Now boarding

In the boarding room of the airport it all became real. There were a whole lot of utterances that suddenly made no sense to us. Though we were still in Frankfurt, the world had gone Chinese.
Somewhere in there a loud, fleshy American walked into the room (part of a small group), and, after collapsing into his chair, announced, “My feet are just killing me!” About one half of the room turned to look at him. Within a few seconds he’d removed his leather shoes with a big “AAAAHHHHH….” Then, with a groan, he was back on his feet again for his complimentary Wall Street Journal, thank you very much, and in his dirty socks as well, don’t mind me. When he’d collapsed once more into the chair, he pulled one of his soft, hairless legs up with a grunt and began scratching at the itchiest of his two feet. His nose wrinkled in satisfaction.

“Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly faaar, faar away from here.”
Luckily he sat in the back of the plane, but not so luckily, the guy in front of me took full advantage of the 747-400′s face-smashing recliners for 9 of 10 hours.

But, as they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade as often as possible.
Also, his seat was so far reclined that it afforded the rare opportunity of watching three movies simultaneously while also reading a book. To my front-right, a Chinese woman was watching “Friends with Benefits,” starring Justin Timberlake and Jessica Alba. To my right, Antje watched the one where Julia Roberts teaches an unemployed Tom Hanks something about life. To my front-left, a Chinese man was enjoying Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in Cowboys and Indians. The finale of that one threw me. Having seen the heroes scaling an alien fortress in the desert – this is it! – a few minutes later everything had changed, including the aliens. They now had purple faces and fluorescent green suits, and weren’t strong anymore. When I looked up later, the stupid movie was still going: things were back on earth – then suddenly back in space – then on earth again – and still no sign of Harrison. Enough of this bullcrap! Call it!

This went on for a while until Ryan Reynolds showed up. Ah hah. Different film. So this Chinese guy had gone straight from Cowboys and Indians to The Green Lantern, without skipping a beat. And you know what? That’s sad.
Last, and apropos of nothing, since there’s absolutely no way to just casually segue into this, let it be said that the crackers they give out on airplanes smell suspiciously like fart, or that airplane farts smell suspiciously like those crackers, and that there’s at least one American out there who thinks that there’s some sort of conspiracy going on here, that the airlines have done this intentionally, to obscure everything.

Anyway, we deboarded with about four hours of sleep between us, straight into a Hong Kong morning. I would’ve put all my money on “hot” and “humid,” and both those bets would’ve been wrong. I would’ve also put my money on “not-so-Christmasy,” but approximately 8 Christmas songs were played on loop throughout the airport, a few in MIDI format.
The layover was for 7 hours, which really meant 4.5 of quality Kong time. Not so, according to “Information.” There wasn’t enough time to see the real Hong Kong, we were informed, but there was certainly enough for “Dong Kong.” Dong Kong? Now that just sounds like a joke. But when she told us “Big Buddha is there,” we were sold. All we needed was money!

["In a minute! In a minute! Arf-arf-arf-arf!"]*

* Saturday morning cartoon reference