Sunday, March 23, 2008

Bob and Jamie's Adventures in Hong Kong, Day 0

Saturday, 8:00AM EDT:
There's a Balducci's in Terminal 7 of JFK! And, just like the one in Alexandria, the food is good but costs far more than it should. My English muffin breakfast sandwich (egg, cheese, and bacon) and Snapple green tea cost $10.


Saturday, 10:35AM EDT:
This plane (a Cathay Pacific Boeing 777) has regular American-style AC outlets at every seat! If only there were a little more legroom.


Saturday, 4:07PM EDT:
We just passed over Greenland(!) Who would've thought that Greenland, of all places, was on the way from New York to Hong Kong? Clearly, Mercator Projection maps have heavily skewed my perception of Earth geometry and geography.

I'm glad my children will grow up in a world with tools like Google Earth. Dead tree globes are, of course, also great (I especially like the ones with brown oceans... that old skool age of exploration style); I had one (with blue oceans... don't worry, Mom, I liked it ;-)). But with the spindle running through the poles holding it in place on the stand, it's still difficult to get a good feel for what Earth looks like from arbitrary orientations.

Actually, my first computer way back in 1995 (a Macintosh Performa 637CD - 68k power!) came with a 3D atlas CD-ROM from Electronic Arts (IIRC it was cleverly titled "EA 3D Atlas") which was very much a progenitor of Google Earth. In fact, it had some things GE doesn't have, like maps showing political borders or rainfall statistics rather than satellite imagery (it had that too, though not to the level where I could zoom in and see my back yard).

But its downfall for me was that it was slower than Google Earth on dialup - probably a consequence of running it on a computer with no FPU and only 1MB of VRAM. So, I never devoted the requisite hours to discovering that a Great Circle connecting New York to Hong Kong passes over Greenland.

My loss.


Saturday, 7:46PM EDT:
We're flying south over northern Russia now, pretty much due north of Chengdu, China. We came over a peninsula which sticks up into the Arctic Ocean. Noril'sk is to starboard, Jakutsk is (further) to port. Krasnojarsk is coming up on the right, and Chita will be on the left. This plane tracker in the TVs is pretty cool. 6:14 to go.


Sunday, 2:00PM HKT (Sunday, 2:00AM EDT):
We're there!


Monday, 12:00AM HKT (Sunday, 12:00PM EDT):
After getting our luggage and going through Customs, we went to one of the four Burger Kings in Hong Kong (three of which are in the airport). I had a teriyaki burger, which tasted really… different. It had too much mayonnaise, I thought.

Then we took the Airport Express (which is an amazingly silent-running train… they should teach the MBTA about track and train maintenance) to our hotel. After checking in and verifying that there were two beds in the room, we marveled at the view of the harbor as well as the gigantic neon advertisement for ING which is about 25 feet away from our window on the roof of the (shorter) building next door.

We left the hotel at about 5:45PM HKT and took the tram to Central and made our way to St. John's Cathedral (an Anglican church) where we participated in choral Evensong with The Cornell University Chorus and Glee Club. Their performance was very good, but Bob and I were both really tired and jet-lagged from our flight so we didn't really get a whole lot out of the service spiritually. Sorry, Jesus. The first hymn was "Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia", and it was just like the Mr. Bean sketch: as we were trying to find it in the hymnal, I didn't know the words so I just kind of hummed along (so did the guy next to me) until they got to the part where they sing the word "alleluia". It's not the same hymn that Rowan tries to sing, but it's very similar.

After the church service we took the ferry across the harbor to Kowloon. We walked along the waterfront and saw the Avenue of the Stars, which is Hong Kong's answer to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We found stars for Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, John Woo, and Chow Yun Fat (among others). Then we decided to stop at the ATM, but it was temporarily out of cash. :-( So, I don't have much money right now. Hopefully we'll find one tomorrow (today, as I post this) that's more accommodating. Anyway, then we came back to the hotel.

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