violist
Feb 21, 04, 6:13 pm
Headed to the airport early as I anticipated some
trouble getting my Sweet Spot to take care of the
entire outbound ... after several minutes of my
trying to explain how I wanted him to document my
record, the young agent did the right thing: simply
gave up and said, just turn in the thing tomorrow
at LAX. I promised I would (and I did).
Security was pretty long - not hairy hairy, the way it
sometimes is, just a bit annoying. They were doing
bunches of extra checks it appears: what's this yellow
downrating all about, anyway? Took half an hour or so.
The RCC was pretty empty - one agent, half a dozen
passengers, a full array of newspapers from the sublime
(FT) to the ridiculous (Boston Herald), lots of plastic
pastries.
0114 75 BOS SFO 0815 1155 752 2D
Joanne, one of my favorite checker inners, was working
this flight. I hadn't seen her in some time; we chatted,
and I asked after her boyfriend (whom I'd met once when
they were working C21 together) ... turns out they'd
been married six years, so I guess it had been some time.
Flight was at half, with a couple empties in front.
FAs were fine - not gushy friendly, but they did
their job well and with at least the ghost of a smile.
TO BEGIN
Fresh from the bakery
A selection of pastries, croissants and bagels
with butter, cream cheese and fruit preserves
MAIN COURSE
Sauteed spinach, egg and Boursin cheese in filo pastry
Mornay sauce, tomato salsa, chicken sausage and fresh fruit
French toast with a cream cheese, banana and walnut filling
Maple cream, Canadian bacon, pork sausage and fresh fruit
Fresh seasonal fruit platter
For the lighter appetite, we offer a variety of fresh fruit
with yogurt.
FEATURED WINES
Montevina Sierra Foothills Sauvignon Blanc 2002
Placido Veneto Pinot Grigio 2002
Xplorador Rapel Valley Merlot 2001
Canyon Road California Shiraz 2001
I had the fruit plate senza dairy products. All
the fruit were juicy, fresh, and aside from the
strawberries, tasteless. A croissant was okay.
A Courvoisier was harsh and tasteless (nursed it
before, during, and after breakfast, as it was far
too raw to drink down in a hurry).
Flight had a few bouts of turbulence (what's the
difference between moderate chop and moderate
turbulence? we had some of both, according to ATC).
Toward the end, a very hot and gooey chocolate chip
cookie, which went well with another Courvoisier,
which was VSOP this time. We landed a couple early
and I had time to do my e-mail at the RCC.
0114 987 SFO LAX 1245 1402 320 3B
Hustled down here just in time for boarding, only
they closed the door just after opening it ... the
pilot had called in a tizzy as they'd overfilled the
gas tank or something. A 735 had been scheduled, but
for unknown reasons they swapped in a 320 that had
been supposed to go to Washington, with the tanks
filled up for that destination. So lest we be heavy
on landing (a full flight, too), they had to deload
(their term) a bunch of fuel. Unfortunately, when there
is an equipment change, even to a bigger aircraft, all
the seats get jiggered around; I'd had 2A, now I got an
aisle; no matter, I slept through the whole flight. We
took off half an hour late and landed 15 late. And then
we drove all around California, as I groused to my
seatmate, and we were at the gate 15 min later still.
The Radisson LAX Airport shuttle is supposed to be on
the half hour, so I figure I missed it, so I walked.
It's about 12 min, with a couple of nasty crossings.
Checked in, and the agent said that I was on the
executive floor. In fact, I was on the highest floor
that doesn't require a key, but that floor was 5. No
matter, it was a decent room, a foot wider than it had
to be and about the right length, with a good view of
the runway where we'd landed.
My friend Manny came over and took me to the Green
Field Churrascurria in Long Beach, which was pretty
good, even though it was a quiet night. He's apparently
a regular there, as the waitress recognized him right
away. A quite big place; I asked the Maitre d' if this
was related to the restaurant of the same name just
outside Washington, and he replied that not only was
it part of the same chain (of 7 nationwide), the chef
who had been cooking there when Bennie and I had last
eaten there was now in the kitchen here.
It's AYCE with two parts, the buffet, which is your
normal buffet with some abnormal ingredients, and the
meat, which is brought to your table by a slave, er,
employee, with the picturesque title of "meat runner."
Feijoada was pretty good: the beans had perhaps not
been cooked quite long enough, but they were well
flavored with sausage, pig tail, pig skin, and pig ear.
Albondigas were your ordinary meatballs in red sauce;
what distinguished these was that even though the dish
was redolent of cheese, the cheese was in the sauce,
not in the meatballs. So I went back for seconds.
Collards and garlic - an odd dish, julienned greens
sauteed with almost as much garlic (slivered) as
greens. I liked these and had seconds also.
Steamed shrimp - average.
Something labeled chicken stroganoff was extremely
peculiar. It was really Newburg sauce with bits of
boneless white meat, rather few and far between,
floating in it.
Frango a passarinho was chicken dark meat bits, hacked
through the bone, marinated in molho cru, and roasted
considerably overmuch.
Seafood salad had squid and octopus (good), shrimp (ok),
mussels (bad), and fake crab in a very sour dressing.
I passed on a variety of soups, salads, yucky sweet
doughnut-like pastries, and American-style buffet items
including various colors of Jell-O.
And on to the main event. Lest My Carol be consumed
with unease for my health, I must mention here that I
ate less than 2 lbs of meat and got up from the table
the same waist size and with room left in my stomach.
They start with less interesting things, so you fill
up on cheap stuff, and then the good stuff comes out.
This verified by the fact that the guy who brings out
the cheap stuff is not the same as the guy who brings
out the good stuff, and when people sit down, guy #1
comes to that table several times before guy #2. Manny
shooed guy #1 away consistently, and although I got a
few things from him, we ate mostly rare meat as served
by guy #2.
Garlic beef was chuck medium, okay; Manny turned his
nose up at this, as apparently did most people; at the
end of the meal, we saw others being offered garlic
beef, and it was obviously the same skewer, with the
meat now cooked down to a dark brown rubberiness.
What was represented as pepper steak was, well, the
same as garlic beef, only heavily seasoned with black
pepper. I asked Manny to experience what it did to the
wine - he maintained that it killed it; my position was
that it brought up the spiciness of the wine and sent
down its fruitiness, not altogether bad.
Sausage was also ok, perfectly unremarkable.
Roast quail in molho cru was pretty good.
Braised brisket was as expected, only less fatty; I
found it edible but stringy. I got a piece with a
quarter teaspoon of fat on it, and that one bite was
quite nice.
Presently guy #2 replaced guy #1.
The skirt steak was the gem of the evening; of course
it came out only once. It was rare; it was neither
marinated nor oversalted. I could have made my entire
meal out of it.
"Filet" was probably top sirloin (aka shell sirloin).
It was medium-rare and quite good.
"Sirloin steak" was not like any sirloin I've
encountered before; it was a smooth-grained meat
with relatively little chew; tender and with a
mild flavor; also rare to medium-rare. My guess:
poor man's filet, also known as false or mock filet,
the tenderest part of the chuck, cut in a peculiar way
and then sliced also in a peculiar way. The second gem,
to my view, of the meal.
"Top sirloin" was probably a nicer part of the tri-tip,
see below. Thinking on it, it might have been just the
same as tri-tip, only done medium-rare as opposed to
the medium.
Tri-tip was decent, done a little over; a flavorsome
but chewy cut that has to be cooked either moist and
to death or just barely with a kiss of flame. This
was about in the middle, not good for a cut that is
part of the round.
There were also a number of things we passed on, such as
various kinds of chicken, turkey, and pork loin (Manny
had a piece of pork loin, and it appeared ok but perhaps
a tad dry). Also they wheeled in a big old cart of beef
ribs, which we eschewed in favor of the rare stuff. In
retrospect I would have liked to try one.
Rutherford 26th Anniversary Cabernet 2000 - Manny had
asked me to pick a wine with both acid and fruit, to
stand up to the heavyish fare, and I chose this, no
bargain at $38, but quite a well made and pleasant wine:
dry without being acerbic, acid without being sour,
fruity without being punchy. Plums, berries, and some
evergreen scents in front, a pretty smooth balanced
palate with some oak, spices after with plums coming
back for a good strong finish.
Back to the hotel, a good half hour drive, and thanks
very much for the company and the conversation, Manny.
The bed at the Radisson seemed nice enough, conducive
for sleeping and then also for getting up 7 hours later
when one's back starts to hurt.
I left nice and early in anticipation of lines at the
airport. Good airport shuttle from the hotel. No lines -
check-in and security took ten minutes tops.
0115 891 LAX NRT 1115 1555 744 16H
Also on this flight: Chemist661, I-flybynight, jan_az,
SanDiego1K (left to right) in row 15. Also Bennie in 5J.
We didn't know about I-flybynight until we were aboard.
He was headed to Singapore on his way to Colombo or
someplace and hadn't been planning on coming to the
dinner, because it would have meant a tight time getting
to the airport. By the end of the flight he was well
convinced to join us at the Jumbo!
Loaded up early (I was one of the last to board and
had to endure the line) but took off late. No matter;
the headwinds were negligible, and we landed half an
hour early. Patches of turbulence; mostly an ok and
uneventful flight. Flight attendants pretty good (but
definitely high seniority). Interesting - even though
we were traveling totally in daylight, most people
slept for a substantial part of the journey. Myself, I
slept a few spells, my longest about 2 hours. Occupied
myself with the Food Channel (the Hopkins County world
championship stew competition; Dallas on $40 a day),
some e-mail, a touch of work, and this report.
This is the first-class meal that Bennie enjoyed:
TO BEGIN
Crab cake with lobster Choron sauce
Sauteed baby spinach
or
Prosciutto with mozzarella cheese and cantaloupe
Tomatoes, Kalamata olives and roasted garlic
flavored red wine vinaigrette
Garden fresh salad
Asian sesame ginger or creamy Gorgonzola dressing
MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with bearnaise sauce and sauteed shrimp
with garlic; baked stuffed potato topped with Cheddar
cheese
Grilled lamb chops with cranberry orange demi-glace
Oven-roasted three potato hash and asparagus
Chinese-style duck with honey lemon sauce
Fried egg noodles with a vegetable medley
Steamed rice is also available upon request.
Japanese Obento selection
An appetizer of shrimp with fish roe, zucchini with
miso paste, crabmeat roll with egg yolk vinegar and
green tea buckwheat noodles; a main course of steamed
white fish with shiitake mushrooms, marinated chicken,
stir-fried burdock and steamed rice
Served with green tea
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Brie, Gorgonzola and New England Cheddar cheese
Ice cream with sundae toppings
Fresh seasonal fruit
MIDFLIGHT SNACK
Mrs. Fields cookies and milk
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Chicken, spinach and ricotta crepes with Hollandaise
sauce, fresh fruit appetizer
or
Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt
This is the meal that my colleagues and I enjoyed:
TO BEGIN
Smoked salmon with Parma ham; capers and lemon aioli
Pleasant if a bit mushy salmon, pleasant if a bit dry
ham. The capers looked forlorn, three sad squashed
ones, sided with an equally squashed but tasty olive.
The garnish - very fresh frisee - was tasty. Good with
a glass of Champers.
Garden salad, Balsamic Dijon vinaigrette dressing
Rather bitter greens, mostly red-leaf lettuce. I ate
mine dry; the label on the little cup of dressing did
not mention Dijon or any other kind of mustard.
MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with Hollandaise sauce; home-fried
potatoes with green beans and carrot batonnets
As I told SD1K before the flight, I've had good luck
with steaks on United. This one was quite tasty and
very tender, although things were somewhat backward,
because the potatoes had been done medium-rare and
the meat medium-well, The veggies were a bit discolored
but appropriately crisp-tender. The Ch. d'Orsan Cotes du
Rhone was slightly too sweet for the meal, but on the
other hand the other red, a Shiraz I hadn't heard of
before, probably would have been worse.
