Escape from Normal

Putting on the Ritz

lanna — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:47:00 GMT

I have some photos posted of my hotel room at the Ritz. We got there around 2am. After a day and a half of traveling, I took advantage of the luxurious shower and then I scrubbed all of my clothes down in the sink with the fancy Ritz Carlton soap and hung them to dry in the closet while I slept like a pampered baby.

I never got my morning wake-up call, unless you count the slightly irritated call from my travel buddies when I was an hour late.

Day 1ish to 2ish, Los Angelos to Singapore

lanna — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:31:00 GMT

We arrived in Los Angelos with several hours to kill before Singapore Air opened up shop for check-in. I got some wacky Korean noodle soup thing and some knock-off version of a frappucino. Oh, breakfast. I also called mom from a different time zone, one of the last ones where I was calling from the past instead of the future. Rose Mary and I then spent the remaining time pre-check-in trying to get our work laptops operating.

Several hours of fiddling around in LAX International, Singapore Air opened up for business. This is where I found out that we were flying the rest of the way from L.A. to Chennai via business class. And, wowza!

I’ve never, ever flown business class before, so excuse me for a second while I go into finite detail.

Business-class gets their own check-in line so we didn’t have to mix with the little people. We were then immediately carted off in a little white bus to a big, plush tent somewhere on the tarmac to await our flight. This place was fancy! Black leather armchairs, white table cloths, individual side tables and personal low-light lamps. Everyone was wearing their best little business-class outfit. Food and drinks (alcoholic and non-) are completely complimentary, so you can just munch and munch until the cows come home and then munch some more because you ain’t no farmer. Since it was breakfast time, there were croissants, Danishes, cereals with milk - the usual. Since we were all international people of the world, there were also various types of ramon noodles and sushi. Of course, there was free wi-fi, but there were also a row of computer desks that you can hang out in to do a bit of internet surfing. Everyone managed their voice in respectfully hushed business-class tones, conducting business over cellphones and clinking drinks. No crying babies or whiney kids throwing temper tantrums. Throughout, soft music plays in the background. You can just kick back on one of the leather couches, read a complimentary newspaper or magazine, and await the lady coming by ringing a bell to announce it is time for you to depart for your flight. Then a bus picks you up from the business-class tent and drops you off briefly amongst the common folk, before, once again, you are the first people let onto the airplane.

And the good times had just begun.

From LA to Singapore, we flew a Boeing 747 double-decker. I was on the top floor with a window seat. And what a seat! And how to describe it? Spacious, comfortable, completely customizable. A silk pillow with a blanket was resting on the seat, awaiting my arrival. Next to my seat was my own hamper-type thing to store my travel gear out of the way as I needed it over the next 20 hour flight. It took me almost the full flight to figure out how exactly the seat and the in-flight entertainment thing worked exactly. The seats can go allllll the way back, so that you are practically horizontal, if that is your desire. But they are constructed in such a way as to provide almost no visible impact to the people behind you. I also had my own personal LCD screen. I could just plug in my headphones to the seat armrest, drag out the remote and watch a bevy of free movies from all over the world. Or I could listen to a large selection of music, which I never bothered with. Or watch a live simulation of your plane’s progress (with outside weather, remaining time to destination, etc, etc). Or I could turn the remote into a game controller and play Mario Brothers. Whatever catches one's fancy. I watched a bunch of movies that I wouldn’t want to pay for but still had an inclination to see (The Number 23, comes to mind, which, thank goodness I did not pay for. The rest were a blur of fluffy romantic comedies.)

Time becomes a ridiculous unit of measurement as you fly through multiple time zones and international date lines, chasing the sun around the globe. I slept when I wished and I did wish so often.

Little Singapore Girls came around, offering “Vitamin C” in a glass, carts of complimentary reading material, packaged sleeping masks, slippers, and regular courses of meals. They would always wake me up to be fed. I had all-vegetarian meals, of course, which translated to a mix of bird feed and Indian food.

