Return to family in SE Asia

[mtbc]

For travel from Scotland back to Metro Manila, I returned to having Emirates fly me via Dubai. The connection again went smoothly. On the flights, masking was poor, even among crew on the Asian leg, and the crew again tended to wander about doing apparently unimportant chores while the seat-belt sign was illuminated. Curiously, on both flights, one of the earlier chores is to bring the large (instant?) camera to the rear of the cabin. My journey took around thirty hours door-to-door.

I explored Glasgow airport as usual but found the free newspaper stands quite bereft, even in late morning. Further, last time, Emirates had provided little menu cards naming interesting Asian and Middle Eastern dishes, this trip the choice was, for example, more one of beef and mashed potato, or chicken and rice. So, my heart sank somewhat: what's the point of flying Emirates from Glasgow without interesting food and accompanying reading? Fortunately, the chicken and rice appellation did not do the meal justice, I can't say what it was but it was at least still interesting. And, I had forgotten that they call the overhead storage hatracks.

In terms of entertainment, airport bookstores continued to disappoint me. I had failed to connect the delivery of my goods and effects with the availability of books, and the stores largely had the usual mainstream human interest stuff, unlikely crime thrillers, etc., though I credit WHSmith with a few quality recommendations. The airplane's television and film selection did not leave me spoiled for choice; I had recalled that the selection includes a decent documentary about UAE but that failed to jump out at me this time. Still, at least the safety video appeared to include some unexpected telekinesis. Had I planned better, I might also have put shows on both my home and work laptops, thus getting two batteries' worth of viewing time.

Fortunately, I discovered that the entertainment system's music selection was actually rather large. I found with Mozart's Requiem Mass that its dynamic range mixes poorly with engine noise, if I can hear the quiet parts then the loud ones are loud indeed, but other pieces like some Brandenburg Concertos worked better (and it was a nicely spirited recording), and there was plenty of other good music, artists from Dire Straits to The Eagles work well for me. Some of the Pink Floyd seemed to have the ends of tracks oddly truncated, deleterious to the soundscape woven by the album, but fortunately this was not a widespread issue and some other albums, like Tubular Bells, have rather long tracks anyway. There weren't many stage musical soundtracks on offer, though.

Comments

[thewayne]

I definitely would not leave my entertainment to chance for 30 hours of travel, but my iPad and laptop are always well-loaded with "stuff", not to mention my phone with music. Our flight from Denver to Berlin wasn't terribly taxing as it left around 7pm and arrived around 8am with time zones, so I slept for a goodly portion of it and was well entertained. My only problem is that I've worked through most of my podcast library, I need to find some new ones.

As I recall, I watched an Iranian vampire movie on one side of the flight and Shaun the Sheep on the other, with Shaun it was several months before it hit the theaters here.

[mtbc]

I'm fairly bad at managing to sleep on planes, while still being too tired to do much else.

I had a surprise in one Iranian horror movie, Under the Shadow: the household had exactly the vacuum cleaner my mother had when I was a little kid. (So, not much of a spoiler!)

[thewayne]

I pulled up my log and found the title: "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night".  It wasn't a great movie, but it was pretty good and had some interesting things.  It was also entirely B&W, which made it pretty cool.  The woman who made it - British born Iranian, now American, it was her first feature-length film.

[mtbc]

Thank you - that looks worth a try, I'll add it to the list.

[thewayne]

I would rate it as worth watching once.  As I recall, you have fairly eclectic taste, I think you might enjoy it.

[mtbc]

Yes, I think you might be right that this I'd like more than the average person might, and there are plenty of films I'm glad to have seen yet also happy not to watch again.