Java at 36 000 feet

Tuesday 5 Apr 05 0200
The wings just swallowed up Denpasar (on the Indonesian island of Bali), outlined in lights, and the cabin lights just eclipsed the faint hinterland. Two in the morning and the cabin crew is preparing us for breakfast before landing in Singapore. It’s a long night, and putting two breakfasts into the middle of it makes it no shorter.

My son would approve of first and second breakfasts.

A meal over the Java Sea – cornflakes and milk, lit from below by flashes of lightning filling the clouds with a sudden glow.

Changi

Transit lounge, Changi airport, Singapore. Our jumbo is being refuelled and we are out stretching our legs and admiring the splendours of exotic Singapore. The airport is very nice and clean and large and modern, much like any other airport, I guess. Singapore itself is still in a pre-dawn state. Probably the most exotic thing I’ve seen is a squat toilet in the gents.

Today has been reasonably hectic, and I’m still kicking myself for not bringing along a couple of small thin books to release along the way. Too busy, I guess.

Tea

Dawn. We’ve just crossed the Sri Lanka coast. I could do with a cuppa, but the pilot has been running a dance with thunderclouds half way across the Indian Ocean and although the sun is blasting through the windows, I can’t see any service for a while. Not until we hit clear air. At one point we were just a few metres below the “anvil” top of a huge cloud and I could inspect the strange shape at close range. Most of the other passengers slumbered, but I had my head jacked around to take in as much of the outside as I can

The wing dominates my view. Better than sitting in the centre rows, but it’s such a lot of grey metal all at once. I’m sitting fair in the middle of that interior curve of the rising jet in my desktop photograph. The wing is never still – it bends and moves. Plates rise and fall. Vapour jets across its upper surface.

Computer entry on traytable

Jet, high above the Arabian Sea. We’ve had our second breakfast – a meal of which my son would thoroughly approve, despite the fact that both of them were served in the middle of various nights. But we’re into daytime now. Dawn came somewhere over Ceylon and lasted an awful long time as we chased the night into the west after a dance with enormous thunderclouds over the Indian Ocean. Our track on the map display – we’ve got those you-beaut seatback screens – wriggled like a snake and I gazed out the window in admiration as the great wing flexed and curved, great grey slabs moving against each other.

About all I can see from this window is wing. Not a great view, but it’s better than nothing. Had to swap seats at Changi. Heaven knows why. From what I could see the staff were reallocating passengers on the fly – printing and destroying boarding passes with not a care in the world.

We’ve drawn the window shades against the bright morning sun. Noon in London is still eight hours away. Gadget time – I’ve reset my watch for the second time today. Third if you count daylight saving time, which we lost twice over in Dunedin and then Sydney last week, and have now gained again. That’s one change on each of three successive weekends, and I’ll be returning to normal in seventeen days. Or is it eighteen?

My miniscule mouse is working well – it’s about the size of a big thumb. And I’m using the little gooseneck USB light to illuminate the keyboard in this dim interior.

Perhaps I should be grabbing a little more sleep – I’ve only had a few catnaps. A couple of them during the taxi and take off from Singapore – must be tired to miss even a second of the start of a flight.

I’ve had my journal out, plotting out my Monopoly book. Writing a bit of it. Have to space it out, put in a structure – if I just walk from street to street releasing books as I go it will be dead boring. Ideally, what I’d like would be a spectacular themed release for each one. And an immediate catch. This is unlikely, but we’ll see how it goes.

The World Beneath My Wings

0630 5 Apr 05. Over Iran. Listening on the audio channel to that great old song:
See the pyramids along the Nile,
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle,
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me.

Fly the ocean in a silver plane
See the jungle when it’s wet with rain.
Just remember, till you’re home again
You belong to me.

And I’m over peaks streaked with the last snow of a Persian winter. Off to the right is Teheran and beyond that a range of mighty mountains in their own world of white. One huge cone dominates all else. A spectacular land.

Coming in on a wing and a coffee

Tuesday 5 Apr 05
Over Germany, an hour before landing. Just finished an excellent lunch. Lack of space and privacy aside, I’ve had a great flight. It’s solid cloud cover, so I can’t wedge my head out the window to see past the wing.

Looking forward very much to landing and seeing London!