Roasted breast of chicken with char siu glaze
Steamed rice and baby bok choy
SD1K said that the chicken wasn't worth eating, and
in fact it looked pretty pristine when I saw the FA
taking away her plate. SD said the rice and veg were
good, though.
Japanese Obento selection
An appetizer of shrimp with fish roe, zucchini with
miso paste, crabmeat roll with egg yolk vinegar and
green tea buckwheat noodles; a main course of steamed
white fish with shiitake mushrooms, marinated chicken,
stir-fried burdock and steamed rice
Served with green tea
I-flybynight and jan_az had this; Jan said that it
was good, but she wouldn't bother ordering it again.
I didn't see what Ch661 had.
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Gorgonzola and New England Cheddar cheese
Eli's Black Bottom pie
The pie turned out to be that apple tart thing that
we have all grown to know and hate. I had a glass of
Port instead.
MIDFLIGHT SNACK
Enjoy our midflight snack.
Potato chips, Oreos, Kit Kats, and more of the
apple tart. I believe that SD1K and jan_az requested
and got hot fudge sundaes, though.
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Penne pasta with spring vegetables in a vodka cream
sauce, Parmesan cheese and a fresh fruit appetizer
or
Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt
Turned out we got penne pasta with zucchini (tasted
like it had been boiled in garlic oil), yellow squash
(didn't eat), and tomatoes in a tomato sauce with a
modicum of cheese and no discernible vodka or cream.
It was fairly decent.
The bubblies were Pommery Brut Royal, a pleasant,
lemony, not particularly complex or interesting
blend (which they served first) and Pol Roger Brut,
which was toasty, with many ripe fruit tastes and
layers of yumminess.
Interesting note: jan_az and I took a brief walk
downstairs and were informed that we were supposed
to stay where we belonged. The lunacy of this policy,
whereby we were allowed to stay right by the cockpit
but were not allowed on other parts of the plane, was
perhaps not lost on some of the FAs, but they remained
adamant in their enforcement of the policy. Bennie was
also not allowed to visit us upstairs, which is of
course pretty nuts: why anyone would sit in first and
then trek upstairs to wreak havoc when they could sit in
biz and not have to worry about the stairs before
attempting their hypothetical nefarious deeds I just
cannot figure.
Fairly nifty new terminal to arrive at, but the club
was nowhere near so nice as the upstairs-downstairs one
had been. Further, this one was grotesquely crowded,
with soft-drink machines that obviously could not keep
up with the demand. Interestingly, nobody aside from
myself was using the beer machines (of which there are
twice as many as soft-drink machines. At SD1K's
suggestion we asked the concierge if we could use a
meeting room to get away from the madding crowd. With my
boarding pass as hostage, we got the room so at least we
got to sit. Bunches of business to transact (bento boxes
to order, certificates to transfer, bump opportunities
to check) and showers to take (30 min wait, with beepers
to let people know when it was their turn), and soon it
was time to return to the gate. By the way, we landed
at the gate to the left of the club and embarked at the
gate to the right of the club. The prelanding video
shows the old gates and clubs, which might confuse some.
0116 801 NRT SIN 1730 2355 777 14J
Also on this flight: jan_az and SD1K (row 8 center
section), and Ch661 (the aisle next to me). mjm's (17
right aisle) upgrade didn't clear. Bennie was in 3F.
I tried the Shiraz, which turned out to be Jindalee
Murray-Darling Victoria 2003 - I found it pleasant
textured, with rather nice raspberry tones, but
impossibly sweet; glad I had the other wine with dinner
on the previous flight.
This was Bennie's first-class meal:
TO BEGIN
Crabmeat salad with diced vegetables and vinaigrette
dressing; papaya wedge and mesclun salad with
Asian-style dressing
MAIN COURSE
Grilled filet mignon with a creamy wild mushroom sauce
Buttered spaetzle and sauteed spinach
Thai chicken curry with diced pumpkin
Chicken flavored rice and marinated onions
Shrimp, scallops and cuttlefish with Chinese noodles
Vegetable stir-fry with peas, carrots, mushrooms and
water chestnut
Soup and sandwich platter
Chunky potato and bacon chowder and roast beef sandwich
with horseradish cream spread
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Kikorangi blue and Brie cheese
Tropical sherbet medley
Orange, mango and raspberry flavored
This was our meal:
TO BEGIN
Herb-marinated shrimp
Mesclun salad with Asian-style dressing
Three very firm medium shrimp sided with
still-frozen tomato wedges and some greens;
the dressing was essentially soy and sesame.
MAIN COURSE
Orange and honey braised pork chop; chicken rice,
carrot spaghetti and sauteed spinach with bacon
Pulehu breast of chicken with teriyaki sauce
Stir-fried rice and snap peas with red peppers
Yuzu-flavored red snapper with taro potato, grilled
yuba, mushrooms and hanagata rice with yukari powder
This was okay, the very red red snapper somewhat
overcooked - no surprise - but fresh, the yuzu sauce
pleasantly citrusy. The accompaniments were one coin-
size bite each of carrot and starchy white root and
two good-size blobs of decent rice with purple plum
powder (try saying that several times in a row!).
The Leon Beyer Pinot Blanc (vintage?) was appropriately
acid, with its own fruitiness working well with the
snapper sauce. The menu says "intense flavors of yellow-
skinned apple; different from Chardonnay" - the latter
half of the description is right.
DESSERT
Tropical sherbet medley
Orange, mango and raspberry flavored
A mostly uneventful night-time flight during which
most people uneventfully slept. Flight came in almost
half an hour late owing, they said, to headwinds. A
very primitive version of Airshow on this flight
provided little clue about anything. Disembarkation,
immigration, and getting to the hotel (S$20 split 4
ways) were a snap.
Conrad Centennial, 2 Temasek Boulevard. Quite nice
place, although the corridors had a bit of that overripe
tropical smell. Bennie and I were given a one-bed room
on a low floor; when I questioned this, we were right
away assigned 1515, a quite nice city view room with two
extremely comfy beds. Took a look at jan_az's diamond-
level room, which overlooked Marina Bay (although with
the Pan Pacific obtruding) from the 30th floor, and then
back down home for a pleasant night's sleep.
We got up, and it was bright and sunny, so Bennie and I
decided to take a walk down to the waterfront. There's
a food hall on the way, so we poked in there, but it's
tiny and uninspiring; so we walked through the Pan
Pacific; just beyond there's a fairly bustling one
called Rasa Marina Food Court; nothing appealed, though,
the smells pretty bland and boring. However, in the
Leisureplex by the Mandarin Oriental, there's yet
another, and it appeared to be the most appetizing of
the lot. Plus there's a beef brisket stall.
Breakfast
The beef brisket set was a substantial portion of
leanish beef that had been stewed with soy and
five-spice with a fair amount of shin gristle
(cooked to an exquisite tender jelliness) over
gai lan, with rice and broth on the side; a good
deal for S$4.
A mixed beef soup was honeycomb tripe and brisket cubes
with gai lan in the same broth, sided with rice, for the
same cost; this was considerably blander than the other,
but the two supplied hot sauces - one with fresh hot
peppers, minced onions, and salt, the other red peppers
and salt fried to a dark brown in oil - helped.
We went to the Esplanade to get our tickets for the
next day's Casual Concert and then walked down to
Chinatown for a light wander before our lunch date.
On the way to Chinatown, we found the United CTO,
one of the last of a dying breed. Stopped in for a
chat with a pleasant set of agents.
Back to the riverfront to find jan_az and SD1K, who
met us right on time, a tad early in fact, so we
hopped the elevators to
Lunch
Sichuan Dou Hua
UOB tower 1, 60th floor
where the pleasant maitre d' seated us at a window
table overlooking the river (not that the place was
packed, it wasn't). The menu is extensive, with
Cantonese dishes as well as the Szechwan food that
the place is named for. We had, though, a number of
constraints here; a few taste preferences, plus we
had to bear in mind the fact that we were going to
be eating all the chilli crab we could in just a few
hours. We looked fairly blankly at the menu, and
after a few tentative suggestions of some heavy dishes,
we decided that small plates were the way to go. Soon
it was time to order. I looked at the waitress sort
of blankly and said, one of everything (actually,
just one of everything on the Sichuan dian xing list).
A goodly amount of food, not impossible, but certainly
ample. I think they were probably laughing at us a bit
in the back, but our meal was actually pretty good.
They serve tea in this funny way, with the tea leaves
and stuff in your cup already when they shoot the hot
water a good distance out of the long-spouted kettle;
with some skill and luck the water lands at its proper
destination. Much fun. The stuff in the cup was fun,
too, a medicinal blend of wolfberry, Chinese date,
some white flower, assorted herbals, and a nice mild
semi-fermented tea.
The food was a good selection of stuff, something for
everyone, and my undeserved reputation for culinary
savvy was not diminished.
The first things to come out were fried buns with minced
chicken, pleasant but nothing to write home about.
The shumai were some of the best I've had; I didn't bring
it up with the assembled company, but I'm pretty sure
that minced pork fat had a bit to do with the success.
Pan-fried dumplings with chives and chicken were yummy as
well; the rather similar boiled dumplings with chives and
chicken more delicate, which was appealing, but both a
little waterlogged and a bit dry around the edges by the
time I got around to tasting them.
I was surprised by the bao - these were a sweetened dough
stuffed with mushrooms and chopped mustard greens - I was
expecting pork from the looks of them (one disadvantage
of just saying yes is one forgets what one ordered).
Suan la chow show (spicy sweet-sour wonton) were less
sour and spicy than I'm accustomed to, but a nice
scallion flavor in the filling came out with the
sweetness.
Glutinous rice with pork floss were festive and
tasty, the pork shreds sweet and savory; unfortunately
the baked meat pie (8 sizable wedges for S$4, the same
price as everything that wasn't $3) tasted almost
exactly the same.
There was a fish-paste dumpling with pepper that was
notable not only for its pepperiness but because I'd
never had the dish before. I might order it again: the
jury's still out.
Our final dish (which, alas, came with everything else)
was dan dan noodles, this version somewhat soupy and
topped with dry-fried meat bits in addition to the
usual cabbagey and oniony things.
I hope that people were sufficiently amused by the
experience, which included nice views northeast and
southeast through the slightly overdecorated windows.
The ladies wanted to see Chinatown, so we escaped from
this excellent confinement and walked south to the CTO,
which unfortunately had closed; but at least we have
additional witnesses to the fact that it still exists.
Then to a bookstore and inland to our destination. SD1K,
jan_az, and Bennie had foot reflexology sessions while I
wandered around, seeing numerous amusing sights, such as
a Buddhist temple, an alley of weird medicinal animal
parts, and a ticket agency called Travel Buzz. Returned
to the massage parlor, and we all went back to the hotel
together, via taxicab that it took us half an hour to
find.
Bennie and I had a little daycap at the lobby bar, where
I had the two-for-one Tiger beer, and she had a dish of
mango ice cream (actually sorbet) with passion-fruit soup
and a hazelnut-milk chocolate tuile.
Returned to the hotel room to discover that my bed had
been slept in and a bottle of half-drunk water had been
left in the bathroom. What the ???? but a quick check
showed nothing important added or subtracted from or to
our possessions. Oh, a tray was on my bed with traces
of elite amenities; the fruit in the fruit bowl had
disappeared; and there was what looked like a prayer mat
on the floor, although the way it was positioned the
person would have had to be facing away from Mecca to
use it. No biggie, and I didn't bother to fuss with the
front desk.
We all reconvened at the executive lounge in the hotel
(fairly nice dim sum and other snacks, almost enough to
make a meal of, although skewed toward sweets) and then
it was downstairs to catch the van to take us to the
main event, chilli crab at Jumbo Seafood Restaurant.
