So here we are, readers, in January 2002, just over halfway to Tokyo and still over Amurrica (well just about to leave the v top of Alaska) and do a slight left hand turn and down the other side … always think this bit goes faster mentally, as it must be downhill….
Feel fine thank you … eating and drinking in moderation…. had the Japanese Bento Box lunch which I always like, as it comes from some posh Jap restau in NY and is certainly not attempted by UA caterers. All sortsa funny looking things which probably died unnatural deaths and now reposing in small china dishes and then some nice teriyaki salmon and small bottle of warm sake, which I am liking much and always forgetting to bring back. My chopsticks skills are good (mainly due to the v first time I went to China, in 1978, we had chopsticks for 3 weeks straight and no sign of a knife and fork, so it was sink or swim (or starve). So now I can still pick up small wet marbles and even tofu, which is prone to break up on a fork, let alone on two bits of twig. I had lunch many times in Chengdu airport with the Chinese agents, after our visits to Tibet and their real specialty there was burn your lips off tofu and I could pick it up without drama and they were impressed every time. Like riding a bike, you don’t forget.
My United Airlines mate Chief Purser Valerie is here – looks fabulous for a 58 yr old woman who has been flying since she was 21 .. threw her arms around me in the doorway, when I was almost the last to board (as refuse to shuffle along in line) and she was having a panic that I was a no-show. She did NOT offer me one of the at least 10 empty seats in F, but I am doing OK as have the aisle of a three in Biz and a comatose Japanese on the other side, so we are all peaceful. Load is mainly Japanese. I notice that given the choice at lunch the, Japanese ate western and the forangs ate Japanese.
Horrible Indian pax diagonally across the aisle and he didn’t get the Japanese meal and wanted one and complained to Valerie that I must be UA crew and he wasn’t happy. Loved the way she went to get her print-out of everyone on board and she rather firmly informed him that I was a tres frequent passenger on UA and thus well known to many crews and had flown over 100,000 miles with them and that entitled me to special treatment … HA .. (well he probably flown that anyway over the years but I don’t think UA recognises that). Only one other crew member I knew from my UA/JFK days and she was a dingbat then and is a dingbat now ! Staggered off the a/c with 2 bottles of champagne, which will be used at my birthday party in Cambodia.
Saw some of me BA mates in JFK and up to the lounge to collect English newspapers and shock horror, these was none. Interviewed a cheerful I should think Mexican catering guy, who offered me anything as I was the only one there, BA having dept earlier and I said what I really wanted was the English newspaper and he rummaged around in the kitchen (at my req, as I have done that in other outposts of the BA empire and quite happily put together a once read paper on the floor of various BA kitchens, having no shame whatsoever) but to no avail. But then he thought they wud have in the Concorde Lounge, so I says I can’t go there but YOU can and off he trotted and back he comes with a nice LON Times and today’s too, so I was happy and he was overcome with being of service. He may have been watching Manuel I think as his role model. Then ran into an old BA Duty Manager l hadn’t seen in eons and she did this huge double take and let out a scream and pressed the flesh to the face and we did a catch up fast … all the time telling each other how GOOD we looked …which is of course all TOTALLY TRUE, as long as I don’t see a mirror. And Caro/BG, who did I see in the distance and I knew it was him even walking away from me, was the dreadful Spotty Captain Mike Bannister – almost square he is now… even his walk says “I am GOD Concorde…”
Had a nice mid flight jumpseat chat with Valerie who brought me up to date with the scene downstairs at UA/JFK … who is dead (several unfortunately, inc a real cheerful guy from Aids last week, which was v sad, as he was a bright light), but one or two who were mentally dead even in my day ! And so we progressed.
Now installed in the Red Carpet Club in Narita, (aka Tokyo Airport) which is HUGE (and as I counted no less than 10 UA widebodied a/c here, so it needs to be …) place full of the road warriors exchanging horror stones about failed upgrades and the like … BOY we frequent flyers are able to bitch almost as much as fit attendants (but we will never catch up with the f/a sisterhood for sure … they are all Olympic gold standard). It is all, of course HI TECH with EVERY seat wired to power up the laptop (it looks like they do a laptop check at the door and if u don’t have one, then u can’t be a REAL passenger and have to go elsewhere…. everyone pounding way like runners in a gym.
Feeling amazingly fit when it’s 0330 at home (and they were forecasting yet more snow … hee hee hee)… but the sun is setting and we shall have 7 hours in the dark and I fear the eyes will close… and then the wonderful clammy and polluted night air of Bangkok will be with me and it should be splendid. Back on very much home turf here, know exactly where to stand, so will be looked at by a ferocious Thai immigration lady with a lot of make up and a very spiffy pushed up peaked cap. I take the cheap regular taxi, called a ‘service taxi’, rather than the twice the price posh ones and I know the route so well, I could drive it myself. The lovely Regent Hotel is waiting. One of my top places to stay, as everything works perfectly and they remember me too, which is always good for the ego. It’s now midnight about 28 hours after leaving JFK so I shall collapse in to a crisply sheeted bed.
timothyvalentinestravels 