Sunday, December 28, 2008

"Meri Kurisumasu"

That would be Japanese for Merry Christmas. An appropriate title for this blog entry, as I spent the bulk of Christmas Day in a large shiny tube hurling thru the atmosphere towards the land of the Rising Sun.

I actually did not mind having to work the holiday, because I was still able to spend Christmas Eve with my mom and ladyfriend and for the past 10 years I have worked Christmas Day, so I guess I am just used to it.

I was lucky to have a great crew on my flight over to Tokyo. My friend Jay was onboard. We have been friends since 2001, but this was the first time we got to fly together. The rest of the crew were new to me, but everyone was festive and brought gifts and snacks for all. I brought hummus and crackers for everyone.

Our flying time over was 13 and a half hours, and it's daylight the whole way. Kind of a needy crowd, perhaps they were infrequent holiday travelers. Normally the people sleep most of the way (we shut the window shades shortly after departure... sort of subliminal sleeping suggestions).

Tokyo was cold and windy. My friend Jay wanted to slam-click (airline language for stay in his room and sleep) but I insisted we get out and do a little walking around. We decided to skip going into town because it was so cold, and instead went with a few other crew members to the Aeon Mall, nearby. I have always wanted to go to the Daiso Store (where everything is 100 yen, sort of like a Dollar Store here). When we got to the mall, this Russian sounding gentleman, who kind of looked like a mobster, came up to us and put his hand on our co-worker Peter's shoulder, and asked for a light for his cigarette. Being Americans, we are into our personal space, and being flight attendants, we hate for people to touch us, so we backed off from this guy pretty fast. He and his Russian mobster friend followed us into the Daiso Store though, so we hung out in the knife section in case they wanted to rumble. Perhaps our threatening body language sent a clear message that we did not want to be messed with, because they left us alone after that.



I got a grey ceramic cat figurine for my ladyfriend Kirsten, and a countdown timer and a keychain flashlight for work. I wanted the countdown timer because people are always asking me how much longer... how much longer til we land? I was sad to learn that the timer only went to 1 hour, so there is 100 yen I will never see again.

We finished up at Daiso and went to Justco, the supermarket, where I got some seaweed rice crackers and peanuts and then caught the shuttle bus back to the hotel. The basement of the hotel has a cafeteria just for airline crew, so we went there and had a few beers and dinner. Jay suggested the Magic Salmon, which is served on a skillet with cabbage and sprouts. It was very good. We ran into a few people from the later flight and visited with them. Around 9pm, I went back to the room and went to sleep, because at this point I had been up for over 24 hours and I was tired.



The coolest thing about the room is the toilet. Every time I see a Japanese toilet I think of my friend Ingrid. When she went to Japan, she fell in love with the toilets, so much so that it got a mention in their Christmas card. Without getting to specific, these toilets can "hose you off" after you are done with your business.


I woke up early the next morning, at like 5:30am, and watched a Netflix movie I brought along, The Time Machine. Then I went downstairs to the fitness center to work out and stopped at the cafeteria to visit with Jay while he had breakfast. Our pick up was at 11:30am and we headed out for the airport. It was still very cold and very very windy. Windy days are the one big downer about wearing hearing aids, because you hear the wind blowing so loudly.

We were full coming home, just like our flight over. I was hoping there would be a Japanese style entree left in first class, but the passengers nabbed them all up. Since we fly into the night on the return leg, most people slept, which left us with a lot of down time. One of our three First Officers, Mike, spent his break burning CD's from his vast collection of iTunes, and he was kind enough to make a few CD's for me. We had time for some picture taking as well :)






I joked with Jay that he can retire now, since he has achieved his lifelong goal of working the Duty Free cart with me.
I slept like a log on my break in the bunks. Normally I never sleep, but I laid down and the next thing I know it is two hours later and they are calling us in the bunks to wake up.
Our arrival time happened to coincide with a major thunderstorm over the airport, so we circled over Northern Texas and Southern Oklahoma for over an hour before we landed. Our flight home was scheduled for just under 11 hours, but we blocked in with 12 and half, so we picked up some time, which I was happy to get since I am over my guarantee. Anything over 70 hours is paid at an incentive rate, which is a little bit higher.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Not so much fun in London

Just returned from my scheduled trip to London on Sunday night. The trip was a challenge from the beginning. We were late to depart off the gate on Friday with a mechanical and we had Captain Redneck who loved to make announcements and was almost too informative to the point the passengers were ready to throw their shoes at him. They finally fix the oil leak and we push back from the gate and are taking our turn onto the runway, when we get a call that some bags were loaded on our plane for passengers who did not board, so they had to be pulled, and thus we had to go back to the gate yet again. We waited for about 30 minutes for a gate to open up that could accommodate a plane of our size, and then when we parked, we had burned too much fuel, so we had to be refueled and given another maintenance check before heading over the pond.

We got to the hotel about two hours later than normal, about 1:30pm UK time. I took two of the girls with me to Sainsbury, a local supermarket, and then made my obligatory visit to get my friends Hunter and Terry their Remegel antacid from Boots. I finally laid my head down around 3:30pm and slept until 6pm. My friend Leatha was supposed to be working the trip as well, but she ended up getting sick, so I decided to scrap our plans for dinner and the theater.

