Ron and Keai's Excellent Chinese Adventure

Now my main reason for going to China was not to actually purchase knock off name brands, but rather to bring a little boy named Keai Sun from Shanghai to Austin. He is 7 years old and was born with a condition called Tetralogy of Fallot, which is a congenital heart defect resulting in low oxygenation of the blood. If left untreated the survival rate is approximately 75% after the first year of life, 60% by four years, 30% by ten years, and 5% by forty years. An organization called the Chinese Agape Foundation has arranged for the donated medical care for Keai in Austin. Keai comes from Shandong province. His mother is deceased, apparently having become affected with "mental disease" after they found out about Keai's condition. He lives with his father and grandparents on a farm where they grow soybeans and sweet potatoes. As in many cases, the parent cannot travel with the child, so Airline Ambassadors (http://www.airlineamb.org/) provides a Flight Attendant escort.

I arrived at the airport a few hours before departure. My English speaking contact was a lady named Vivian. She and Keai and his father would be waiting by my airline's ticket counter. As I approached the seating area, I could see Keai was visibly upset. He was crying and clinging to his father, obviously scared to death. The ground staff at Shanghai had been alerted of our trip and they had blocked two seats in the front row of coach for us. It gave us a little more room since we had no seats in front of us. Vivian, my contact person, had to go to work, so it was just me and Keai and his father.

When it was time to go thru passport control, the Premium Services manager named Barbie Wu came to help us. Keai became hysterical, throwing himself on the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs. Because of his condition, when he goes into a "tet spell" he curls up in a little ball. I guess by nature, Chinese people are very inquisitive and helpful and several people were gathered around us, talking to him, consoling him. Barbie, the agent helping me, told me they were trying to encourage him and tell him that it would be ok. The next thing I know, his father starts hitting him, trying to get him to behave. Almost immediately, three little old Chinese ladies start hitting the dad, trying to make him stop. It was like Chinese Jerry Springer. I could not believe it was happening.

I finally motioned for the father to leave, as I knew we would never get anywhere with him there whomping on his son. A few minutes later, I decided it was now or never, and I scooped him up in my arms, Barbie took all the hand baggage and we made our way to passport control. Keai was kicking and screaming, hitting on me, grabbing onto a pole, you name it. I kept rubbing his back, making a "shhhhh" sound, trying to be calming. About two minutes later, he suddenly gave up and was perfectly calm.


We made it thru passport control with no problem and went to our departure gate. Barbie went and got Keai some chocolate milk tea (which sounds gross). I asked her the word in Chinese for friend, which is phonetically pronounced "shu-shu". Literally it means uncle, but it is a word for someone who is your friend who is older than you.

We boarded early so we had time to get settled, and I took him to the lavatory to "neow-neow" which means to pee. The crew we had taking us back was the same crew that I flew over with so they knew the reason for my trip. They all came over and gave him lots of attention.

Keai was really enthralled with his personal video monitor, which had a channel of cartoons, even though they were in English.

I tried to get him to eat a little, and munched on some snacks, but he really had no interest in eating. Shortly after the meal service, he passed out and slept for the remaining 13 hours of our flight.

When we arrived at Chicago, the Customs and Immigration Hall was chaos. Even though he did not really need it, we requested a wheelchair because it would allow us to jump to the front of the line for clearing passport control. A Flight Service Manager named Keith met our inbound to help with the connection, and Annie and Lani, the two Chinese speakers from our flight, stayed with us as well. The airline had arranged for Annie, who commuted from DFW, to travel on our flight to DFW, to help us out. Unfortunately, the flights to DFW were all delayed because of weather, and it looked like we would miss our Austin connection, so Keith, the FSM, got Keai and I changed to the nonstop to Austin that departed at 10pm. It would not get us into Austin until 1am, but it eliminated the possibility of us being stranded. Annie took Keai to McDonalds to try to get him to eat something while Keith and I worked on getting the tickets changed. We met up in the Crew Lounge after that, and Annie was kind enough to stay with us until her delayed flight to DFW departed at 8pm.

We spent the rest of the time in Chicago playing with some toys I had gotten for him. He liked the Hot Wheels cars and the little wind up airplane, and he taught me how to write Chinese, while I taught him how to write in English. Note his stick figure compared to mine. He also discovered my camera and started taking tons of pictures of me.

He had refused to go to the bathroom since we left Shanghai, so I finally took matters into my own hands and took him to restroom and got him to pee. I then brushed his teeth and noticed he had lots of little black spots of decay, so I made a note to tell the folks in Austin about it so they can possibly arrange some free dental care for him.

