Airplane Etiquette

(London, UK: May 12, 2007)

A mixed bag of notes and observations to follow...

As soon as the guy sitting next to me put his heavy laptop bag on top of my daypack, I knew I was not going to like him. Not only was there other space in that overhead bin, but the two adjacent were completely empty! I told him I needed to move his bag off since I had an expensive lens in my bag, and he told me that the data in his computer was worth far more than all of the lenses in the world! Then he proceeded to tell me to be really careful with his bag, and not to drop it even though I was not even taking it out of the bin. Okay guy, if that data is so precious, here's an idea: make a back-up!!! We didn't exactly start off on the right foot. Then it turns out he's the kind of guy who takes the "shared" arm rest over completely - and unfortunately for me actually has his arm over the invisible dividing line in my seat, so no matter how i sit, his arm is always touching mine! Ewww. Could I stand 11 hours of this? I was so annoyed, and sat there silently fuming over it for a bit. Then I thought why am I letting myself be so bothered? I either need to ask him to remove his arm from my seat, or just let it go. I opted for the let it go approach since our former interaction led me to believe asking him would be useless - and then I would be more annoyed. I was moderately successful at letting it go - I think the Valium definitely helped. Funny thing happened at the end of the flight. They told us to please put our seat backs to the upright position. So we did. Then magically his was back to reclining. The flight attendant came by again to tell him to put it back up and he said it was broken and couldn't stay upright. He was told he had to go sit elsewhere then - in a *very* middle seat in the middle section. He threw his neck pillow off in a huff. Once he left, the flight attendant came back to check out the seat - oddly, it had no problem staying in the upright position! Hmmm. First thing I did was drape my arm over the arm rest into his seat.

Cool things about London:
1. They call an umbrella a brolly.
2. The intersections have directions painted on the street "Look Left"and "Look Right". Seriously - without those, I would either have already been run over, or just would never cross the street. You would think it wouldn't be too hard to just look the opposite direction I usually do in the states - think again.
3. A nap is a kip.
4. My awesome friends who I miss terribly the rest of the year.

Off to Nairobi in 3 days!