I went down to the crew room to put in my bids and check my emails and saw my friend Jan who was laying over as well, and we visited for a while before I decided to go get some food. The pizza place near Kensington Park was closed that I go to sometimes (who closes at 9pm on a Saturday night?) so I ended up getting a chicken sandwich from Burger King (I am almost ashamed to admit it) before heading back to the hotel where I had a date with ambien.

Our flight home the next day was torturous, and it took us over 11 hours gate to gate. We had a granola family in coach that was upset their Lactose-free Vegetarian meals were not catered, and that all I had was regular Vegetarian meals. They later had their two year old running around without a diaper or bottoms on, so that should give you some insight into the quality of people they were!

Then with about 45 minutes to go, the Captain informed us he had given the wrong landing time, and we thought we still had an hour and 15 minutes, so I had to serve 191 pizzas rather hastily, but it got done with time to spare.

I did get to see the new A380 pull up to a gate in London. It made me realize I would rather eat my own foot than fly on a plane with 600 plus other people.


Aloha!

So after the monsoons from my last Hawaii trip, I decided to give it another try. This time, the weather was actually quite pleasant so it turned out to be a fine trip. The crew I flew with was real nice and we all went to a great restaurant for dinner the night we arrived called Chuck's Cellar (http://www.restaurantswaikiki.com/ChucksCellar.htm). Our purser, Ric, had been there before and said it was a great place to eat. They have an early bird special (not a problem for the crew as they were "older") with a fixed menu. You get a choice of entree and they have a great soup and salad bar. Live entertainment is also a staple of this joint too. I had the mahi-mahi and a baked potato.

After dinner we strolled along Waikiki back to the hotel. It was quite a difference from the week before when the place was almost deserted because of all the rain.


I went back to the room and wrote out a few postcards before turning in.

The next day, I went down to the International Village to do a little shopping and then met Judy, another one of my co-workers for lunch at the Pacific Beach hotel. They have a great restaurant that sits in front of a two story aquarium and during lunch time, a diver goes into the tank to feed the fish and rays. http://www.pacificbeachhotel.com/Content.aspx?path=/ServicesAttractions/TheOceanarium. The tank holds over 280,000 gallons of water. When we left, we got to see a little display of the 12 days of Christmas (Hawaiian style) made of frosting.


I wanted to head over a shop near the hotel called Del Sol, which sells shirts that change color in the sunlight, but they were closed for construction, although they did not appear to be doing any construction at the time, so I am not sure what that was about.
I went back to the hotel and tried to take a nap before flying home, but could not fall asleep. I ended up watching Wall-e on my laptop, and then went down to the Fossil store to get my watch band replaced and then walked down to Diamond Head before getting ready for pick up. Arriving back home to below freezing temperatures was less than ideal.

Hurricane in Honolulu

I took my sister Jennie on a layover with me to Honolulu last week. It was my Christmas present to her. Normally, getting to and from Hawaii is hard on an employee pass because the flights are always full, but I guess there is a calm before the storm so to speak, and the loads were quite decent.

The crew was pretty nice and before we left for Honolulu, the Captain let her sit in his seat in the cockpit, but she was afraid to touch anything. My sister must have good non-rev karma because she got a seat in first on the way out. Given that the flight is over 8 hours, I was glad she could be comfortable. The purser and the other aisle flight attendant wined and dined her, to the point that she got a little upset stomach even. While she was enjoying the good life, I was back slaving in coach selling sandwiches and chips for $10 a pop.


We landed in Honolulu and were immediately transformed by the tropical air (or perhaps it was more gratitude for not being in the 30 degree weather we left behind back home). One of the ladies on the crew, Suzanne, had a favorite sushi place she liked to go to, where you could get all the made to order sushi you wanted for $20. We had planned to join her and some of the other crewmembers, but when we got to the hotel, we learned the owner had closed up and went home to Japan for the holidays.

We joined Cindy, Suzanne, and Sonia by the pool with the pilots from the earlier trip and had some wine and then went to the restaurant at the hotel for a quick dinner before retiring. Jennie had lobster rolls and I had calamari and a Kona Pale Ale.



After dinner we walked along Waikiki down to one of the many ABC Stores so Jennie could do a little souvenir shopping.


We wanted to hit Pearl Harbor in the morning and so we arranged for a shuttle to take us, as it was cheaper than a cab, but faster than taking the city bus. Since our body clocks were four hours ahead, we figured we could make the 7:30am opening at Pearl Harbor no problem and arranged a 5:45am wake up call (9:45am body time). We both slept like logs.
Things went downhill rather fast when we woke up the next morning to see intense wind and driving rain outside. It reminded me of when a hurricane would come ashore when I lived in Florida. Still we would not let the weather get us down and we departed the hotel at 6:45am for Pearl Harbor. If we knew at the time the island of Oahu was experiencing massive power outages, flooding, landslides, and traffic accidents, we might have opted to stay in.
I brought an umbrella, thinking that would keep us dry, but when we got to Pearl Harbor, we had to stand outside in the driving rain and it was like someone was throwing buckets of water on us or spraying us with a hose. We were soaked to the bone. The Park Service finally let us all wait inside the building under cover, where we found a lady selling ponchos. Would have been nice to have those sooner.