Happy chaos there as we made ourselves home amid the
celebrating throngs and the appetizing smells of their
dinners. Present: msy-msp and prncess674, dlouise37 and
Mrs. dlouise37; Flying Buccaneer, zvezda, RustyC,
Gary (no handle), mjm, I-flybynight, ws8n, Ch661,
SD1K, jan_az, violist, and Bennie.
Satays of chicken and beef were a gentle introduction;
pretty standard everywhere in the known world, I guess,
but the peanut sauce was well above average. After this
appetizer, the food came fast and furious.
Stir-fried venison with ginger and scallion was what
you'd expect, only the venison tasted more like beef.
I loved the sambal kangkong, water convolvulus in a
savory slightly spicy sauce.
A steamed sea bass was done a bit over to modern tastes
but had good flavor.
Chilli crab, a festive dish suitable for new year's, is
always a sweet and ketchupy dish; this was sweeter and
ketchupier than usual, less chillied. Still, we enjoyed
them enough to order more.
The true winner was the pepper crab, far more tasty and
more distinctive, and liked well enough by the company
assembled to make it quite likely that next year's
gathering will be called the Singapore Pepper Crab Do.
And it will be the third annual, not the first annual.
Tiger beer in pitchers and soft drinks rounded out the
meal. And so we toddled full and satisfied back to our
van and home.
Where a couple rounds of drinks at the Conrad for most
of us and then a bottle of Vina Tarapaca Riserva Merlot
1999 (ripe stone fruit, tobacco, mint, not a greatly
distinguished but a pleasantly forward wine) at Zee 10,
the bar across the street for the hardier few followed.
Then the hard hard core went to msy and prncess's room
for a nightcap.
= =
Bennie went off with some of the people to get massaged
back in Chinatown, and I went off wandering by myself.
Presently that peckish feeling came around, and as I
was still in the neighborhood, I hied myself to one of
the food courts in giant Suntec Mall, where I wandered
around the stalls; on my third go-round I decided to
just have a plate of fried oysters at the only place
in the largish hall that offered them. For S$5 I got
about a dozen smallish ones in a pancakey batter, with
many fried bits of plain batter thrown in - definitely
an amateur job, but the ingredients were fresh fresh,
and the plate was satisfying enough. I might have done
better with the pork entrails noodle soup I spied at
one of the other stalls, but it was a buck more than
the same thing at the Leisureplex food court. Here the
prices were uniformly $1 a plate more than there (or
Lau Pa Sat), where the prices were 50c-$1 more than
down in the depths of Chinatown, where the prices were
50c-$1 more than in the grottiest places I found (such
as the one in the car park directly opposite the UOB
towers). The other finalist was fusilli with Thai
green curry, which sounded just weird enough to be
good, that I spotted at a place that had things like
spaghetti carbonara on the list but where all the
people in back looked sort of like my grandmother.
Off to Carrefour, where I poked around for over half an
hour, eschewing the department store part except for
checking to see whether there were any shirts my size
(there were lots, all ugly), and proceeding straightaway
to the grocery floor (when I say I hate to shop, that
doesn't include food shopping). Thought about buying a
whole duck for $23-odd, but that would have killed my
appetite for the rest of the day, not to mention leaving
grease stains all over the upholstery and carpeting at
the hotel; or some durian, 1 pod for $10 but 5 pods for
$20, to inflict on my Conradian colleagues, but that
would have ended up with my eating lots of durian and
leaving that remarkable stench all over the hotel too.
Great wine selection, including some lesser vintages
of lesser classed Bordeaux for under $80 (I always
wondered where the oversupply goes; apparently it goes
here, and then it doesn't sell, and the prices remain
static, which means that what started off overpriced
ends up being reasonable). Ended up with just a couple
cans of New Year's food, one of shark fin and abalone,
the other of abalone-like mollusc. Back to the hotel
via the fabulous water sculpture by the office buildings
on Temasek Avenue and the Chinese arts festival (mostly
tacky stuff that they were charging triple for because
you got to watch them sculpt-draw-paint-engrave on the
spot). Thought about getting a slice at the pizza joint
or a pint at O'Brien's Sandwich Bar but decided to save
my calories for later.
= =
I really wanted to try My Humble House in Esplanade Mall
- the buzz has been really good, and it was featured in
the most recent T&L or some similar magazine, and it was
really convenient, being in the same complex as the
concert hall. We almost turned around when we heard the
blasting techno music and the Eurotrash decor, but the
smells seemed nice and the prices, if not low, at least
within reason. Bennie and I looked at the carte and had
some tentative ideas; and it turned out that many of the
dishes we wanted were included on the $168-for-two set
New Year's meal, so we got that. It's good when the set
meal looks not unlike what I'd order on my own. The help
was very helpful, with varying levels of accomplishment
in the English language.
Pork jerky with green herbal sweet mayonnaise was not on
the list, but it came anyway, and we ate it, thinking it
was comped, and it was good, but then at bill time it
turned out to be $6 extra, a silly nickel-and-dime that
didn't really bother us but might cause others to feel
used. Sort of like bread and butter in Europe.
The Sun Sets on Fortune
Prosperity Tuna and Salmon Yusheng
This was a rather recherche version of the dish, with
sashimi-grade fish over julienne of nontraditional as
well as the usual ingredients: carrot, daikon, red and
yellow peppers, red cabbage, deep-fried lotus root,
yuzu pulp, toasted sesame seeds, seaweed, and a couple
unidentifiables in a sweet dressing. Also pok chui
crackers, hollow little pillows that I think must be
called that because they go "pok" when you chui on them.
Bennie and I both came up with the same thought at the
same time: if vegetables always tasted like this,
we'd be thin.
Flight of Fantasy
Braised Shark's Fin with Egg White, Crab Meat and Roe
This came a little too soon, because the strong tastes
of the yu sheng were still in our mouth. A couple
draughts of wine (swishing it around like mouthwash)
did the trick, and the wine was merely okay, so that
was fine. An abundance of shark fin in the most
concentrated chicken broth I've had in a long time,
with nice crab and slightly overdone roe. As SD1K and
I have discussed, this is one of those dishes that is
mostly for show or medicinal purposes and tends to
increase the price of a meal without enough flavor to
justify; but the version here did a good job trying.
Blessed Treasure
Braised Whole Abalone in Black Truffles Sauce
Near perfect: a small abalone each, about 2 oz, fresh,
very tender, in a sweetish (the only possible points
taken off, but given the sweet nature of new year food,
perhaps justifiable) black sauce quite redolent of
truffle flavor. The garnish was a perfect stalk of
green asparagus.
The Waves Beckon
Steamed Pacific King Prawn, Roasted Garlic
Too much garlic. We'd encountered this same flavor in a
lobster dish at the Sheraton in Taipei once. They use a
very pungent garlic and use tons of it on very delicate
(and super yummy) shellfish. The texture of the prawn
(one giant one each, about 2 oz) was gorgeous from the
steaming, but I'd still prefer the stronger taste of
broiled to go with this level of garlic heat. Abundant
sprinklings of raw scallion moderated rather than
enhanced the experience.
A Long History of Fortune
Jasmine Golden Fried Rice with Crab Meat and Diced
Chicken
Good yellow fried rice with tiny <2mm cubes of carrot
and ginger chicken breast and shreds of excellent crab.
I'd have preferred a noodle filler-upper, but that's
just me.
Earth Angel
Chilled Almond Tofu, Japanese Chestnut Cream
Dessert was light and pleasant, the almond float almost
unsweetened, the chestnut stuff delicious; garnishes
were tiny cubes (an obsessive-compulsive in the kitchen)
of strawberry, grass jelly, and lotus seed. Delicious.
Yirra Wirra or Yarra Warra or something Chard was fine,
virtually no oak, sunny tropical flavors, good acid,
a little low in body, but pleasant with the more
delicate dishes.
We closed the place down around 3:30, so there was
still time for a quick stroll up to the esplanade
library (good selection of music) and the roof terrace
for a good view of the spewing lion, then green tea ice
cream at Haagen-Dazs for like $8.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui conductor, with
Kam Ning, violin soloist. Let's see. The hall's native
acoustic is good, but the PA system is intrusive when
it's used. The orchestra is good, about on the level of
a middle-level professional orchestra in the US (i.e.,
I've played with only a few better and a large number of
worse). Lan Shui is much the same as when I met him
when he was a Bernstein student in the '80s, a bit of a
showman, not I think a deep musical thinker but a good
advocate for and popularizer of serious music. Kam Ning,
after a weakish start, came on gangbusters and proved
herself worthy of better than the second prize she'd got
a few years ago at the Queen Elizabeth competition.
The Candide overture has always been one of my favorites
ever since I butchered the violin solo part in 1974 or 5
- showed off the precision of the orchestra nicely (and
its few imprecisions, mostly in the upper strings, also).
Bernstein's Serenade (influenced by the ancient Greeks,
supposedly) was a good vehicle for Kam Ning; it starts
off slow and gives the soloist a chance to warm up, and
gradually through the movements works its way to some
fancy fiddling. Great piece, full of bits of West Side
Story (and Candide, too).
Kam Ning was back in the atrium signing autographs at
intermission, looking fresh as a daisy and gracious as
a diplomat, showing few signs of just having given a
performance of a most athletic piece of work.
After the interval, there was an amusing Q&A with the
audience (questions submitted in writing and prescreened
by the management; this is after all Singapore), where
Kam Ning and her upper-class British accent and demeanor
contrasted with Lan Shui's bumptious Yan-Can-Cookish
style. Both had good points to make, though.
Then the noisy, rousing Hussites Overture by Dvorak,
which I hadn't heard in maybe 30 years. Fun piece.
The program gives timings of the pieces: 5 min for the
overture, 30 for the serenade, 20 for intermission, and
14 for the other overture. This comes to 69 minutes, but
we went over in a most un-Singaporean way by 15 min or a
touch more. This owing perhaps to the Q&A. And then,
because of the insistence of a smallish but enthusiastic
audience, we had an encore, which Lan Shui described as
"the most famous piece of Chinese music." It's a tawdry
Socialist-realistic mishmosh called "Good News from
Beijing," and Bennie and I wondered what the implication
of its programming was. Got out of there at about ten of
and walked across the bridge and down to Lau Pa Sat,
the so-called festival market. It's much less festive
than perhaps it once was. The things that make it
attractive are: 1. it's open all hours; 2. the building
itself is of an interesting appearance (I've been in
several such commercial complexes that are arranged
radially in this way, but this is the neatest of all);
3. it's easy to get to, being exactly opposite the
United city ticket office. The selection of vendors
is pretty good, as is the food available from them. I
tend to go to sleazier markets, but then I don't stick
out like quite the same sore thumb, at least until I
start trying to talk. When we arrived after a pleasant
stroll, we found mjm already chowing on Indian food;
we greeted him and strolled around looking for likely
things to eat; settled on roast duck noodles and roast
pork rice from the roast duck store. The duck of course
was better. A side of gai lan was nicely done. We
waited around for a while, eventually Ch661 arrived
with the news that the others were still at the Raffles,
where they'd had high tea and Singapore Slings. It was,
truth to tell, getting late for people who had to be up
at 4 in the morning, so we said our respective goodbyes
and cabbed it home.
Returned to the room to find some further signs of
habitation, again nothing serious. So off for a peaceful
sleep and up at 4 to get ready for the flight (actually,
for me, 2, as that's when I woke up).
The cab to the airport came right on time, and we were
early to checkin, which went smoothly. The SATS lounge
was not really crowded - we were on the later UA flight,
so most of the guys from the 6:50 had cleared out by
the time we'd arrived. Snacks included curry puffs and
mushroom-cabbage pastries to accompany my Courvoisier
VSOP Exclusif, which I drank exclusively for old times'
sake (you don't get it outside Asia, and as it's a rather
harsh blend, I wouldn't buy it anyhow). We found
Flyertalker wwee in the lounge; we left Ch661 chatting
animatedly with him when, full of drinks and snacks, we
headed off to do our errands before boarding. I got some
Beanie monkeys and checked my e-mail, and then it was to
the gate for the swift but thorough security check and
onto the aircraft.
