on the flight from LAX to narita, japan, i sat next to an older japanese man. he asked me
are you flying to hong kong?
so i figured that once again, my ethnicity was being incorrectly identified. at least this time, it wasn't
caucasian. with his shaky grasp and my constant abuse of the english language we got to talking. as it turns out, he's the president of a large japanese corporation (which shall remain nameless,
lest association with characters the likes of me destroy his company's reputation).
we first got to discussing aerospace and technology since both of our companies (well he really *has* a company) are involved in the aerospace industry. in citing corporate revenues, i got a quick lesson in counting in japanese. we had an interesting discussion (does international charades constitute a discussion?) on international business. in his business, he often deals with lots of international customers. while gesturing his hands in what seemed to me like a swimming motion, he said that there was very little
under the table money in the US and japan. i took this to mean that there wasn't much bribery and kickbacks involved in transactions. korea, taiwan, hong kong not so much. but in shanghai and bejing he said ~70% of the money involved was under the table. but this just pretty much just confirmed what i already knew:
chinese people are corrupt. lol.
one question i did ask him though was:
as the president of a company, shouldn't you be flying first class?
to which he answered
no. company money is my money. first crass, waste of money.
as the president, i guess that makes sense.
my parents had booked me a flight directly from the motherland to JFK, so i was able to spend a couple days in NY before flying back to LA. as per my normal operating procedure, i just check my airline on my e-ticket before i go to the airport. and if i actually remember the airline when i get to the airport, then i'll just go to that terminal. when my parents and i got to JFK, we started looking for alaska airlines. conveniently, alaska airlines is not listed on the JFK terminal road signs. so at the last terminal in the airport, i asked a porter where the hell it was. apparently alaska airlines is related to american, so with my 1.5 hours to spare, we headed over to the american terminal. at the american terminal, when my ticketing information was not found, i was told that my flight is actually being operated by delta. ...taking the air train to the delta terminal with my (uncharacteristic) check in luggage, i got there with maybe 70 minutes to spare.
i checked in on the kiosk fairly quickly, but just needed to grab my baggage tag for my check-in luggage to get to my gate. i don't know if delta is being dominated by incompetence or bankruptcy, but apparently they could only muster up a single person to distribute the luggage tags for the west coast flights. this resulted in ~100 mob (note that i did not say a 100 person line) standing around in a room with 10 delta check in stations. the angry mob would be separated and roughly grouped into the vaguest semblance of a single line several times over the course of 2 hours. after a couple people were taken away by airport security for yelling at the employee, a couple other employees were sent over with the actual baggage tags. imagine sending up the bat signal hoping for batman and then having robin drive up in his pink volkswagen beetle.
for my SFO flight (another connecting flight would take me to LAX), a single man was given ~50 luggage tags for the ~70 SFO passengers waiting. that man decided to read off each name (without going through the list first), walk through the mob, and then personally tag the luggage. since he did not speak loudly, a subset of the mob would follow him through the larger mob, with their baggage in tow everytime he moved. it was like the rats following the pied piper, but only if the pied piper was swimming in a sea of gophers. oh yeah and all the rodents are carrying rolling luggage. so of course 1.5 hours after my flight departs and since the sticker distributor didn't have my sticker, i found myself at the end of the check-in line. 2.3 hours after my flight departs, i find myself booked on a direct flight to LAX, which boarded around 8 hours from the current time.
i somehow got through security even though i didn't have a boarding pass (they couldn't print it out since it wasn't 6 hours before my flight). my intent was to curl up into a ball and die for 8 hours, but as i got to the gate, i saw that there was a direct flight to LAX in an hour that the stupid delta bitch failed to mention. i ended up getting myself a first class flight, arriving in LA 2 hours earlier than i would have if i caught my original flight.
now i had never flown first class before, so allow me to describe it for the unwashed masses. when the gate announces they will begin boarding a flight, people naturally accumulate and queue up near the door. this sea of people is forced to part as the attendants request the first class passengers board first. the envious eyes of the peasants watch you strut down the carpet towards the plane, wondering whether you are a celebrity, playboy, or mogul (all of the above).
as you enter the plane, you are greeted with alacrity by beautiful stewardesses. i suspect these are special first class flight attendants, imported from scandanavia with breasts imported from los angeles. before the thundering hoard boards the plane, the viking stewardesses carry you via piggy back over the shared coach areas. before you enter the first class area, they toss rose petals beneath your feet, so that your shoes never have to touch the fine persian rugs on first class floors.
as you sit on your large pleather throne, your flight-slave offers you a complimentary selection of either soda, water, liquor, cambodian breast milk, or fanta. unlike coach, meals are not served in recycled hospital bed pans, but on actual plates. the trays show a certain heft as the stewardess places the food on your seat's specific fold out table, i suspect they're made of pure gold.
the bathroom in first class is also held seperate from the coach bathroom. i was pretty amazed by the expansiveness of the bathroom and the wooden floor. the fact that they actually had a porcelain toilet was only slightly less amazing than the ambidextrous skill of the ninja that wipes your ass after using the toilet. do you ever watch the safety videos at the start of a flight? yeah, me neither, but i'm told that in the event of a hazardous landing, a giant inflatable slide will allow passengers to rapidly exit the plane aboard a comforting cloud of air. as a coach passenger, you may notice that you've never seen a first class passenger exit a plane. well next time you deplane, point your ears towards first class and listen for the characteristic sound of us exiting. it sounds something like: "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"
balut is the name of a filipino delicacy. it's a boiled duck egg with a duck embryo inside. one of my uncles actually 
any discussion of food in the philippines warrants the obligatory inclusion of lechon. i'm not too big a fan of pork, but i do heartily approve of it's use for decorative purposes. in the mega malls, we found another filipino favorite: tsitsaron (pork rinds). due to the pronunciation of tsitsaron, (chi-cha-ron), apparently they decided to give (as flips are so wont to do) the snack a nickname:
one thing that surprised me about filipinos in the philippines was how often they ate. there were two breakfasts, lunch, merienda, dinner, and some more snacks during the day. i suppose i had a different idea growing up. my mom used to tell us stories of how often times when they were young, they'd only have a bowl of rice to eat for a day. now that i think about it, there's been days when i've only had a bowl of rice to eat. but that's usually with banana sauce. oh and i suppose that's just because i'm lazy.
the food i'll miss the most though will definitely have to be the fruits (and fruit products). the bananas, the pineapple, the chico, the list goes on and on. there are these dwarf bananas that are really sweet. but the mother of them all has got to be the filipino mango. i've tried buying mangos in the states, but they're never near the quality of the ones that come from the philippines. my mom said that often, the mangos labeled "manila mangos" are actually from mexico. the mangos in the motherland are super sweet, not fibrous, and are so soft, that the way we usually eat them is with a spoon. cutting up mangos into small slices means you have an inferior mango. we had all things mango in the philippines, including mango ice cream. i really wish i could have smuggled some back.
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luckily, she looks nothing like me
