When it came time to board I found my way aboard the aircraft and sat down in 22A, a window seat I had the good fortune of finding the day before. To my right sat a young Korean America man from Cornell traveling to Seoul for a 6-week summer abroad program. We chatted about our experiences and he shared some of his mom’s homemade Kimbap. It looks like Sushi, but don’t tell Koreans that or they’ll get offended. In the seatback pocket, in addition to the safety instructions, were about 4 other magazines jammed in there to the point it was cutting into my legroom. One of the magazines had an ad on the back for a Korean Casino featuring Robert Deniro hamming it up.
The selection of inflight movies was really impressive. Each seat had a touchscreen on the back of it with 60 channels and another 50 or so movies in an on demand/DVR system. You could select Korean, Indian, American, and Japanese movies and play any of them starting and stopping whenever you wanted. The American selection also included some neat old movies as well. There was a Gene Kelly movie called an American in Paris and a movie from the 50s about a reporter investigating Anti-Semitism. I watched both along with Oz and The Hobbit.
The food on the plane was fantastic, for plane food. The first meal we got, in addition to a small hot towel was smoked salmon over potato salad, Italian salad, mixed veggies, steak and cheesecake for dessert. After another few hours they brought out little ham and cheese subs for everyone. About an hour before we landed, we had pork and rice with mixed veggies, a roll, and bean salad.
Between the movies, my interesting travel companion and the frequent and delicious food, the 14 hours of flight time didn’t seem all that bad. In general, I really like flying. It’s a nice break from reality. No one bothers you, there’s no expectation of accomplishing anything and none of the responsibilities of daily life really start up again until you land.
