. He was sent from balmy Houston, TX to Mystic, Connecticut (see Mystic Pizza, an early Julia Roberts film, quaint little New England seaport). His flight out was during "The Perfect Storm". 100 year blizzard coasts down the Eastern Seaboard to join with two storms in the Atlantic. He was stuck in the New York airport (I think he was at La Guardia, but it might have been JFK) for nearly 24 hours. That wasn't because of the storm outside though. Flights were arriving and departing fine where he was. He had a stop in Dallas and DFW airport was closed because of a relatively small cold front had dropped 2-3 inches of snow. They had to bring in deicing equipment from another airport farther North.

(And, SoRB, if you ever end up visiting one of the many chemical plants on the Texas Gulf coast, let me know... I know of a nice pub.)

What is this "cattle class" of which you speak? Is it something the poor people do?

Seriously, I can't believe anyone would fly 12 hours economy class - it was bad enough up front in the huge comfy motorised seats with hot and cold running geishas...

And now everyone hates me...



MoG, picture me grovelling in apology (I'm sure you can do that ) and let me say that it simply never occurred to me that someone might make a trip of over a thousand miles simply to meet me. I can't get my cousins to drive their cars 60 miles to my house. I'm in NY/NJ all week, so if you can make Saturday in Manhattan, I'll be here all day, gawking up the big buildings like a complete rube.

And now that really must be all...

SoRB

I'll be working Saturday or I'd give it a shot, SoRB. Some people go back and forth from here to New York all the time, *getting* there is not that big a deal, and there are cheap flights to some of the smaller airports. If you do this again, let me know in advance. I'd pop up for the day, check out an art museum in the afternoon while you're working, meetcha for dinner and catch the late flight back.

We don't think about distance in the same way y'all do. It would be a semi-nutty thing to do, but not completely out of the realm of reasonable. I could enjoy the illusion of being a jet-setter. Have fun!

This is a hoot. http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/q-our-omnipotent-president-q.html

Figured I'd best pop it in here, just in case SoRB gets the urge to voice any outdated opinions regarding our omnipotent president Bush during his visit.

OK, so now I'm sitting in JFK, where, after a week of ridiculously unseasonable clear, warm weather (it's been spring-like all week when I was expecting something a little more, um, arctic), it is now hammering down with rain.

Fortunately, it's rained once or twice in this state within the last ninety years so the airport looks like it can deal with it.

The only fly in my ointment was my company's policy that long haul flights (e.g. England-Japan, Japan-USA) go business class, but "short" flights (e.g. the next one I'm getting, back to Blighty) go economy. Bugger.

Except... I walk up to the British airways lounge desk and present my boarding pass, and do my best to look respectable and really tired (not a stretch, let me tell you, at least not the second one...). "This doesn't give you access to the lounge" says the slightly camp gentleman behind the desk. "Oh, doesn't it? OK." I say, and look a little downcast. He hangs onto it, makes a quick phone call, actually gets up and walks around the desk to look me up and down, *twice*, then comes back and says "This is your lucky day. You're now business class."

RESULT!

Cue two bags of corn chips and quarter of a bottle of free Drambuie. I am f**kin SLEEPING on this flight, ladies and gentlemen.

It's a red-eye, i.e. I spend a whole day awake here, get on a plane about six, which then flys for six hours until I'm just about ready to go to sleep when I find to my horror I've arrived in a country which is just about to welcome a new day. I gained half a day crossing the date line last week, now it's payback time. I got a TARDIS for Christmas, but unfortunately it's a little metal one I hang from my rearview mirror. Which prompts the thought - does the Doctor or his companions get TARDIS-lag?

Now I'm rambling, but so far everything is going well, flight's on time, executive lounge is pleasant and well equipped and not full of Taiwanese boat-people (unlike Narita), so I'm in a happy place.

So, to all a good night. Here's to not flying economy.

SoRB