craigoxbrow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
craigoxbrow) wrote2010-08-28 10:20 pm
craigoxbrow) wrote2010-08-28 10:20 pm
This is your brain on 29 hours at 40000 feet
Seeking things to do during the many hours of flight, a few pages of my notebook were filled up with observations.
Saying "go to gate" 45 minutes before boarding starts, and an hour and a half before the flight actually goes off, means bidding farewell to loved ones early and sitting at the gate rather too long.
The first person I see getting ready to go on my first flight is a nun. All we need now is a pregnant woman and someone with a guitar and we're ready to go.
Who did "Build Me Up Buttercup"? I know it from the pilot episode of Alias. JJ Abrams went on to do LOST so therefore I'm doomed.
The flight setting off 40 minutes late doesn't have much impact on me because I was going to have to wait four hours at Heathrow for the flight out, now it's a mere 3 1/4 hours. By the time I reach the board they haven't even announced what gate it's going to.
Place is enormous. You'd think therefore that they could stand to have more security scanners than Edinburgh.
Read SFX entirely while waiting. JJ Abrams' Star Trek on the cover. DOOMED!
Ooh, lots of things on the back-of-next-seat screen with Qantas. About a hundred movies, lots of TV, music...
Oddly, one 2009 Doctor Who special. Watch the precredits and credits...
Flip over to Clash Of The Titans, the new dungeonpunk skinhead version which I hadn't seen. Wasn't awful, but did make me wonder what Ray Harryhausen could have achieved if he'd been in charge of an effects department that big and capable.
Take a break from the movies on discovering that the TV Comedy section has the first nine episodes of How I Met Your Mother s3, which charts an entire relationship among its asides about much-loved barrels and The Sexless Innkeeper and one plot that actually makes a side reference to the How I Met Your Mother metaplot in passing.
Shrek Forever After duly proves to be not-bad as well, which is an improvement over previous sequels.
And then I notice How To Train Your Dragon, which I missed at cinemas and latterly heard was the best thing that company's ever done. And it's good, nicely designed, funny. The end seemed a bit off the rest of the mood, though.
So that's three for three in movies that were in 3D in cinemas but obviously not on planes. So I dip into their run of 38 Oscar classics (to celebrate that we're on an A380, apparently). And see that this flight lasts as long as Return Of The King. (Looking a bit lonely by itself as the other two didn't win Best Picture.) I fast-forward through the creditsbecuse I really don't want to hear the song about how death is just a journey to a new land as we're about to touch down.
1.07 a.m., home time, and land with a thud at Changi Singapore. Get off the plane, go through security, get back on it again. Not sure this was entirely necessary, and they don't even stamp my passport. Waiting area now has two free internet things, which is cool but not ideal when there are 150 people waiting for 45 minutes, so I don't get my cyberpunk on.
In my seat for an hour before we take off, too.
And halfway through that a PA announcement asking "is there any medical personnel on board?" Which is better than asking that at 20000 feet, I suppose.
Now so tired that I feel like we're moving all the time.
Have my third "lunch" and "breakfast" of the trip in that order, which doesn't help my sense of time.
After closing my eyes and trying real hard to make my enormous tiredness translate into actual sleep, I give up and put the telly on. Eschewing various other options, I discover that they have all of True Blood S2, and despite being on an airplane it has the swearing, nudity and violence all left in.
I think. I'd gotten to the point of "is this really happening in the show or am I hallucinating from sleep deprivation?" But no, apparently the Hotel Carmilla sequence really happens.
10:13 a.m. hometime, wham, thump, on the ground. Breeze through security here despite having something to declare - "I've got biscuits!" "On you go." - and actually intending to leave the terminal. Get to shiny new Airport train station, transfer at held-together-with-string Central train station, get in, say hello to people, fall asleep watching Buffy on cable. The end.
Saying "go to gate" 45 minutes before boarding starts, and an hour and a half before the flight actually goes off, means bidding farewell to loved ones early and sitting at the gate rather too long.
The first person I see getting ready to go on my first flight is a nun. All we need now is a pregnant woman and someone with a guitar and we're ready to go.
Who did "Build Me Up Buttercup"? I know it from the pilot episode of Alias. JJ Abrams went on to do LOST so therefore I'm doomed.
The flight setting off 40 minutes late doesn't have much impact on me because I was going to have to wait four hours at Heathrow for the flight out, now it's a mere 3 1/4 hours. By the time I reach the board they haven't even announced what gate it's going to.
Place is enormous. You'd think therefore that they could stand to have more security scanners than Edinburgh.
Read SFX entirely while waiting. JJ Abrams' Star Trek on the cover. DOOMED!
Ooh, lots of things on the back-of-next-seat screen with Qantas. About a hundred movies, lots of TV, music...
Oddly, one 2009 Doctor Who special. Watch the precredits and credits...
Flip over to Clash Of The Titans, the new dungeonpunk skinhead version which I hadn't seen. Wasn't awful, but did make me wonder what Ray Harryhausen could have achieved if he'd been in charge of an effects department that big and capable.
Take a break from the movies on discovering that the TV Comedy section has the first nine episodes of How I Met Your Mother s3, which charts an entire relationship among its asides about much-loved barrels and The Sexless Innkeeper and one plot that actually makes a side reference to the How I Met Your Mother metaplot in passing.
Shrek Forever After duly proves to be not-bad as well, which is an improvement over previous sequels.
And then I notice How To Train Your Dragon, which I missed at cinemas and latterly heard was the best thing that company's ever done. And it's good, nicely designed, funny. The end seemed a bit off the rest of the mood, though.
So that's three for three in movies that were in 3D in cinemas but obviously not on planes. So I dip into their run of 38 Oscar classics (to celebrate that we're on an A380, apparently). And see that this flight lasts as long as Return Of The King. (Looking a bit lonely by itself as the other two didn't win Best Picture.) I fast-forward through the creditsbecuse I really don't want to hear the song about how death is just a journey to a new land as we're about to touch down.
1.07 a.m., home time, and land with a thud at Changi Singapore. Get off the plane, go through security, get back on it again. Not sure this was entirely necessary, and they don't even stamp my passport. Waiting area now has two free internet things, which is cool but not ideal when there are 150 people waiting for 45 minutes, so I don't get my cyberpunk on.
In my seat for an hour before we take off, too.
And halfway through that a PA announcement asking "is there any medical personnel on board?" Which is better than asking that at 20000 feet, I suppose.
Now so tired that I feel like we're moving all the time.
Have my third "lunch" and "breakfast" of the trip in that order, which doesn't help my sense of time.
After closing my eyes and trying real hard to make my enormous tiredness translate into actual sleep, I give up and put the telly on. Eschewing various other options, I discover that they have all of True Blood S2, and despite being on an airplane it has the swearing, nudity and violence all left in.
I think. I'd gotten to the point of "is this really happening in the show or am I hallucinating from sleep deprivation?" But no, apparently the Hotel Carmilla sequence really happens.
10:13 a.m. hometime, wham, thump, on the ground. Breeze through security here despite having something to declare - "I've got biscuits!" "On you go." - and actually intending to leave the terminal. Get to shiny new Airport train station, transfer at held-together-with-string Central train station, get in, say hello to people, fall asleep watching Buffy on cable. The end.