Away

I like writing on airports. It's the combination of traveling to write about, idle time and occasional free wireless internet access I believe.

I'll get a few chances the next two weeks.

I'm going on a two week holiday, first to Zhangjiang and then to Finland. My co-authors on this site have established a tradition of not writing in or of Finland but it remains to be seen if I gather any insights. I know last time in Finland I didn't write much.

No promises, but I'll get back on the saddle after I return.
OP Out.

Deadline

Oh boy. I'm sure people have talked about deadlines since someone invented them. I hate deadlines, and Dilbert and Garfield and etc. hate deadlines too. And mondays. Luckily it's tuesday, and unluckily I have a pressuring deadline.

My boss just told me yesterday that I have to move during this week, 'cause my old apartment is "due". I know the nice areas in Kuala Lumpur where to look at, and believe me, I've been looking at them. It is just that with my budget it isn't the easiest task to find a good value for the money - especially as a white boy, where every agent sees a potential for exploit. Well fuck that.

Regardless, I gotta move to a new home this week *snap* just like that. While it may sound hasty, hassleish, stressing or pressuring, it is all of those three lumped together and tripled. Vitutuksen multihuipennus, as we say in Finland.

I'll get back to you next week once this is sorted out.

On Wings

So what’s the deal with the airline food? You remember how that stand-up routine goes, right? I’ll talk of food in a moment.

The Guangzhou Baiyun Airport is definitely nice. It has large open spaces, clear directions and space to sit. As far as services, you have several little carts cruising around, ready to take you to the gate or check-in counter. There are restaurants, which, while expensive are clean and nice. Even the public toilets are clean. Or as close to clean as I’ve seen a mainland toilet. But this is all because you are specifically paying for these services - you get what you pay for.

The flights themselves are occasionally on time. I think I haven’t seen a flight which wasn’t 30 minutes late in the air this year. Not a big deal, but I’m glad I speak enough Chinese to understand when they announce plane is going to sit two hours before taxiing to the runway. Oh, they do have an English announcement too. I welcome anyone to come and try make sense of it.

But once you are up in the air, the airline is fulfilling its obligation to you. They have to take you where the ticket says. But they do not need to serve you nice food. They feel compelled to serve some food, true, but it’s just so say they did it.

If you’re lucky you get a choice of rice or noodles over sauce. It’s not great but it works. The sad case is when they don’t serve the hot food at all. You get a little box, which includes a bread, a few cherry tomatoes, a piece of something sweet and a wet towel. The towel is the tastiest item in the box. I wish there were food options aside from flying in business class.

I’ll be flying to Finland in a couple of weeks. I hope our grand national airline has stopped flying the MD-11. Calling it a venerable aircraft is a courtesy.

OP out.

Compound Suspicions

I'll write based on the pictures above.

The first one, dubbed "Sanitation" is a view 5 minutes walk away from my house. It's actually the street immediately outside my neighborhood. There are two points of interest. The first is the local funky Chinaman, proudly displaying his stomach. The local men like to show their bellies on a hot day. Sometimes they opt to take off their shirts, but either opening a button-up shirt or rolling up a T-shirt is the norm. It's a common enough occurrence. And it makes the people look like yokels. But hey, they act like it too.

The reason I took the picture, however, is the well. It's the local way of drawing daily water from a well in middle of the street. I do not know if it's straight up sewage, or is it the same water as the river sitting just behind the camera. The water in the river might actually be worse than sewage, but if you are the type to have a well on the sidewalk, you probably don't care.

I really don't trust these people when it comes to pretty much anything. And I have a baby on it's way.

At least the baby shops are for the wealthy, and as such are nice and clean. The items are mostly sensical and useful. Or I imagine they are. I'm still at the stage where I'm googling "goat milk as breast milk supplement" and seeing what comes up. They sell a lot of enriched goat milk here as supplement, by the way. According to my brief research, it's mostly a viable course of action too.

And then the shops strike out. They sell Eel-Calcium pills. I'm not going to apologize for the instant when my trust for the clean, nice, well-meaning baby flies out of the window the second I see a smiling Eel on a pill box. My thoughts immediately return to the street wells and rolled up T-shirts. Buying a product in China is a veritable minefield of broken, sub-par, coped, imitated and outright dangerous goods. But yes, if I manage to raise a healthy kid staring in Taizhou, China, I can do anything. Catching flies with chopsticks should be trivial in comparison.

My suspicions aside, my girlfriend and the now approximately 5 month baby are both healthy. No thanks to Eel-pills.
OP out.

Mess

Today I'm going to whine about dress code. My company has one, and I'm quite sure a great number of companies in Malaysia do also. Dress code custom is ridiculous, it's just like the old rule of taking one's hat off when eating. On a practical level you DON'T need to wear a suit when typing and making phone calls nor you need to take your hat off while eating, because there is no practical reason behind either of those.

Does everything need to be practical? Well certainly not, but how about letting me mind about my hat and my dressing and my practicalities? Dress code has been invented by someone sometime and the reason is "because". For example, last week I poured coffee on my pair of trousers which I've just picked from a dry clean service. Today, I poured melting butter from my toast on my other trousers (also dry cleaned last week). If I had jeans, I couldn't care less - wipe n wash. But now, I have to went again through all the trouble to bring both of my trousers to dry clean service, open my wallet, hand them money, wait one (1) day, and then I can mess my trousers with some other funky stuff again (;)). Just because my boss wants me to look professional. People who have no real problems have great talent of making their life harder in some other ways.

Hopefully it's something really permanent next time when I mess my trousers again, like epoxy paint or superglue, so I need to spend more fucking money to buy more fucking ridiculous suits and trousers to be allowed to work in this company 'cause I fucking need to look fucking professional. I mean, in army I understand the dress code because they actually DO have some practicalities behind it, but on a real life. What the FUCK?! Maybe you, dear reader, think that I'm whining about the slightest things - sod off to you too.

Thank you Mr. Dress Code Inventer. You ruined my day today again, as you have done for oh so many days before.