We left a few minutes late for Austin, but made up most of the time enroute. We slept most of the way there, as we had been traveling for 24 hours at this point. When we got to Austin, we were presented with a care package that the folks at DFW Flight Service had put together for him (they had sent it along earlier that evening when we determined we would not be going thru Dallas). Keai was thrilled to get more toys. He had commented earlier to Annie that he had never had so many nice things before.

His foster family was waiting for us outside the security checkpoint in Austin. The host dad, Marshall, also speaks Chinese, so I think that will help Keai with his transition. He actually will only be in the states until early October, as the recovery time for his operation is only about a month.

I had planned to stay with my friend Jenny, but since we arrived about two hours later than planned, I just went to a local hotel near the airport. Jenny and her son came to have lunch with me the next day before flying out, so at least I still got to visit with them.

I always said my escort trip with the little three year old, George Owinikoko, to Africa was my favorite trip ever, but I really bonded with this little boy. I hope that my schedule will permit me to take him home in October so we can see each other again.

Shanghai, China

Some pictures from China. This first one is actually the Great Wall as seen from 35,000 feet just south of Beijing.

Shanghai, especially the Pudong area where I stayed, was very modern. Lots of skyscrapers, lots of highways.

The crew that I flew over with took me to Science and Tech, the local market to get authentic "fakes". However, due to the recent Olympics, the police have been cracking down on forgeries so a lot of the vendors did not have anything to sell. A lot of factories were also ordered to be shut down to reduce pollution.

I really wanted a watch. One vendor, Jack, of Jack's Bags and Watches, insisted he did not have any, until one of the ladies on the crew told me I was a "friend" and then Jack took us to a back room and opened a set of drawers with a false bottom. I got an "authentic" Tag Hauer watch for $25, down from $75, but my friend Carla, who is rather well versed in the art of Asian negotiations after three years in Malaysia, said she could have taught me more about calculator negotiations (you always use a calculator to name your price). I also got some Olympic magnets and some DVDs (Seasons 1 & 2 of 30 Rock, and Season 1 of Madmen.

Don't Cry For Me..... Argentina

In the tradition of titling my posts after songs, I thought it was only appropriate to use the famous song from Evita for my trip to Buenos Aires. I really don't have much to post, because the trip is so short, all I did was sleep. We flew 11 hours all night to Buenos Aires, arriving the next morning. There was a pretty grumpy German passenger who was upset about sitting next to a woman with a baby. Whenever we tried to help him, he just started yelling about how no one wants to help him. Then about halfway thru the flight we became very nice. Maybe crossing the equator did something to him, since everything is opposite in the Southern Hemisphere.

I slept most of the day, then went to work out (I am on a health kick since my uniform pants no longer fit me.... down 7 pounds so far!) before flying back out that night. You really have to get your sleep on a 10 hour layover when you have that much flying.

Given that it was a Sunday, there was nothing open. I will be there again on Monday so hopefully I will have some time to explore in the afternoon.

The 11 hour flight home was ok, but we managed to hit some pretty nasty turbulence over the Andes and were really rockin' and rollin' for a while. My aisle partner Kristi had just come back to work after being off for three years with cancer, so it was quite a big deal, and the crew was very happy she was back.

Dust In the Wind

Not really sure how to title a trip to Kansas, so I decided to use the number one hit by the group Kansas. Kind of a stretch I know. Anyway, last week I made a quick trip to Topeka with my ladyfriend Kirsten to visit her Aunt and Uncle. We flew in to Wichita and drove up to Topeka, since apparently being the state capital doesn't equate to having commercial air service.


We spent a day sightseeing in Topeka. One of the first places we stopped was Monroe Elementary school, site of the famous Brown V. Board of Education incident, regarding integration of public schools back during the civil rights movement. The building has been completely restored to it's original condition (although the halls smelled like pee). They had some nice exhibits about the civil rights movement and some great photographs from the time. The one that struck me as the most powerful was a picture of an African American girl walking into school and this white woman behind her, mouth wide open, obviously spewing some racial slur. I would love to know where that white woman is now and what her feelings are about the issue, hoping she changed her mindset.




We also visited the capital where we climbed the dome of the state capital. It was pretty high up. Kirsten was more anxious going up, I was more anxious going down, but it was neat experience and afforded us a great view of downtown Topeka. Inside the capital, I got to walk on the floor of the state senate. I attempted to pass a resolution increasing the signage on the freeway between Wichita and Topeka (which is virtually non-existent.... how do you know where you are going?), but no one was there to vote on it.