0119 800 SIN NRT 0720 1450 777 11A
also on this flight: msy-msp and prncess674 (8AB),
SD1K (8F) jan_az (11D), mjm (11F), Ch661 (13B),
wwee (17B). Bennie was in 1A.
Bennie's first-class meal:
TO BEGIN
Your selected entree will be served with fresh fruit,
cold cereals, yogurt and breakfast breads.
MAIN COURSE
Mushroom and tomato crepe with bechamel sauce
Chive scrambled eggs, crispy apple-smoked bacon,
oven-roasted dried tomatoes and roasted new potato
with chives
Walnut and raisin French toast with maple syrup
Mango and raisin compote, chicken sausage and clotted
cream
Steamed cod fish with Szechuan vegetables and black beans
Asparagus, seafood wonton of prawns, scallops, water
chestnuts and mushrooms and Shanghai noodles with carrot
julienne
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Garden fresh salad appetizer
Romaine lettuce, Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes and
radishes with a Caesar dressing
Chicken satay with dim sum
Char siu bun and Thai chili sauce with coriander
or
Chilled chicken tandoori with cream cheese and bistro
wraps
Vegetarian wrap of mushrooms, olives, basil pesto with
pine nuts, curry mayonnaise with Parmesan, mozzarella
and cream cheese
DESSERT
Fruit tartlet
Chocolate cream cornet
Her report: The steamed fish: truly remarkable! The
texture was perfect. This fish preparation was among
the most successful of anything I've eaten on United.
I truly can't imagine how they achieved this. This was
one of those rare entrees which must have gotten lost
on the way to some other intended destination. The
seafood wontons: extremely firm, but most flavorful.
Our meal:
TO BEGIN
Your selected entree will be served with breakfast
breads, butter and fruit preserves.
I was surprised to find blueberry pinwheels among
the croissants and muffins (the FA was pushing these
hard, telling me they were very good and I should
have one in addition to the blueberry thing; I didn't
as the blue thing was fine, and big enough.
MAIN COURSE
Gruyere cheese omelette
Grilled chicken sausage and roasted new potatoes
with chives
Singapore-style stir-fried bee hoon noodles with
char siu chicken
Bay shrimp, vegetables and Thai fish sauce
Looked ugly, tasted good. Salty, though.
Continental breakfast
Breakfast pastries, fruit, yogurt and cereal
I was interested to be asked as late in the process
as I was - initially gratified that there were that
many 1Ks around, my feeling turned to a bit of dismay
as the FA, an older guy with the Mainland Look, walked
past several times and took some obvious non-1K orders
before mine. Luckily I got my choice - in fact I got
the last Chinese breakfast; later I called another FA
over and asked for the onboard service director. And
what happened but this same old character came by and
introduced himself as the purser. I asked him why he'd
used this irregular procedure and was told rather
haughtily that there were a lot of Premiers aboard ...
I pointed out I was a 1K, and he sort of stammered about
a bit and then gave me a rather peculiar and unconvincing
apology. Afterward, all the rest of the FAs were okay,
but this one remained chilly - I was not asked for an
alcoholic beverage order, and even when he came by with
the water he neglected to give me a refill. So I'm
probably going to have him written up. I saw him
sort of cringing in the corner as I disembarked.
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
International cheese selection with fresh fruit
Brie, Kikorangi Blue and Port-wine Cheddar cheese
or
Chilled chicken tandoori with cream cheese and bistro
wraps; vegetarian wrap of mushrooms, olives, basil
pesto with pine nuts, curry mayonnaise with Parmesan,
mozzarella and cream cheese
I passed, not being really into the dairy thing.
DESSERT
Coconut panna cotta with sea coconut in a spicy palm
sauce
But I made an exception for this: it was pretty good,
a little gummy but with nice coconut and vanilla
flavors, the "sea coconut" being what I know as baby
coconut in heavy syrup. Turns out the meal service was
started so late (50 min before landing) that most people
didn't get any dessert - I'd asked for mine while others
were getting their snack. Had a Courvoisier with.
Transit was uneventful, except for a huge line at the
security station owing to another flight coming in at
the same time. They opened a lane for 1K, UGS, and F,
and we breezed through with no trouble.
The club was nowhere near so crowded as on the trip out,
so we were able to find a bank of seats together, which
was great; this time all the conference rooms were in
use. Between the beer machine and the showers, we were
kept amused; msy-msp brought out his new phone for all
to be impressed by. At one point msy-msp, jan_az, and I
went to look for sushi, but the place we were pointed
to had run out; oh, well, next time. Eventual fond
goodbyes: first the LAX flight took SD1K and Ch661;
then Bennie went to try for the JFK flight; then jan_az
and I headed off for San Fran.
0119 852 NRT SFO 1700 0900 744 23AB was 13?, 16A
At the RCC we'd discovered that the next leg of jan_az's
trip had been upgraded, so we requested seats together.
There weren't any doubles left upstairs, so we settled
for downstairs, which was fine except that we were by
the galley; the FAs promised us they'd be quiet between
services, and as jan_az had an Ambien and I had my
booze, we both slept fine when the time came to rest.
TO BEGIN
Smoked salmon timbale and peppered beef appetizer
Cucumber onion salad with lemon aioli
Pretty good salmon made into a funny package with the
salad inside - an odd conception.
Garden salad with mozzarella cheese
Honey Dijon dill vinaigrette dressing
MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with wild mushroom sauce
Basil garlic mashed potatoes and snap peas with red
peppers
The meat was rare! and pretty good, although a bit
salty. The mushrooms were very tame. Accompaniments
tasted good.
Pulehu breast of chicken with teriyaki sauce
Stir-fried rice and snap peas with red peppers
Japanese Obento selection
An appetizer of tuna with scallion nuta mix, a stuffed
tomato, pumpkin tofu with sesame miso, and green tea soba
noodles; a main course of steamed snapper, hiratake
mushrooms and vegetables, taro potatoes with shimeji
mushrooms, carrots, peas and steamed rice
Served with green tea
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Brie and Pepper Jack cheese
Double chocolate cake
Raspberry and chocolate sauce
This was a brownie-type thing with mini-chips baked
in. The sauce was really a drizzled-on glaze. It was
large. Tasted like Sara Lee.
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Creamed spinach omelette with shiitake mushroom sauce
Home-fried potatoes, chicken sausage and a fresh fruit
appetizer
or
Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt
The fruit were: half a firm-ripe papaya, some grapefruit
segments, unripe but sweet strawberries, nice kiwi, and
the usual grapes. Pretty nice.
The RCC hosted jan_az and me for a while before her
flight parted us. I stayed on for another two yawning
hours before wandering off to my gate.
0119 294 SFO BWI 1300 2100 320 2A
Started off with an annoyance. First, the flight had
been rescheduled back two hours from 1100, something
I didn't figure out until I was in Singapore (a failure
of the notification system - whereas on my next set of
flights a 10-minute change of schedule generated both
telephone and e-mail informations); then, it boarded
50 late. Continued with an amusement - guy claimed my
seatmate and I were in his and his lady's seats. He
must have been dyslexic or something. And as jan_AZ's
Ambien must have inspired me, I immediately snoozed as
got comfy in my seat. But when I came to it was half an
hour later, and we were still on the ground. I asked my
seatmate about this, and he reported that in all the
delay the meals had gone illegal or something and the
plane had to be decatered and recatered. Oh, yes, the
other annoyance was that the equipment had been changed
from a 757 to a 320. Not while I slept; I just forgot
to mention it earlier in this paragraph.
Eventually we took off, and it was a good flight with
great service by the lone FA serving our section. I
was too woozy to ask his name, but I'll try to have
him written up as well. He's a middle-aged graying
black guy based in DC and has enough seniority that he
remembers to do stuff like warm up the bowls of nuts.
TO BEGIN
Heartland field greens with carrots and yellow bell
peppers, Asian sesame ginger or classic Caesar
dressing
What came: the salad, as advertised, pretty fresh,
with a choice of Conway's Asian sesame ginger or
Natural Taste oriental dressing. The first ingredients
of the Conway's are soybean oil and water; of the other
the first are sugar and peaches. Out of perversity I
tried the Natural Taste: it tasted like sweet-and-salty
sesame peach juice. I like the Conway better.
MAIN COURSE
Chicago-style filet mignon sandwich with caramelized
onions, horseradish mayonnaise and roasted red pepper
in garlic and oil
Four 1-oz slices of medium-well meat, okay-tasting,
the other elements as advertised; a decent meal.
Breaded breast of chicken with a green peppercorn
sauce, roasted red potatoes, baby carrots and
asparagus
My seatmate had this; it was a very large serving,
and he ate all of it.
Portobello mushroom stuffed gnocchi with basil cream
sauce, toasted pine nuts and shredded Parmesan cheese
1B had this, and it smelled good.
DESSERT
Ice cream with sundae toppings
Very chocolatey and very vanillary ice creams served
with a pirouette wafer. I passed on the sauce.
Continued to snooze through most of the flight until we
landed about an hour and ten late. My Carol had circled
the airport several times in the little Forester but
was reasonably gracious, not razzing me the way she had
in 2000 and 2001 about United's on-time performance.
She's a Southwest and Valujet flyer and has no real
right to cast any stones about anything anyway.
And so back home. Miles: 22892; segments:7; 134 hours,
57 1/2 of them under the control of UA.
= =
US 607 BWI PIT 0945 1044 752 14A
Why anyone would want to upgrade on a 40-minute flight I
don't know, but of course there are many in my boat, with
500-milers to burn and noplace to use them. Anyhow, my
upgrade didn't clear, and I was none the worse. Slept for
the entire flight.
US1002 PIT PHX 1150 1430 321 3A
A fairly attentive crew, although I'd gotten a weird vibe
from them, especially from the older lady whose accent
seemed to change with the situation.
Lunch choices were a chicken salad wrap or a beef salad,
the latter being about 3 oz of filet medium-well, coriander
and pepper crusted (so the taste was like pastrami, only
nowhere near as good), with a mixed-green salad (smelled
like mildew), cooked red onions (wretched), grilled red
peppers (ok but insufficiently peeled), pastina salad
(the pasta were in little clumps like insect eggs but
nowhere so tasty as insect eggs), and a dressing that was
95% oil (cheap salad oil; I found a few chips of garlic
in the bottom, but it was hard to get them out with the
utensils provided (no spoon)). I got many of my calories
from Courvoisier (4) and packets of cashews (6).
The Hungarian mushroom soup was also on offer; it's the
gem of the US Air offerings, but it greps me every time,
so I passed.
Landed pretty much on time, nothing fancy.
= =
Dinner with Ann and Bill - steaks, of which I ate barely
12 oz. I made dan dan noodles to go with. The wine was a
SE Australian Shiraz packaged for the US market, some
aboriginal painting of an animal or something on the
bottle, oversweet, underflavored. Pulled out a Lindemans
that was many times better.
Carol was due in late, but nobody was up to driving 30
miles drunk to pick her up, so she had to take the
StupidShuttle, which got her there around 1 at a cost of
only 22.50.