Because of the weather, the Navy was not running the boat out to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, so we were only able to tour the museum and see the short film about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Finally, due to rain and flooding, they closed the entire complex, and Jennie and I were forced to wait under a little covered hut for our shuttle back to the hotel. It took Elmer the driver forever to get to us due to weather, and we watched as tour group after tour group left the complex. Finally he showed up, but then we had to go to the airport first and pick up some folks before heading back to Waikiki.
Once we made it back to the hotel, we changed out of our soaked clothes. My socks were so wet, I had to wring them out and hang them out to dry. It was still raining so hard. Jennie gave up and got back into bed and quickly passed out. I was a little worried that the bad weather would somehow affect our flight out that night and had visions of something happening and Jennie not getting on, and me leaving her stranded in Honolulu (I think our mother would probably kill me), so I went down to the lobby and used the free wifi to check and make sure everything was ok.





Finally, a few hours later, there was a break in the weather, so we got back out and walked along Waikiki and the beach area. We would have liked to have gone to Diamond Head, but the weather was too iffy and we did not want to get stuck again.







We had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's outside our hotel (I get a little discount) and then went back up to rest and get ready for our flight home.
Suzanne, from our crew surprised us each with a real flower lei and Jennie lucked out and scored one of the crew rest seats going home (going to Hawaii the flight is over 8 hours so we have four seats that are designated for us, that have a better recline, foot rest, isolated cabin, etc., however coming from Hawaii the flight is blocked at under 8 hours so those seats are up for grabs, but the nice HNL ground staff blocked the seat for her). Jennie wanted an ambien after take off, and quickly passed out, but had a super hard time waking up when we landed the next morning in Dallas. It kind of made her loopy the whole next day.



We had sad news upon arrival with a message from my dad that our Grandpa Pete had passed away earlier that morning. He had been in declining health for a long time and at 96 his body had just given out. :-(

Monday, December 8, 2008

London

My first trip this month was a trip to London. My airline offers two daily flights from my base to London Heathrow, and this trip was the later one. We left at 7:30pm and flew all night arriving into the UK at 10:30am. We weren't full so it made things a little more relaxed. We were at the layover hotel by about 11:30 and I was asleep by noon. I had planned to sleep for just 3 hours, but I ignored my 3:00pm wake up call. When I did wake up, it was dark, but was only just after 5pm.

I cleaned up and went down to Sainsbury to get some bath and shower stuff I liked called Original Source (www.originalsource.co.uk). I had gotten addicted to these products when my friends Carla and Steven were living in Scotland and I would go and visit. Now they are living in the states again, so I have no suppliers. Original Source has a whole line of new products out now so I wanted to stock up. After leaving Sainsbury, I went over to Boots and got some antacid products called Remegel for my friend Terry, one of the guys I play cards with every month (he eats them like they are candy, but swears by them). After Boots, I headed to Waitrose for some snack items for breakfast and then headed back to the hotel to drop the stuff off.

I wanted to go see a musical I had been hearing about called Avenue Q (http://www.avenueqthemusical.co.uk/). It's kind of like an adult version of Sesame Street. I took the Picadilly line down to Leicster Square and went over to the box office at the Noel Coward Theatre, where the show was playing. The bad news was that the reserved seats were sold out, but they had a will call cancellation for one seat and it was in the front row. I scored the seat for twenty pounds (which with the falling British Pound is now down to about $30). The show did not actually start until 8:30pm, so I killed some time and went over to a Cyber Cafe and checked my email and Facebook page, and then went to Pret A Manger, a chain of delicatessens in the UK, and had dinner before heading back to the theatre.

The cast is comprised of puppets and live actors and they sang some great songs like "Everyones a little bit racist" and "The Internet is great....for porn!". It was so hilarious. The whole audience was roaring with laughter.

All the shows in the West End kind of let out at the same time, so the area was really hopping at 11:00pm when I left the threatre. There was a bomb threat on the Underground, so London Transport had closed the Picadilly Line temporarily. When it finally reopened, the tube was packed, and I had to wait for about another 30 minutes before I could finally get on a train. I made it back to the hotel a little after midnight and went to sleep by 1am (which really is only 7pm on my body clock).

Pick up was at 10:50am the next morning. London is the once place where we are required to follow the liquids/gels/aerosols exemption that passengers have to follow, so I had to check my rollerboard as I was prohibited from taking it on the plane. We go thru a special crew clearance lane on the tarmac and don't actually go in the terminal, so after we cleared security, airline personnel tagged my bag and I just left it right next to the right landing gear of the plane. Kind of an uneasy feeling, wondering if I would ever see my bag again.



10 hours and 17 minutes after we left the UK, we touched down at home and miracle of miracles, my bag was waiting for me in the Customs Hall and only one of the bottles of shower gel had actually opened and only leaked a little bit, so it was worth it.