Hong, Kong:

Ah, the sounds of Asia..... As jackhammers resound throughout the departure hall [Didn't they just build this airport?] I await the departure of my connecting flight to Singapore. So, yup, only about four more hours. Fortunately this place is really fun at five o'clock in the morning.

Actually, there is absolutetly nothing [read: nothing, except use the free internet provided by Reuters: one-hundred and fifty years of information] to do here at this hour -- as if an airport is usually fun at oh-five hundred. I'm beginning to wonder when the stores are going to open. Come to think of it, I could just lay down here with the other travellers who seem to have nothing better to do than sleep on the dais of the free internet. I imagine I'll forgo that gem of an idea, as the high-traffic show-room carpet doesn't actually look all that enticing.

Well, I'm sure all of this is thrilling to the readers out there -- whomever you might be. If only something even slightly entertaining occurred on the way over here...

I started this short jaunt at six in the morning on Monday the twenty-eighth of October at the ACE subway stop at 14th and eighth avenue [in Manhattan.] My good friend Rachel -- who was kind enough to tolerate my hangover [this is a whole other story that I will not begin to get into; though I will say that in the event of an empty stomach, consumption of bourbon-on-the-rocks should be limited to one in the event that one commenced drinking bloody-marys at three in the afternoon.] -- suggested that I try the subway as an early morning alternative for a trip to JFK. After some thought, I opted to accept her advice and -- very few might know that this is actually trustworthy -- checked the schedule on-line to determine the appopriate train. The train departed from the subway station in Manhattan at twenty-one after six and arrived at the airport at fice minutes after seven. Despite the relatively slow shuttle bus, I was at the check-in counter line at quarter to eight -- which I think is completely acceptable for a nine o'clock flight. All that for only one-thirty-five.

My nine-hour layover in LA allowed me to spend some time with my west coast friends: Kate, James, Joy, and of course Charles Matthew Eddy. [back from his jagged journey about Europe with Hugh Grant and an all-female Swedish flight crew] I think the most notable part of my stay in the city of angles was a brief shopping jaunt on Melrose where I walked into three shops in a row where the same girl tried to sell me the same clothes with the same clerk-to-customer flirt-infused lines. In tune with my better judgement I departed Los Angles without any additional items.

Now, somewhere around here there is suppose to be a place where one can get a back massage. It's beginning to sound a bit tempting...


- posted by Unknown @ 1:27 PM