= =
Breakfast a la Phoenix: fajitas and beer. I marinated
the 5 lb of skirt steak (there were 4 of us) in cumin and
vinegar and grilled them on the gas grill; chopped up a
few tomatoes, cooked some onions and peppers; Carol
marinated some avocado cubes in lemon juice (trees on
premises), and we had a feast; home-squeezed orange and
tangelo juices completed the meal. Friends Carl and Ellen
and John showed at 11 to take us off-roading in the
Tonto National Forest (sort of a misnomer, as there are
hardly any trees); an exciting trip through a wash under
glowering skies, then up to Cottonwood Spring, which is
this funny little oasis in the desert, then out to the
Apache Trail, where we discovered the gate locked and
the combination not working, so we retraced our steps
partway and then south and out another gate. Despite
the overcast, it was very beautiful, and Carol had her
new 4-megapixel toy ($100 or so at some remainder place)
to take plenty of pictures. And back home for beers and
more fajitas (there were of course enough left over for
the whole lot of us the second time round), then to
wait around for dinner, which was turkey, mashed taters
(scratch, with garlic), stuffing (Wal-Mart), and more
Shiraz. Bananas Foster for afters.
= =
Bill had to run off to Philadelphia, so we said goodbye
and went to the flea market, apparently a very famous
one. I didn't care for it, of course, but I bought two
kokopelli place mats for Carol and a Chinese new year
beanie monkey and some Arizona pistachios for Ann.
Decided to go to Royal Thai for lunch before taking
Carol to her Southwest flight back to BWI. Had a seafood
hot pot - squid, shrimp, mussels, the usual suspects,
with bean thread noodles in a very scanty (almost all
absorbed by the noodles) black-pepper scented broth,
very yummy, came with a chile-lime sauce to hot it up
as required; penang beef spicy, which was ok but not
spicy at all; and fried catfish in basil, medium, which
came extra spicy and extra good. The owner was reasonably
nice to us but not so nice as he is when Carl is eating
with us (Carl is his landlord). Then to the airport,
where we dropped Carol off and headed back out. Telephone
call. Flight cancelled because of weather. So we picked
her up and went off to Carl and Ellen's for cocktails,
after which we all went off (after some discussion of
possibly going back to Royal Thai) to this Mexican
dive called Susie's I think: pretty standard food, with
tamales, enchiladas, and the like, which everyone else
but me had; my stuff was more interesting, a bowl of red
chile (3.50) and a carnitas taco and a lengua taco (1.25
each). Back to Carl and Ellen's for a chat, and then it
was time to take me to the airport.
US 174 PHX PIT 2355 0539 321 3D
Got there in plenty of time; no line at the check-in or
at security, so I had an hour or more to waste at the
gate - spent it attempting to do some work on the computer
(no success). I had seat 3F, but as the Mexican food had
sort of upset my stomach, I asked to change to an aisle,
so they gave me 3D instead. When it came time to board,
it turned out that the plane was half full at best in both
classes, so I had row 3 to myself anyway. They offered a
"small roast beef sandwich with potato salad," but I just
had a Courvoisier and a couple packets of cashews, and
then off to the land of nod. We got in quite early - the
flight took just 3 hrs - and I thought I could make the
next flight, so I went to the US Airways Club desk -
no offer of space on the earlier flight (as there would
have been on United). So I sat and drank grapefruit juice
and read e-mail for a couple hours. Back to the gate,
where I finally had my upgrade clear - the agent asked,
"do you STILL want to sit in first class?" to which the
answer was, "I guess so."
US 930 PIT BOS 0750 0932 734 1D
Short flight, piece of cake. I passed on refreshment and
slept for the whole hour flight.
Carol, turns out, got out at noonish and home about
half a day after I did.
trouble getting my Sweet Spot to take care of the
entire outbound ... after several minutes of my
trying to explain how I wanted him to document my
record, the young agent did the right thing: simply
gave up and said, just turn in the thing tomorrow
at LAX. I promised I would (and I did).
Security was pretty long - not hairy hairy, the way it
sometimes is, just a bit annoying. They were doing
bunches of extra checks it appears: what's this yellow
downrating all about, anyway? Took half an hour or so.
The RCC was pretty empty - one agent, half a dozen
passengers, a full array of newspapers from the sublime
(FT) to the ridiculous (Boston Herald), lots of plastic
pastries.
0114 75 BOS SFO 0815 1155 752 2D
Joanne, one of my favorite checker inners, was working
this flight. I hadn't seen her in some time; we chatted,
and I asked after her boyfriend (whom I'd met once when
they were working C21 together) ... turns out they'd
been married six years, so I guess it had been some time.
Flight was at half, with a couple empties in front.
FAs were fine - not gushy friendly, but they did
their job well and with at least the ghost of a smile.
TO BEGIN
Fresh from the bakery
A selection of pastries, croissants and bagels
with butter, cream cheese and fruit preserves
MAIN COURSE
Sauteed spinach, egg and Boursin cheese in filo pastry
Mornay sauce, tomato salsa, chicken sausage and fresh fruit
French toast with a cream cheese, banana and walnut filling
Maple cream, Canadian bacon, pork sausage and fresh fruit
Fresh seasonal fruit platter
For the lighter appetite, we offer a variety of fresh fruit
with yogurt.
FEATURED WINES
Montevina Sierra Foothills Sauvignon Blanc 2002
Placido Veneto Pinot Grigio 2002
Xplorador Rapel Valley Merlot 2001
Canyon Road California Shiraz 2001
I had the fruit plate senza dairy products. All
the fruit were juicy, fresh, and aside from the
strawberries, tasteless. A croissant was okay.
A Courvoisier was harsh and tasteless (nursed it
before, during, and after breakfast, as it was far
too raw to drink down in a hurry).
Flight had a few bouts of turbulence (what's the
difference between moderate chop and moderate
turbulence? we had some of both, according to ATC).
Toward the end, a very hot and gooey chocolate chip
cookie, which went well with another Courvoisier,
which was VSOP this time. We landed a couple early
and I had time to do my e-mail at the RCC.
0114 987 SFO LAX 1245 1402 320 3B
Hustled down here just in time for boarding, only
they closed the door just after opening it ... the
pilot had called in a tizzy as they'd overfilled the
gas tank or something. A 735 had been scheduled, but
for unknown reasons they swapped in a 320 that had
been supposed to go to Washington, with the tanks
filled up for that destination. So lest we be heavy
on landing (a full flight, too), they had to deload
(their term) a bunch of fuel. Unfortunately, when there
is an equipment change, even to a bigger aircraft, all
the seats get jiggered around; I'd had 2A, now I got an
aisle; no matter, I slept through the whole flight. We
took off half an hour late and landed 15 late. And then
we drove all around California, as I groused to my
seatmate, and we were at the gate 15 min later still.
The Radisson LAX Airport shuttle is supposed to be on
the half hour, so I figure I missed it, so I walked.
It's about 12 min, with a couple of nasty crossings.
Checked in, and the agent said that I was on the
executive floor. In fact, I was on the highest floor
that doesn't require a key, but that floor was 5. No
matter, it was a decent room, a foot wider than it had
to be and about the right length, with a good view of
the runway where we'd landed.
My friend Manny came over and took me to the Green
Field Churrascurria in Long Beach, which was pretty
good, even though it was a quiet night. He's apparently
a regular there, as the waitress recognized him right
away. A quite big place; I asked the Maitre d' if this
was related to the restaurant of the same name just
outside Washington, and he replied that not only was
it part of the same chain (of 7 nationwide), the chef
who had been cooking there when Bennie and I had last
eaten there was now in the kitchen here.
It's AYCE with two parts, the buffet, which is your
normal buffet with some abnormal ingredients, and the
meat, which is brought to your table by a slave, er,
employee, with the picturesque title of "meat runner."
Feijoada was pretty good: the beans had perhaps not
been cooked quite long enough, but they were well
flavored with sausage, pig tail, pig skin, and pig ear.
Albondigas were your ordinary meatballs in red sauce;
what distinguished these was that even though the dish
was redolent of cheese, the cheese was in the sauce,
not in the meatballs. So I went back for seconds.
Collards and garlic - an odd dish, julienned greens
sauteed with almost as much garlic (slivered) as
greens. I liked these and had seconds also.
Steamed shrimp - average.
Something labeled chicken stroganoff was extremely
peculiar. It was really Newburg sauce with bits of
boneless white meat, rather few and far between,
floating in it.
Frango a passarinho was chicken dark meat bits, hacked
through the bone, marinated in molho cru, and roasted
considerably overmuch.
Seafood salad had squid and octopus (good), shrimp (ok),
mussels (bad), and fake crab in a very sour dressing.
I passed on a variety of soups, salads, yucky sweet
doughnut-like pastries, and American-style buffet items
including various colors of Jell-O.
And on to the main event. Lest My Carol be consumed
with unease for my health, I must mention here that I
ate less than 2 lbs of meat and got up from the table
the same waist size and with room left in my stomach.
They start with less interesting things, so you fill
up on cheap stuff, and then the good stuff comes out.
This verified by the fact that the guy who brings out
the cheap stuff is not the same as the guy who brings
out the good stuff, and when people sit down, guy #1
comes to that table several times before guy #2. Manny
shooed guy #1 away consistently, and although I got a
few things from him, we ate mostly rare meat as served
by guy #2.
Garlic beef was chuck medium, okay; Manny turned his
nose up at this, as apparently did most people; at the
end of the meal, we saw others being offered garlic
beef, and it was obviously the same skewer, with the
meat now cooked down to a dark brown rubberiness.
What was represented as pepper steak was, well, the
same as garlic beef, only heavily seasoned with black
pepper. I asked Manny to experience what it did to the
wine - he maintained that it killed it; my position was
that it brought up the spiciness of the wine and sent
down its fruitiness, not altogether bad.
Sausage was also ok, perfectly unremarkable.
Roast quail in molho cru was pretty good.
Braised brisket was as expected, only less fatty; I
found it edible but stringy. I got a piece with a
quarter teaspoon of fat on it, and that one bite was
quite nice.
Presently guy #2 replaced guy #1.
The skirt steak was the gem of the evening; of course
it came out only once. It was rare; it was neither
marinated nor oversalted. I could have made my entire
meal out of it.
"Filet" was probably top sirloin (aka shell sirloin).
It was medium-rare and quite good.
"Sirloin steak" was not like any sirloin I've
encountered before; it was a smooth-grained meat
with relatively little chew; tender and with a
mild flavor; also rare to medium-rare. My guess:
poor man's filet, also known as false or mock filet,
the tenderest part of the chuck, cut in a peculiar way
and then sliced also in a peculiar way. The second gem,
to my view, of the meal.
"Top sirloin" was probably a nicer part of the tri-tip,
see below. Thinking on it, it might have been just the
same as tri-tip, only done medium-rare as opposed to
the medium.
Tri-tip was decent, done a little over; a flavorsome
but chewy cut that has to be cooked either moist and
to death or just barely with a kiss of flame. This
was about in the middle, not good for a cut that is
part of the round.
There were also a number of things we passed on, such as
various kinds of chicken, turkey, and pork loin (Manny
had a piece of pork loin, and it appeared ok but perhaps
a tad dry). Also they wheeled in a big old cart of beef
ribs, which we eschewed in favor of the rare stuff. In
retrospect I would have liked to try one.
Rutherford 26th Anniversary Cabernet 2000 - Manny had
asked me to pick a wine with both acid and fruit, to
stand up to the heavyish fare, and I chose this, no
bargain at $38, but quite a well made and pleasant wine:
dry without being acerbic, acid without being sour,
fruity without being punchy. Plums, berries, and some
evergreen scents in front, a pretty smooth balanced
palate with some oak, spices after with plums coming
back for a good strong finish.
Back to the hotel, a good half hour drive, and thanks
very much for the company and the conversation, Manny.
The bed at the Radisson seemed nice enough, conducive
for sleeping and then also for getting up 7 hours later
when one's back starts to hurt.
I left nice and early in anticipation of lines at the
airport. Good airport shuttle from the hotel. No lines -
check-in and security took ten minutes tops.
0115 891 LAX NRT 1115 1555 744 16H
Also on this flight: Chemist661, I-flybynight, jan_az,
SanDiego1K (left to right) in row 15. Also Bennie in 5J.
We didn't know about I-flybynight until we were aboard.