We spent the afternoon back at her Aunt and Uncle's house. They live on a lake, so we went out on the pontoon for a relaxing ride.






All in all a quick trip, but a fun couple of days.

London for 17 Pounds Sterling

I don't think that any city is more expensive to visit that London. The British pound blows the dollar out of the water. On my recent layover, I managed to have an enjoyable time for less than 17 pounds.

This was actually an out of base trip via Chicago, much like the Dublin trip last month. We arrived into London Heathrow at about 8am after flying all night. We were surprisingly light, a rarity for the summer travel season, but scary to think about how bad it might get in the fall when travel normally declines. We hit lots of morning commuter traffic on our ride into the city, and we had to wait about 40 minutes for our rooms when we arrived, but they have a nice crew lounge computers and hot chocolate/coffee.

My room was on the 24th floor (the above picture is my view) and I rode on the elevator with a particularly nasty American tourist from the Midwest who was complaining about how there is no weather channel here, how everything is so old, small, etc. I kind of gave her a curt response back reminding her that she was in a foreign country and that perhaps she should restrict her vacations to U.S. locations.

I slept a little longer than I wanted too, waking up about 3pm. I went down to Waitrose, a local supermarket chain around the corner from the hotel and got a few food items. They have hot items for "take away". It was cheaper to buy the items at a supermarket than go to a restaurant for lunch. I took my food items and walked about a mile down to Kensington Park. I had taken a towel from the hotel and sat under a tree and had a little picnic, read my book, listened to my iPod, and watched all the people. It was a bit overcast, starting out kind of dreary, but in the end, the cloudy skies kept the temperature cool and comfortable.

After a few hours of relaxing at the park, I walked thru the Kensington Gardens, which were in full bloom. When my sister and I went in February, there were not nearly as many plants in bloom as now.

I got back to the hotel by about 7pm in time to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics which were aired on the BBC. I think I was out by about 10pm, but woke up at 4:30am (which was like 10:30pm body time) and was wide awake. I watched a little TV and read some of my book (When a Crocodile Eats the Sun.... very sad but still excellent memoir of Africa) and then went down to the crew room to check my email. I had a nice work out in the fitness center (I am on a renewed health kick since my uniform pants are getting a little tight) and then went over to Waitrose again to purchase a few snacks for the flight home.

All in all, I spent 17 pounds on my layover, which ain't that bad.

The flight back to Chicago was packed. We all got rest breaks of about 1 hour 15 minutes in the bunks, but I never really managed to sleep. The deadhead home from Chicago found me in 29E, a middle seat, and when we landed, we had to wait an hour because there were no available gates!

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

On Monday afternoon, I was sitting around on my fourth day of Reserve when they call me with a Costa Rica trip for early evening. About 10 minutes later, the scheduler calls back and asks me if I can make a 3:50pm deadhead, and if so, would I rather go to Dublin, Ireland, out of Chicago. Not a hard question to answer.

I got the airport for my deadhead. The flight was not full so I managed an aisle seat in coach and sat next to a nice young girl from Cameroon, who was going to Frankfurt to visit friends. There was another flight attendant from my base going to cover the trip was well, named Ginger, and it was her first time to Ireland, so she was pretty psyched. I had been to Shannon years ago on a diversion, but never got off the plane, so this was really my first time too.

We met up with our Chicago based crew and boarded the plane to prepare for our departure. I was the Coach galley, responsible for cooking all the food and setting up all the carts. It had been a while since I had done this on a Transatlantic flight, so I was a bit rusty, but everything sort of fell into place.

Our flight over was about 7 hours and most of the passengers were low maintenance. We landed in Dublin about 9am, cleared customs and made our way to the bus that would take us to our hotel.

The hotel property was quite nice and they offer us a free breakfast every morning. Ginger and I were the only two who had never been to Dublin before, so we decided we would power nap and then meet up in the lobby and walk into town to do some sightseeing around noon.

The weather was great, probably in the mid 70's and partly cloudy. We strolled down O'Connell Street, which is sort of the main drag into Dublin and takes you over the River Liffey. We bought tickets on the Dublin Bus, a hop on, hop off double decker tour bus that hits all the main part of Dublin.

