On what felt like a slow (14 hr) flight from Washington to Beijing, I encountered quite the characters aboard the aircraft. Their names were Grumpy, Sleepy, Dopey, Beauty, Baby, Gassy, and Sassy.
Sassy was my favourite. He was a flamboyant flight stewardess who worked in my section of economy class. If you picture Doctor Zoidberg from Futurama with beige skin, wearing glasses and sporting a grey mustache, that is essentially what Sassy looked like. He was very sweet to Baby (who sat in front of me), making silly faces at Baby accompanied by weird alien sounds, and even offering special care when Baby was experiencing discomfort as our flight descended. But how Sassy dealt with Dopey (who sat two rows behind me) is a completely different story. Dopey kept pushing the call button as if it were a toy, calling for the assistance of a stewardess for every little thing she needed. Dopey placed the final straw that broke the (sassy) camel's back, which made Sassy react in an unprecedented manner. Sassy scurried down the aisle huffing and puffing. He stopped two rows behind me and said, "This button is for E-MER-GEN-CIES. You can't keep pressing it for every. little. thing. You are in the WRONG car for that. You should be sitting up there," gesturing up to first class, "If you want this type of service you need to be paying more. Do you understand?!?" Needless to say, that encounter made Sassy my favourite character aboard the flight.
Although lights on the plane were turned off at a certain point to facilitate sleeping, I only managed to get in a couple naps that weren't very restful. The passengers who sat in the window seats directly in front of me and behind me kept abruptly opening and closing the blinds as if they were hoping that one cloud formation over Russia would more interesting than the one over Mongolia. All they really succeeded in doing was blinding me and my fellow passangers by flooding the plane with a sudden onset of bright light.
What I did appreciate about the flight was how I lucked out with an empty seat between me and another female passenger, which gave me more wiggle room and more space to stretch out my legs. I also appreciated how this same female passenger who sat in the aisle seat of my row (I had the window seat) was very kind and understanding every time I had to interrupt her movie-watching experience so that I could use the washroom.
Along with the people-watching I did on the plane, I mainly spent my time following the plane's movement along it's designated flight path through the GPS monitoring system on the tiny screen in front of me. I used the same tiny screen to watch a movie (The Grand Budapest Hotel) and familiar T.V. shows (like Friends and Whose Line Is It Anyway?) that comforted me in my state of delirium.
Once I got off the plane, I rolled my carry-on into a line marked "Foreigners." The line was pretty long, but the act of actually speaking to the customs officer and going through customs (for me, at least) only took a couple of stamps and what felt like a couple seconds. After that, I took the escalators down to retrieve my luggage from a carousel and wheeled it to the only exit where a sea of people were awaiting the arrival of loved ones and new acquaintances (with the help of some signage). My aunt spotted me straight away, and we took a taxi together to my hotel. As I started experiencing the unfamiliar sights and sounds of Beijing, I couldn't help but think about how in about a month and a half, I would be boarding another 14 hour flight to get back home...
To be continued...
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