He was headed to Singapore on his way to Colombo or
someplace and hadn't been planning on coming to the
dinner, because it would have meant a tight time getting
to the airport. By the end of the flight he was well
convinced to join us at the Jumbo!
Loaded up early (I was one of the last to board and
had to endure the line) but took off late. No matter;
the headwinds were negligible, and we landed half an
hour early. Patches of turbulence; mostly an ok and
uneventful flight. Flight attendants pretty good (but
definitely high seniority). Interesting - even though
we were traveling totally in daylight, most people
slept for a substantial part of the journey. Myself, I
slept a few spells, my longest about 2 hours. Occupied
myself with the Food Channel (the Hopkins County world
championship stew competition; Dallas on $40 a day),
some e-mail, a touch of work, and this report.
This is the first-class meal that Bennie enjoyed:
TO BEGIN
Crab cake with lobster Choron sauce
Sauteed baby spinach
or
Prosciutto with mozzarella cheese and cantaloupe
Tomatoes, Kalamata olives and roasted garlic
flavored red wine vinaigrette
Garden fresh salad
Asian sesame ginger or creamy Gorgonzola dressing
MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with bearnaise sauce and sauteed shrimp
with garlic; baked stuffed potato topped with Cheddar
cheese
Grilled lamb chops with cranberry orange demi-glace
Oven-roasted three potato hash and asparagus
Chinese-style duck with honey lemon sauce
Fried egg noodles with a vegetable medley
Steamed rice is also available upon request.
Japanese Obento selection
An appetizer of shrimp with fish roe, zucchini with
miso paste, crabmeat roll with egg yolk vinegar and
green tea buckwheat noodles; a main course of steamed
white fish with shiitake mushrooms, marinated chicken,
stir-fried burdock and steamed rice
Served with green tea
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Brie, Gorgonzola and New England Cheddar cheese
Ice cream with sundae toppings
Fresh seasonal fruit
MIDFLIGHT SNACK
Mrs. Fields cookies and milk
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Chicken, spinach and ricotta crepes with Hollandaise
sauce, fresh fruit appetizer
or
Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt
This is the meal that my colleagues and I enjoyed:
TO BEGIN
Smoked salmon with Parma ham; capers and lemon aioli
Pleasant if a bit mushy salmon, pleasant if a bit dry
ham. The capers looked forlorn, three sad squashed
ones, sided with an equally squashed but tasty olive.
The garnish - very fresh frisee - was tasty. Good with
a glass of Champers.
Garden salad, Balsamic Dijon vinaigrette dressing
Rather bitter greens, mostly red-leaf lettuce. I ate
mine dry; the label on the little cup of dressing did
not mention Dijon or any other kind of mustard.
MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with Hollandaise sauce; home-fried
potatoes with green beans and carrot batonnets
As I told SD1K before the flight, I've had good luck
with steaks on United. This one was quite tasty and
very tender, although things were somewhat backward,
because the potatoes had been done medium-rare and
the meat medium-well, The veggies were a bit discolored
but appropriately crisp-tender. The Ch. d'Orsan Cotes du
Rhone was slightly too sweet for the meal, but on the
other hand the other red, a Shiraz I hadn't heard of
before, probably would have been worse.
Roasted breast of chicken with char siu glaze
Steamed rice and baby bok choy
SD1K said that the chicken wasn't worth eating, and
in fact it looked pretty pristine when I saw the FA
taking away her plate. SD said the rice and veg were
good, though.
Japanese Obento selection
An appetizer of shrimp with fish roe, zucchini with
miso paste, crabmeat roll with egg yolk vinegar and
green tea buckwheat noodles; a main course of steamed
white fish with shiitake mushrooms, marinated chicken,
stir-fried burdock and steamed rice
Served with green tea
I-flybynight and jan_az had this; Jan said that it
was good, but she wouldn't bother ordering it again.
I didn't see what Ch661 had.
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Gorgonzola and New England Cheddar cheese
Eli's Black Bottom pie
The pie turned out to be that apple tart thing that
we have all grown to know and hate. I had a glass of
Port instead.
MIDFLIGHT SNACK
Enjoy our midflight snack.
Potato chips, Oreos, Kit Kats, and more of the
apple tart. I believe that SD1K and jan_az requested
and got hot fudge sundaes, though.
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Penne pasta with spring vegetables in a vodka cream
sauce, Parmesan cheese and a fresh fruit appetizer
or
Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt
Turned out we got penne pasta with zucchini (tasted
like it had been boiled in garlic oil), yellow squash
(didn't eat), and tomatoes in a tomato sauce with a
modicum of cheese and no discernible vodka or cream.
It was fairly decent.
The bubblies were Pommery Brut Royal, a pleasant,
lemony, not particularly complex or interesting
blend (which they served first) and Pol Roger Brut,
which was toasty, with many ripe fruit tastes and
layers of yumminess.
Interesting note: jan_az and I took a brief walk
downstairs and were informed that we were supposed
to stay where we belonged. The lunacy of this policy,
whereby we were allowed to stay right by the cockpit
but were not allowed on other parts of the plane, was
perhaps not lost on some of the FAs, but they remained
adamant in their enforcement of the policy. Bennie was
also not allowed to visit us upstairs, which is of
course pretty nuts: why anyone would sit in first and
then trek upstairs to wreak havoc when they could sit in
biz and not have to worry about the stairs before
attempting their hypothetical nefarious deeds I just
cannot figure.
Fairly nifty new terminal to arrive at, but the club
was nowhere near so nice as the upstairs-downstairs one
had been. Further, this one was grotesquely crowded,
with soft-drink machines that obviously could not keep
up with the demand. Interestingly, nobody aside from
myself was using the beer machines (of which there are
twice as many as soft-drink machines. At SD1K's
suggestion we asked the concierge if we could use a
meeting room to get away from the madding crowd. With my
boarding pass as hostage, we got the room so at least we
got to sit. Bunches of business to transact (bento boxes
to order, certificates to transfer, bump opportunities
to check) and showers to take (30 min wait, with beepers
to let people know when it was their turn), and soon it
was time to return to the gate. By the way, we landed
at the gate to the left of the club and embarked at the
gate to the right of the club. The prelanding video
shows the old gates and clubs, which might confuse some.
0116 801 NRT SIN 1730 2355 777 14J
Also on this flight: jan_az and SD1K (row 8 center
section), and Ch661 (the aisle next to me). mjm's (17
right aisle) upgrade didn't clear. Bennie was in 3F.
I tried the Shiraz, which turned out to be Jindalee
Murray-Darling Victoria 2003 - I found it pleasant
textured, with rather nice raspberry tones, but
impossibly sweet; glad I had the other wine with dinner
on the previous flight.
This was Bennie's first-class meal:
TO BEGIN
Crabmeat salad with diced vegetables and vinaigrette
dressing; papaya wedge and mesclun salad with
Asian-style dressing
MAIN COURSE
Grilled filet mignon with a creamy wild mushroom sauce
Buttered spaetzle and sauteed spinach
Thai chicken curry with diced pumpkin
Chicken flavored rice and marinated onions
Shrimp, scallops and cuttlefish with Chinese noodles
Vegetable stir-fry with peas, carrots, mushrooms and
water chestnut
Soup and sandwich platter
Chunky potato and bacon chowder and roast beef sandwich
with horseradish cream spread
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Kikorangi blue and Brie cheese
Tropical sherbet medley
Orange, mango and raspberry flavored
This was our meal:
TO BEGIN
Herb-marinated shrimp
Mesclun salad with Asian-style dressing
Three very firm medium shrimp sided with
still-frozen tomato wedges and some greens;
the dressing was essentially soy and sesame.
MAIN COURSE
Orange and honey braised pork chop; chicken rice,
carrot spaghetti and sauteed spinach with bacon
Pulehu breast of chicken with teriyaki sauce
Stir-fried rice and snap peas with red peppers
Yuzu-flavored red snapper with taro potato, grilled
yuba, mushrooms and hanagata rice with yukari powder
This was okay, the very red red snapper somewhat
overcooked - no surprise - but fresh, the yuzu sauce
pleasantly citrusy. The accompaniments were one coin-
size bite each of carrot and starchy white root and
two good-size blobs of decent rice with purple plum
powder (try saying that several times in a row!).
The Leon Beyer Pinot Blanc (vintage?) was appropriately
acid, with its own fruitiness working well with the
snapper sauce. The menu says "intense flavors of yellow-
skinned apple; different from Chardonnay" - the latter
half of the description is right.
DESSERT
Tropical sherbet medley
Orange, mango and raspberry flavored
A mostly uneventful night-time flight during which
most people uneventfully slept. Flight came in almost
half an hour late owing, they said, to headwinds. A
very primitive version of Airshow on this flight
provided little clue about anything. Disembarkation,
immigration, and getting to the hotel (S$20 split 4
ways) were a snap.
Conrad Centennial, 2 Temasek Boulevard. Quite nice
place, although the corridors had a bit of that overripe
tropical smell. Bennie and I were given a one-bed room
on a low floor; when I questioned this, we were right
away assigned 1515, a quite nice city view room with two
extremely comfy beds. Took a look at jan_az's diamond-
level room, which overlooked Marina Bay (although with
the Pan Pacific obtruding) from the 30th floor, and then
back down home for a pleasant night's sleep.
We got up, and it was bright and sunny, so Bennie and I
decided to take a walk down to the waterfront. There's
a food hall on the way, so we poked in there, but it's
tiny and uninspiring; so we walked through the Pan
Pacific; just beyond there's a fairly bustling one
called Rasa Marina Food Court; nothing appealed, though,
the smells pretty bland and boring. However, in the
Leisureplex by the Mandarin Oriental, there's yet
another, and it appeared to be the most appetizing of
the lot. Plus there's a beef brisket stall.
Breakfast
The beef brisket set was a substantial portion of
leanish beef that had been stewed with soy and
five-spice with a fair amount of shin gristle
(cooked to an exquisite tender jelliness) over
gai lan, with rice and broth on the side; a good
deal for S$4.
A mixed beef soup was honeycomb tripe and brisket cubes
with gai lan in the same broth, sided with rice, for the
same cost; this was considerably blander than the other,
but the two supplied hot sauces - one with fresh hot
peppers, minced onions, and salt, the other red peppers
and salt fried to a dark brown in oil - helped.
We went to the Esplanade to get our tickets for the
next day's Casual Concert and then walked down to
Chinatown for a light wander before our lunch date.
On the way to Chinatown, we found the United CTO,
one of the last of a dying breed. Stopped in for a
chat with a pleasant set of agents.
Back to the riverfront to find jan_az and SD1K, who
met us right on time, a tad early in fact, so we
hopped the elevators to
Lunch
Sichuan Dou Hua
UOB tower 1, 60th floor
where the pleasant maitre d' seated us at a window
table overlooking the river (not that the place was
packed, it wasn't). The menu is extensive, with
Cantonese dishes as well as the Szechwan food that
the place is named for. We had, though, a number of
constraints here; a few taste preferences, plus we
had to bear in mind the fact that we were going to
be eating all the chilli crab we could in just a few
hours. We looked fairly blankly at the menu, and
after a few tentative suggestions of some heavy dishes,
we decided that small plates were the way to go. Soon
it was time to order. I looked at the waitress sort
of blankly and said, one of everything (actually,
just one of everything on the Sichuan dian xing list).
A goodly amount of food, not impossible, but certainly
ample. I think they were probably laughing at us a bit
in the back, but our meal was actually pretty good.
They serve tea in this funny way, with the tea leaves
and stuff in your cup already when they shoot the hot
water a good distance out of the long-spouted kettle;
with some skill and luck the water lands at its proper
destination. Much fun. The stuff in the cup was fun,
too, a medicinal blend of wolfberry, Chinese date,
some white flower, assorted herbals, and a nice mild
semi-fermented tea.
The food was a good selection of stuff, something for
everyone, and my undeserved reputation for culinary
savvy was not diminished.