All-in-all, I’ve never had a more pleasurable flight on a plane before. If you ignore the severely dry nostrils and swollen feet.

After a very brief layover in Tokyo (again with the separate business-class waiting room with posh bathrooms, complimentary food, and entertaining beer dispensing vending machines), we found ourselves at the Ritz Carlton in Singapore.

I could get used to this.

Day 1ish, San Antonio to LA

lanna — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:48:00 GMT

The malaria pills give me insomnia which is a gift when you have no time to sleep. It seems that I spent most of the four weeks preparing for my trip by shopping and the final two days I had to deal with the multiple bags of unopened travel items as a consequence. The day before departure was spent downloading and uploading files, messing about on the computer, being sure that if some Indian pickpocket made off with my passport, I would not be stuck on the side of the road at Mahamallapuram crying into my cup of lassi. By 1:00am, I began emptying my warehouse of pills into little manageable travel sized containers, not realizing that I should have brought every precious ounce of the pepto bismal. From 2:00am to 5:00am, I didn’t take a second to sit down and breathe. I packed, packed, packed like a demon on speed. I was sweating, I was cranky, and I was completely disorganized. Even the Eagle Creek packing cubes that I bought? No time to mess with that crap. It just got tossed into the luggage along with the clothes it was supposed to contain. My plan to fit everything in one bag? There is no such plan.

We arrived at the airport around 6:15am, moderately late for check-in on an 8:30am flight, but still the earliest of my travel group. This was a blessing as all 4 million San Antonio citizens decided to show up at the airport at 6:20am.

I had to pay through the nose to have an extra bag checked-in and paid via my one and only credit card. Oh, the adventures that resulted.

The incompetent excuse of human flesh that was the flight receptionist mis-keyed in my credit card number and, as a result, my card was denied. And some idiot excuse of security apparently built a process in which such credit card denials would result in the airport taking away the credit card from the customer. From me. The flight receptionist took my only credit card away from me as I was headed out on a 6 week international trip to India. Can we take a moment to appreciate the absolute absurdity?

And she was a total incompetent excuse of human flesh, no joke. Her computer told her to take away my credit card and whatever the computer says must be done, well, it must be done. That woman has obviously never watched the Matrix or she would know that we are supposed to overthrow our computer overlords for the greater good of humanity. And so she walked off with my credit card and had it locked up in a safe room behind the desk. She refused to help any further.

I then spent 15 minutes with another woman at the desk trying to get my credit card back. She called in to check about my credit card, but I think the multiple menu prompts finally got to her and she returned my credit card to me without explanation.

A nerve-racking bit of entertainment, all in all.

I don’t know why, but we flew from San Antonio to Los Angelos for 3 hours in a Canadian-operated plane. I don’t know if I’m allowed to judge all Canadian planes just by this one, but I like to make broad generalizations. Thus, I must unequivocally state that all Canadian planes are tiny. They are built in miniature, like children toys. I bet the Canadians also manufacture clown cars. And while we all try to fit inside of them, the Canadians just sit back and laugh and laugh and laugh.

I slept all the way into Los Angelos.

And so, I’ll post what I’ve written for now. Way more very soon.

Timed

lanna — Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:51:00 GMT

I have 11 minutes and 54 seconds to announce "Greetings from India!"

I'm going to try to find the time to provide a long rambling post about my three days of travel, one day in Singapore, and my arrival in India.

Let me just say that everything is going great, I am safe, and I've set up home in my hotel. No terrible culture shock quite yet, but I think that stuff tends to set in after the first week and wear off over two weeks. So, yay. Hopefully I'll be past the culture shock and travelers diarrehea by the time I go wandering through India on my own.

I'm trying to gauge how wise or unwise it is to load my picures using the business laptop, and am currently feeling uncomfortable with the idea. I'll investigate my options and try to see if I can share a few photos.

Anyways, we'll be working pretty hard here. Our current schedule will probably be noon to 9:30pm. I'm getting up still earlier in the morning to get ready and get some work done on the laptop, so... not much to report about India except: work, work, work.

More soon!