Oh Canada!

The strange thing about plane rides is the before and after. When I was taking off I felt like a 7 year old who had had too much sugar in a spaceship. I twisted my neck silly trying to see everything, tried all the buttons, flipped through those useless magazines and kept adjusting the tilt of my tv screen. I had an early flight - 12:05 in the afternoon so I was pretty much awake through out the flight.

We flew to Hong Kong for our transfer to Vancouver. The first flight was pretty pleasant; I watched an episode of my favorite TV show, The Office (which I normally have to download by means less than legal). But the best part was landing and seeing Hong Kong and its islands emerge from underneath the sea of clouds.


There were beautiful long stretches of white beaches (you can kind of see it at the bottom of the picture) and tiny dots of islets - my image of Hong Kong had always been a smog-y metropolitan - not this exotic island picture!

Maybe being hundreds of metres in the air helps.

The start of the second flight was just as exciting - I guess I'm a sucker for take-offs - and also because my dad had ordered western-vegetarian lunches. I had no idea what it meant so it was interesting to find out. ''Western'' turns out to mean eggs and dairy products. We had a lasagna dinner, but I found that when they said vegertarian, it means ''much cheese and eggs as we can substitute for vegetables''. It was like eating a block of pure cheese. It was so rich that none of us could really finish our portion. You had to eat a bite, drink some water and wait for it to settle to the bottom of your stomach before you could continue your abnormally lengthy meal. Lord, it was like eating weights. Also, everything tasted of mushrooms, even the fruit. Weird.

By the time I was feeling sleepy, however, my fun-metre was running an all time low. I was suddenly incredibly tired, but it seemed that everyone else, especially this Chinese lady and her baby to my immediate left, was not. The baby's noises, which were cute at first were now like thorns in my side. The boy kept saying ''Plane! Plane! Plane!''. At 12:05, he started his routine for the billionth time - by which time it was starting to sound like ''Pain! Pain! Pain!'' - which was what I was feeling. The mother obviously thought it was endearing, because she did nothing but order more Cup Of Noodles - the smell of which never went away for the remainder of the flight.

I read that, to save money, airplane companies turn down the flow of oxygen - thus saving about 8 dollars a minute (myth or fact? Frankly I can't remember). By the end of the trip I was pretty much convinced that it was true, because I felt like an old sock. A rolled-up old sock. So it was a tear-jerking sight to see, after endless trips to the cubicle-toilet and vege-cheese meals, the first sight of Canada.

It was mostly green, with great stretches of lakes and many islands. It looked like a place worth exploring.


We were finally in Vancouver.



(More later, as my car-ride to Kamloops is here and my famliy and I are once again on the move!)