The first things to come out were fried buns with minced
chicken, pleasant but nothing to write home about.
The shumai were some of the best I've had; I didn't bring
it up with the assembled company, but I'm pretty sure
that minced pork fat had a bit to do with the success.
Pan-fried dumplings with chives and chicken were yummy as
well; the rather similar boiled dumplings with chives and
chicken more delicate, which was appealing, but both a
little waterlogged and a bit dry around the edges by the
time I got around to tasting them.
I was surprised by the bao - these were a sweetened dough
stuffed with mushrooms and chopped mustard greens - I was
expecting pork from the looks of them (one disadvantage
of just saying yes is one forgets what one ordered).
Suan la chow show (spicy sweet-sour wonton) were less
sour and spicy than I'm accustomed to, but a nice
scallion flavor in the filling came out with the
sweetness.
Glutinous rice with pork floss were festive and
tasty, the pork shreds sweet and savory; unfortunately
the baked meat pie (8 sizable wedges for S$4, the same
price as everything that wasn't $3) tasted almost
exactly the same.
There was a fish-paste dumpling with pepper that was
notable not only for its pepperiness but because I'd
never had the dish before. I might order it again: the
jury's still out.
Our final dish (which, alas, came with everything else)
was dan dan noodles, this version somewhat soupy and
topped with dry-fried meat bits in addition to the
usual cabbagey and oniony things.
I hope that people were sufficiently amused by the
experience, which included nice views northeast and
southeast through the slightly overdecorated windows.
The ladies wanted to see Chinatown, so we escaped from
this excellent confinement and walked south to the CTO,
which unfortunately had closed; but at least we have
additional witnesses to the fact that it still exists.
Then to a bookstore and inland to our destination. SD1K,
jan_az, and Bennie had foot reflexology sessions while I
wandered around, seeing numerous amusing sights, such as
a Buddhist temple, an alley of weird medicinal animal
parts, and a ticket agency called Travel Buzz. Returned
to the massage parlor, and we all went back to the hotel
together, via taxicab that it took us half an hour to
find.
Bennie and I had a little daycap at the lobby bar, where
I had the two-for-one Tiger beer, and she had a dish of
mango ice cream (actually sorbet) with passion-fruit soup
and a hazelnut-milk chocolate tuile.
Returned to the hotel room to discover that my bed had
been slept in and a bottle of half-drunk water had been
left in the bathroom. What the ???? but a quick check
showed nothing important added or subtracted from or to
our possessions. Oh, a tray was on my bed with traces
of elite amenities; the fruit in the fruit bowl had
disappeared; and there was what looked like a prayer mat
on the floor, although the way it was positioned the
person would have had to be facing away from Mecca to
use it. No biggie, and I didn't bother to fuss with the
front desk.
We all reconvened at the executive lounge in the hotel
(fairly nice dim sum and other snacks, almost enough to
make a meal of, although skewed toward sweets) and then
it was downstairs to catch the van to take us to the
main event, chilli crab at Jumbo Seafood Restaurant.
Happy chaos there as we made ourselves home amid the
celebrating throngs and the appetizing smells of their
dinners. Present: msy-msp and prncess674, dlouise37 and
Mrs. dlouise37; Flying Buccaneer, zvezda, RustyC,
Gary (no handle), mjm, I-flybynight, ws8n, Ch661,
SD1K, jan_az, violist, and Bennie.
Satays of chicken and beef were a gentle introduction;
pretty standard everywhere in the known world, I guess,
but the peanut sauce was well above average. After this
appetizer, the food came fast and furious.
Stir-fried venison with ginger and scallion was what
you'd expect, only the venison tasted more like beef.
I loved the sambal kangkong, water convolvulus in a
savory slightly spicy sauce.
A steamed sea bass was done a bit over to modern tastes
but had good flavor.
Chilli crab, a festive dish suitable for new year's, is
always a sweet and ketchupy dish; this was sweeter and
ketchupier than usual, less chillied. Still, we enjoyed
them enough to order more.
The true winner was the pepper crab, far more tasty and
more distinctive, and liked well enough by the company
assembled to make it quite likely that next year's
gathering will be called the Singapore Pepper Crab Do.
And it will be the third annual, not the first annual.
Tiger beer in pitchers and soft drinks rounded out the
meal. And so we toddled full and satisfied back to our
van and home.
Where a couple rounds of drinks at the Conrad for most
of us and then a bottle of Vina Tarapaca Riserva Merlot
1999 (ripe stone fruit, tobacco, mint, not a greatly
distinguished but a pleasantly forward wine) at Zee 10,
the bar across the street for the hardier few followed.
Then the hard hard core went to msy and prncess's room
for a nightcap.
= =
Bennie went off with some of the people to get massaged
back in Chinatown, and I went off wandering by myself.
Presently that peckish feeling came around, and as I
was still in the neighborhood, I hied myself to one of
the food courts in giant Suntec Mall, where I wandered
around the stalls; on my third go-round I decided to
just have a plate of fried oysters at the only place
in the largish hall that offered them. For S$5 I got
about a dozen smallish ones in a pancakey batter, with
many fried bits of plain batter thrown in - definitely
an amateur job, but the ingredients were fresh fresh,
and the plate was satisfying enough. I might have done
better with the pork entrails noodle soup I spied at
one of the other stalls, but it was a buck more than
the same thing at the Leisureplex food court. Here the
prices were uniformly $1 a plate more than there (or
Lau Pa Sat), where the prices were 50c-$1 more than
down in the depths of Chinatown, where the prices were
50c-$1 more than in the grottiest places I found (such
as the one in the car park directly opposite the UOB
towers). The other finalist was fusilli with Thai
green curry, which sounded just weird enough to be
good, that I spotted at a place that had things like
spaghetti carbonara on the list but where all the
people in back looked sort of like my grandmother.
Off to Carrefour, where I poked around for over half an
hour, eschewing the department store part except for
checking to see whether there were any shirts my size
(there were lots, all ugly), and proceeding straightaway
to the grocery floor (when I say I hate to shop, that
doesn't include food shopping). Thought about buying a
whole duck for $23-odd, but that would have killed my
appetite for the rest of the day, not to mention leaving
grease stains all over the upholstery and carpeting at
the hotel; or some durian, 1 pod for $10 but 5 pods for
$20, to inflict on my Conradian colleagues, but that
would have ended up with my eating lots of durian and
leaving that remarkable stench all over the hotel too.
Great wine selection, including some lesser vintages
of lesser classed Bordeaux for under $80 (I always
wondered where the oversupply goes; apparently it goes
here, and then it doesn't sell, and the prices remain
static, which means that what started off overpriced
ends up being reasonable). Ended up with just a couple
cans of New Year's food, one of shark fin and abalone,
the other of abalone-like mollusc. Back to the hotel
via the fabulous water sculpture by the office buildings
on Temasek Avenue and the Chinese arts festival (mostly
tacky stuff that they were charging triple for because
you got to watch them sculpt-draw-paint-engrave on the
spot). Thought about getting a slice at the pizza joint
or a pint at O'Brien's Sandwich Bar but decided to save
my calories for later.
= =
I really wanted to try My Humble House in Esplanade Mall
- the buzz has been really good, and it was featured in
the most recent T&L or some similar magazine, and it was
really convenient, being in the same complex as the
concert hall. We almost turned around when we heard the
blasting techno music and the Eurotrash decor, but the
smells seemed nice and the prices, if not low, at least
within reason. Bennie and I looked at the carte and had
some tentative ideas; and it turned out that many of the
dishes we wanted were included on the $168-for-two set
New Year's meal, so we got that. It's good when the set
meal looks not unlike what I'd order on my own. The help
was very helpful, with varying levels of accomplishment
in the English language.
Pork jerky with green herbal sweet mayonnaise was not on
the list, but it came anyway, and we ate it, thinking it
was comped, and it was good, but then at bill time it
turned out to be $6 extra, a silly nickel-and-dime that
didn't really bother us but might cause others to feel
used. Sort of like bread and butter in Europe.
The Sun Sets on Fortune
Prosperity Tuna and Salmon Yusheng
This was a rather recherche version of the dish, with
sashimi-grade fish over julienne of nontraditional as
well as the usual ingredients: carrot, daikon, red and
yellow peppers, red cabbage, deep-fried lotus root,
yuzu pulp, toasted sesame seeds, seaweed, and a couple
unidentifiables in a sweet dressing. Also pok chui
crackers, hollow little pillows that I think must be
called that because they go "pok" when you chui on them.
Bennie and I both came up with the same thought at the
same time: if vegetables always tasted like this,
we'd be thin.
Flight of Fantasy
Braised Shark's Fin with Egg White, Crab Meat and Roe
This came a little too soon, because the strong tastes
of the yu sheng were still in our mouth. A couple
draughts of wine (swishing it around like mouthwash)
did the trick, and the wine was merely okay, so that
was fine. An abundance of shark fin in the most
concentrated chicken broth I've had in a long time,
with nice crab and slightly overdone roe. As SD1K and
I have discussed, this is one of those dishes that is
mostly for show or medicinal purposes and tends to
increase the price of a meal without enough flavor to
justify; but the version here did a good job trying.
Blessed Treasure
Braised Whole Abalone in Black Truffles Sauce
Near perfect: a small abalone each, about 2 oz, fresh,
very tender, in a sweetish (the only possible points
taken off, but given the sweet nature of new year food,
perhaps justifiable) black sauce quite redolent of
truffle flavor. The garnish was a perfect stalk of
green asparagus.
The Waves Beckon
Steamed Pacific King Prawn, Roasted Garlic
Too much garlic. We'd encountered this same flavor in a
lobster dish at the Sheraton in Taipei once. They use a
very pungent garlic and use tons of it on very delicate
(and super yummy) shellfish. The texture of the prawn
(one giant one each, about 2 oz) was gorgeous from the
steaming, but I'd still prefer the stronger taste of
broiled to go with this level of garlic heat. Abundant
sprinklings of raw scallion moderated rather than
enhanced the experience.
A Long History of Fortune
Jasmine Golden Fried Rice with Crab Meat and Diced
Chicken
Good yellow fried rice with tiny <2mm cubes of carrot
and ginger chicken breast and shreds of excellent crab.
I'd have preferred a noodle filler-upper, but that's
just me.
Earth Angel
Chilled Almond Tofu, Japanese Chestnut Cream
Dessert was light and pleasant, the almond float almost
unsweetened, the chestnut stuff delicious; garnishes
were tiny cubes (an obsessive-compulsive in the kitchen)
of strawberry, grass jelly, and lotus seed. Delicious.
Yirra Wirra or Yarra Warra or something Chard was fine,
virtually no oak, sunny tropical flavors, good acid,
a little low in body, but pleasant with the more
delicate dishes.
We closed the place down around 3:30, so there was
still time for a quick stroll up to the esplanade
library (good selection of music) and the roof terrace
for a good view of the spewing lion, then green tea ice
cream at Haagen-Dazs for like $8.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui conductor, with
Kam Ning, violin soloist. Let's see. The hall's native
acoustic is good, but the PA system is intrusive when
it's used. The orchestra is good, about on the level of
a middle-level professional orchestra in the US (i.e.,
I've played with only a few better and a large number of
worse). Lan Shui is much the same as when I met him
when he was a Bernstein student in the '80s, a bit of a
showman, not I think a deep musical thinker but a good
advocate for and popularizer of serious music. Kam Ning,
after a weakish start, came on gangbusters and proved
herself worthy of better than the second prize she'd got
a few years ago at the Queen Elizabeth competition.
The Candide overture has always been one of my favorites
ever since I butchered the violin solo part in 1974 or 5
- showed off the precision of the orchestra nicely (and
its few imprecisions, mostly in the upper strings, also).
