You know how I said that I had a few other things that I didn’t get to do last night? Well I got to them this morning. All of them. I didn’t expect to get through my whole list, but I did. I was so happy ๐ Ah how the most trivial of things make me happy ๐
But it did mean that I didn’t get to have breakfast at home, and I had to go without coffee all morning. The lack of food just helped my cause, though, expanding my current 12-hour fasting window target ๐ The first time I ate today was on the plane – at 2:45pm. That was a 16-hour fasting window! I was starving! I was so hungry that I actually finished everything on my tray. Highly unusual for me!
I was allocated an exit row seat between two other people travelling on their own. Last time I flew, I was also allocated a seat in between two solo travellers. Does Singapore Airlines want us to all make friends with each other or something?? ๐ Anyway, apart from the never ending leg room (I couldn’t even kick the flight attendant sitting in front of me, even if I wanted to ๐), I don’t see any benefits to this seat:
- Firstly, you have to keep your monitor stowed away during takeoff and landing, cutting out about half an hour from your flight time to watch movies;
- Secondly, you don’t have a seat in front of you, meaning you don’t have a seat pocket or space in front of you to store your items. Everything has to be put up in the overhead compartments. There are magazine pockets on the side for two seats, but the third seat gets diddly squat. But they’re not very “stretchy”, so you can’t really store anything but flat items in them. I don’t even know if you can store a laptop in them, since there’s already a whole heap of paraphernalia in them;
- Also, people who are queueing for the bathroom or who just want to stretch their legs tend to cluster around in the area, simply because it is such a large space, which can be a bit distracting;
- And lastly, a flight attendant (or two!) is sitting in front of you, and has the unlucky spot to be in clear view of your ugly mug for the half hour of takeoff and landing ๐
So the exit row is never my first option, and I certainly won’t pay a premium for the extra leg room that I don’t need anyway! OK, I’ve come up with one extra positive: it’s easy to get in and out of your seat, without having to bother your seat neighbours. Now that’s a pretty good perk. Particularly for longer-haul flights. But when I’m only travelling around Asia, where the average flight is, say, 3 hours, these two positives don’t really carry as much of a punch.
I watched a Japanese movie on the plane called 50 First Kisses. It’s based on the Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore movie 50 First Dates. I haven’t seen the American movie in a while, but from what I remember of it, I think it was more comedy than drama. Well it does have Adam Sandler in it?! ๐ The Japanese version felt like it leaned more on the drama side. But it was still good. The male lead reminded me of a Japanese Scott Baio ๐ Do you agree??
Takayuki Yamada
Scott Baio
I managed to survive the flight without really feeling the turbulence, even though there was actually quite a fair bit throughout. Not wine-on-the-ceiling crazy turbulence, just minimal turbulence, but consistent throughout most of the 4-hour flight. I was pleasantly surprised. Flights normally take their toll on me and I have to recover in the hotel as soon as I land on the other side. This must be how the vast majority of people feel when they travel. Totes jeals! I did feel the turbulence during landing, though. It was/is raining in HK, and that affected the smoothness of the landing.
Last time I was in HK, I applied for the e-channel service at HK airport, which allows you to use the machines at the arrival and departure halls and bypass the queues at immigration. The HK and Aussie governments must have some agreement, coz the only requirements for Aussies in order to be eligible to apply to use the e-channel service is that:
- They have a valid Australian passport with at least six months’ validity left on their passport;
- They’re over 16 years of age; and
- They don’t have any adverse records in HK.
Given how frequently we’ve been travelling to HK recently, we thought we should apply for this service. The walk to the immigration office in HK was the worst bit of the whole application process. When I went, I asked a staff member where I can get a ticket to join the queue, as there were a bajillion people already there in the waiting area. I was expecting to be there for a good hour or two, waiting for all these people to be served ahead of me. She asked what I was there for and I told her, and that was when she proceeded to process my request then and there. Five minutes later, voila! I was eligible to use the e-channels ๐ No idea what the bajillion other people in the waiting area were there for, but clearly not to apply for the e-channel service!
So arriving this time in HK, I bypassed the “Visitors” queue and went straight to the “HK Residents” area, and got a machine straight away. No queue! Also, since I am only travelling with carry on, I had no luggage to wait for and so I was out of the airport in less than ten minutes and straight onto the train to HK Island. Woohoooo! Love it ๐
We’re staying in a serviced apartment this trip. The apartment is huge! Probably the same size as our 2-bedroom apartment in SG, but it has only one bedroom, so there is more space in each of the rooms. Except the kitchen. They’re both tiny as! ๐ It’s nice to have more space. It feels just that little bit more comfortable, and more like a home away from home.
