Lounging

I am cooling my heels between flights.  The first leg of the journey went well, with no delays coming out of SeaTac or arriving in SFO.  The quality of my companionship, though was another matter.  My seat-mate arrived late, and proceeded to distribute her three very large, heavy bags throughout the cabin.  I am pretty sure that she had more luggage as carry on than I do in total for 3 weeks in Africa.  I have a personal pet peeve about this arriving late with many bags maneuver. (I've been that this particular rodeo before.) The end of flight luggage grab usually involves the luggage owner climbing over seats and bonking people in the head and legs while retrieving her junk. Since she was on the aisle it also meant that I got to watch her assemble said junk while being pinned to the window, while she balanced all of her bags on her seat.   During the flight she politely declined the breakfast, instead asking for hot water, 2 creamers, and a spoon......Wait for it!  When the ingredients arrive, she dumps something that looks like powdered green peas, and smells like a barnyard into the water, adds the creamer and stirs.... incessantly.  Apparently, the stuff separates quickly because the stirring continued the entire flight.  I was pleased that I only got to enjoy her company for 90 minutes or so.

Continuing on the theme of  people watching, while walking between terminals an older (French?) man with a Hercule Pirot mustache and a smoldering cigarette asked me to take a picture of him using his phone.  I was happy to do so...he then told me about the museum in the terminal and asked me to tour it with him.  I didn't...but I was nice about declining the offer.  Later the dude at the information desk told me that the museum was not that great and advised me not to waste my time on it.  So, it's good to know that I didn't miss anything.

It is a beautiful day in San Francisco.  Of course, I am not outside.  Instead I am in the Cathay Pacific Lounge.  It is nice.  Functional, with good working computers and lots of marble.  They fed me a lovely lunch of rice noodles, green beans, and stir fried rice.  Below is the won ton and dan dan noodle combination they made to my order.  I was hungry.  It was yummy.

As you an imagine, the Cathay Pacific lounge has people from all over the world.  As I'm sitting here typing, a youngish man with an Indian accent has been talking to someone on his cell phone using his blue tooth ear piece.  He's been pacing up and down the lobby gesturing, as if he's in a play.  I couldn't help myself, because it seemed so funny, so I took a picture.  He was pretty much staring at me  (albeit through an opaque glass) when I took the shot above.  The glass makes him look ghostlike, which I don't think he'd appreciate.

The next leg of the journey should board in about an hour.  This is the REALLY long flight. Fourteen hours 20 minutes.  I'm thinking that I'll be watching a couple of movies, and reading a book or two, and maybe finishing a pair of socks!