O'Connell Street

Monument to Irish Independence

We first hopped off at Trinity College, where the Book of Kells is displayed. This book was written sometime around 800 AD in Iona, an island off the coast of Scotland. It contains the four Gospels of the New Testament, transcribed in Latin, as well as ornate illustrations. I was not allowed to take pictures, so you can check out more about it at the Wikipedia site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_kells

Trinity College

After leaving Trinity College, we hopped back on the bus and went to the National Gallery. It kind of reminded me of the Prado because they had a lot of Spanish paintings in addition to the Irish ones. After walking around the various floors, we stopped at the Gallery cafe and had a late lunch.

We took the bus thru the rest of it's route and got some great shots of various parts of the city. Lots of cathedrals and monuments.

We ended our afternoon with some souvenir shopping and then headed back to the hotel. At 6pm, they set out wine for our crew and the Continental Airlines crew (and they are apparently notorious for stealing our wine so you have to get there early).

This was our Captain Jack's last trip before retirement so the crew had planned a little special party. We had brownies and snacks to go with the wine and we all presented him with a card.

For dinner we walked to a nearby Indian Restaurant along a canal (note the sign below) and then retired for the evening.

The next morning we all get wake-up calls one hour before pick up, so the phone rings at 7:40am and it is the concierge saying "Good Morning Sir, this is your 7:40 wake up call. Oh... and you are not going home today". I was not prepared to hear that, but apparently the flight had cancelled out of Chicago the night before so there was no plane for us to take home. Now, getting stuck an extra day can suck, unless you are in a cool city like Dublin in which case, it ain't that bad.

We all went up for our free breakfast and decided we would take a little nap and meet at 11 to go back into town and tour the Guinness Brewery.

It was another great day, a little warmer and sunnier. On the way to the brewery, we stopped at The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Ireland (1100AD). We stapled a Dollar bill to the wall and signed it "Flight 93 Cancelled 7-23-08" and had a beer.

We continued on to the Guinness Brewery. The tours are self guided and you go up a series of floors ending at the Gravity Bar on top that offers a 360 degree view of Dubin. I learned that Guinness is not carbonated, but rather nitrogenated. I can't say I really enjoyed the taste all that much, but it was part of the experience.

After the brewery, we proceeded to Temple Bar, the part of town with lots of pubs and restaurants. Ireland no longer permits smoking in pubs and restaurants, so it was nice to be able to sit inside and not smell all the smoke. We all had Fish & Chips and mushy peas (they were great). The girls decided they wanted to keep drinking, so I walked back to the hotel with my other co-worker, Doug.

We all met up for night two of Happy Hour at 6pm and then Ginger and I went to a local restaurant for dinner before retiring for the night.

The flight home was ok. It's a daylight flight and the passengers were always up and standing in our way. Since it was blocked over 8 hours, we are contractually guaranteed crew rest seats, so we each got to retire for about an hour and a half and sleep. Most of the passengers were older Americans who were on a tour and returning home and they were constantly going to the bathroom. We arrived into Chicago a little late and Ginger and I hauled ass to try to make our deadhead back to base, but we missed it by 3 minutes, so we had to catch the next flight where I had a middle seat between two very large men.

It was a great trip, getting an extra day and all, and since it's not a trip on our bidsheet, it was nice to go somewhere out of the ordinary.

Chavezuela

So my latest trip found me laying over in Venezuela (Chavezuela may be the new name soon after their loon ball president) and Tampa. Can't say Caracas was all that exciting. The most adventurous thing you can do is go down to the hotel pool and try to dodge the rocks that the folks living in the mountain slums above the hotel throw down at you. The most annoying thing about Caracas is that Chavez has changed the time zone so that it is 30 minutes behind EST. So when it is 5pm in Miami, it is 4:30 in Venezuela.

The second day we flew from Caracas to San Juan to Tampa. This was the best part of my trip because I got to have breakfast with Carla, one of my dearest friends in the whole wide world. She lives in Scotland, but was back home visiting family. The highlight of our meeting up was the 9 bottles of Original Source shower gel that she got for me. The story behind that goes back to when she first moved to Scotland after she met her soon to be husband and I came over for a visit. That is the shower gel he used, and I fell in love with it. On every successive visit over to the UK, I would pick up a few bottles. I am now happy to say I am the owner of 11 bottles of Original Source (http://originalsource.co.uk) and that should last me for at least a year.

The third day was long, but uneventful as we flew back to base and then did a turn to Belize.

Tomorrow I am going to attempt for the second time to fly to Houston to get my Crew Visa from the French consulate. Last month I managed to try to go on the same day we had a massive thunderstorm so I am hoping for better luck tomorrow.