Bernstein's Serenade (influenced by the ancient Greeks,
supposedly) was a good vehicle for Kam Ning; it starts
off slow and gives the soloist a chance to warm up, and
gradually through the movements works its way to some
fancy fiddling. Great piece, full of bits of West Side
Story (and Candide, too).
Kam Ning was back in the atrium signing autographs at
intermission, looking fresh as a daisy and gracious as
a diplomat, showing few signs of just having given a
performance of a most athletic piece of work.
After the interval, there was an amusing Q&A with the
audience (questions submitted in writing and prescreened
by the management; this is after all Singapore), where
Kam Ning and her upper-class British accent and demeanor
contrasted with Lan Shui's bumptious Yan-Can-Cookish
style. Both had good points to make, though.
Then the noisy, rousing Hussites Overture by Dvorak,
which I hadn't heard in maybe 30 years. Fun piece.
The program gives timings of the pieces: 5 min for the
overture, 30 for the serenade, 20 for intermission, and
14 for the other overture. This comes to 69 minutes, but
we went over in a most un-Singaporean way by 15 min or a
touch more. This owing perhaps to the Q&A. And then,
because of the insistence of a smallish but enthusiastic
audience, we had an encore, which Lan Shui described as
"the most famous piece of Chinese music." It's a tawdry
Socialist-realistic mishmosh called "Good News from
Beijing," and Bennie and I wondered what the implication
of its programming was. Got out of there at about ten of
and walked across the bridge and down to Lau Pa Sat,
the so-called festival market. It's much less festive
than perhaps it once was. The things that make it
attractive are: 1. it's open all hours; 2. the building
itself is of an interesting appearance (I've been in
several such commercial complexes that are arranged
radially in this way, but this is the neatest of all);
3. it's easy to get to, being exactly opposite the
United city ticket office. The selection of vendors
is pretty good, as is the food available from them. I
tend to go to sleazier markets, but then I don't stick
out like quite the same sore thumb, at least until I
start trying to talk. When we arrived after a pleasant
stroll, we found mjm already chowing on Indian food;
we greeted him and strolled around looking for likely
things to eat; settled on roast duck noodles and roast
pork rice from the roast duck store. The duck of course
was better. A side of gai lan was nicely done. We
waited around for a while, eventually Ch661 arrived
with the news that the others were still at the Raffles,
where they'd had high tea and Singapore Slings. It was,
truth to tell, getting late for people who had to be up
at 4 in the morning, so we said our respective goodbyes
and cabbed it home.
Returned to the room to find some further signs of
habitation, again nothing serious. So off for a peaceful
sleep and up at 4 to get ready for the flight (actually,
for me, 2, as that's when I woke up).
The cab to the airport came right on time, and we were
early to checkin, which went smoothly. The SATS lounge
was not really crowded - we were on the later UA flight,
so most of the guys from the 6:50 had cleared out by
the time we'd arrived. Snacks included curry puffs and
mushroom-cabbage pastries to accompany my Courvoisier
VSOP Exclusif, which I drank exclusively for old times'
sake (you don't get it outside Asia, and as it's a rather
harsh blend, I wouldn't buy it anyhow). We found
Flyertalker wwee in the lounge; we left Ch661 chatting
animatedly with him when, full of drinks and snacks, we
headed off to do our errands before boarding. I got some
Beanie monkeys and checked my e-mail, and then it was to
the gate for the swift but thorough security check and
onto the aircraft.
0119 800 SIN NRT 0720 1450 777 11A
also on this flight: msy-msp and prncess674 (8AB),
SD1K (8F) jan_az (11D), mjm (11F), Ch661 (13B),
wwee (17B). Bennie was in 1A.
Bennie's first-class meal:
TO BEGIN
Your selected entree will be served with fresh fruit,
cold cereals, yogurt and breakfast breads.
MAIN COURSE
Mushroom and tomato crepe with bechamel sauce
Chive scrambled eggs, crispy apple-smoked bacon,
oven-roasted dried tomatoes and roasted new potato
with chives
Walnut and raisin French toast with maple syrup
Mango and raisin compote, chicken sausage and clotted
cream
Steamed cod fish with Szechuan vegetables and black beans
Asparagus, seafood wonton of prawns, scallops, water
chestnuts and mushrooms and Shanghai noodles with carrot
julienne
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Garden fresh salad appetizer
Romaine lettuce, Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes and
radishes with a Caesar dressing
Chicken satay with dim sum
Char siu bun and Thai chili sauce with coriander
or
Chilled chicken tandoori with cream cheese and bistro
wraps
Vegetarian wrap of mushrooms, olives, basil pesto with
pine nuts, curry mayonnaise with Parmesan, mozzarella
and cream cheese
DESSERT
Fruit tartlet
Chocolate cream cornet
Her report: The steamed fish: truly remarkable! The
texture was perfect. This fish preparation was among
the most successful of anything I've eaten on United.
I truly can't imagine how they achieved this. This was
one of those rare entrees which must have gotten lost
on the way to some other intended destination. The
seafood wontons: extremely firm, but most flavorful.
Our meal:
TO BEGIN
Your selected entree will be served with breakfast
breads, butter and fruit preserves.
I was surprised to find blueberry pinwheels among
the croissants and muffins (the FA was pushing these
hard, telling me they were very good and I should
have one in addition to the blueberry thing; I didn't
as the blue thing was fine, and big enough.
MAIN COURSE
Gruyere cheese omelette
Grilled chicken sausage and roasted new potatoes
with chives
Singapore-style stir-fried bee hoon noodles with
char siu chicken
Bay shrimp, vegetables and Thai fish sauce
Looked ugly, tasted good. Salty, though.
Continental breakfast
Breakfast pastries, fruit, yogurt and cereal
I was interested to be asked as late in the process
as I was - initially gratified that there were that
many 1Ks around, my feeling turned to a bit of dismay
as the FA, an older guy with the Mainland Look, walked
past several times and took some obvious non-1K orders
before mine. Luckily I got my choice - in fact I got
the last Chinese breakfast; later I called another FA
over and asked for the onboard service director. And
what happened but this same old character came by and
introduced himself as the purser. I asked him why he'd
used this irregular procedure and was told rather
haughtily that there were a lot of Premiers aboard ...
I pointed out I was a 1K, and he sort of stammered about
a bit and then gave me a rather peculiar and unconvincing
apology. Afterward, all the rest of the FAs were okay,
but this one remained chilly - I was not asked for an
alcoholic beverage order, and even when he came by with
the water he neglected to give me a refill. So I'm
probably going to have him written up. I saw him
sort of cringing in the corner as I disembarked.
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
International cheese selection with fresh fruit
Brie, Kikorangi Blue and Port-wine Cheddar cheese
or
Chilled chicken tandoori with cream cheese and bistro
wraps; vegetarian wrap of mushrooms, olives, basil
pesto with pine nuts, curry mayonnaise with Parmesan,
mozzarella and cream cheese
I passed, not being really into the dairy thing.
DESSERT
Coconut panna cotta with sea coconut in a spicy palm
sauce
But I made an exception for this: it was pretty good,
a little gummy but with nice coconut and vanilla
flavors, the "sea coconut" being what I know as baby
coconut in heavy syrup. Turns out the meal service was
started so late (50 min before landing) that most people
didn't get any dessert - I'd asked for mine while others
were getting their snack. Had a Courvoisier with.
Transit was uneventful, except for a huge line at the
security station owing to another flight coming in at
the same time. They opened a lane for 1K, UGS, and F,
and we breezed through with no trouble.
The club was nowhere near so crowded as on the trip out,
so we were able to find a bank of seats together, which
was great; this time all the conference rooms were in
use. Between the beer machine and the showers, we were
kept amused; msy-msp brought out his new phone for all
to be impressed by. At one point msy-msp, jan_az, and I
went to look for sushi, but the place we were pointed
to had run out; oh, well, next time. Eventual fond
goodbyes: first the LAX flight took SD1K and Ch661;
then Bennie went to try for the JFK flight; then jan_az
and I headed off for San Fran.
0119 852 NRT SFO 1700 0900 744 23AB was 13?, 16A
At the RCC we'd discovered that the next leg of jan_az's
trip had been upgraded, so we requested seats together.
There weren't any doubles left upstairs, so we settled
for downstairs, which was fine except that we were by
the galley; the FAs promised us they'd be quiet between
services, and as jan_az had an Ambien and I had my
booze, we both slept fine when the time came to rest.
TO BEGIN
Smoked salmon timbale and peppered beef appetizer
Cucumber onion salad with lemon aioli
Pretty good salmon made into a funny package with the
salad inside - an odd conception.
Garden salad with mozzarella cheese
Honey Dijon dill vinaigrette dressing
MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with wild mushroom sauce
Basil garlic mashed potatoes and snap peas with red
peppers
The meat was rare! and pretty good, although a bit
salty. The mushrooms were very tame. Accompaniments
tasted good.
Pulehu breast of chicken with teriyaki sauce
Stir-fried rice and snap peas with red peppers
Japanese Obento selection
An appetizer of tuna with scallion nuta mix, a stuffed
tomato, pumpkin tofu with sesame miso, and green tea soba
noodles; a main course of steamed snapper, hiratake
mushrooms and vegetables, taro potatoes with shimeji
mushrooms, carrots, peas and steamed rice
Served with green tea
DESSERT
International cheese selection
Brie and Pepper Jack cheese
Double chocolate cake
Raspberry and chocolate sauce
This was a brownie-type thing with mini-chips baked
in. The sauce was really a drizzled-on glaze. It was
large. Tasted like Sara Lee.
PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Creamed spinach omelette with shiitake mushroom sauce
Home-fried potatoes, chicken sausage and a fresh fruit
appetizer
or
Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt
The fruit were: half a firm-ripe papaya, some grapefruit
segments, unripe but sweet strawberries, nice kiwi, and
the usual grapes. Pretty nice.
The RCC hosted jan_az and me for a while before her
flight parted us. I stayed on for another two yawning
hours before wandering off to my gate.
0119 294 SFO BWI 1300 2100 320 2A
Started off with an annoyance. First, the flight had
been rescheduled back two hours from 1100, something
I didn't figure out until I was in Singapore (a failure
of the notification system - whereas on my next set of
flights a 10-minute change of schedule generated both
telephone and e-mail informations); then, it boarded
50 late. Continued with an amusement - guy claimed my
seatmate and I were in his and his lady's seats. He
must have been dyslexic or something. And as jan_AZ's
Ambien must have inspired me, I immediately snoozed as
got comfy in my seat. But when I came to it was half an
hour later, and we were still on the ground. I asked my
seatmate about this, and he reported that in all the
delay the meals had gone illegal or something and the
plane had to be decatered and recatered. Oh, yes, the
other annoyance was that the equipment had been changed
from a 757 to a 320. Not while I slept; I just forgot
to mention it earlier in this paragraph.
Eventually we took off, and it was a good flight with
great service by the lone FA serving our section. I
was too woozy to ask his name, but I'll try to have
him written up as well. He's a middle-aged graying
black guy based in DC and has enough seniority that he
remembers to do stuff like warm up the bowls of nuts.
TO BEGIN
Heartland field greens with carrots and yellow bell
peppers, Asian sesame ginger or classic Caesar
dressing
What came: the salad, as advertised, pretty fresh,
with a choice of Conway's Asian sesame ginger or
Natural Taste oriental dressing. The first ingredients
of the Conway's are soybean oil and water; of the other
the first are sugar and peaches. Out of perversity I
tried the Natural Taste: it tasted like sweet-and-salty
sesame peach juice. I like the Conway better.
MAIN COURSE
Chicago-style filet mignon sandwich with caramelized
onions, horseradish mayonnaise and roasted red pepper
in garlic and oil
Four 1-oz slices of medium-well meat, okay-tasting,
the other elements as advertised; a decent meal.
Breaded breast of chicken with a green peppercorn
sauce, roasted red potatoes, baby carrots and
asparagus
My seatmate had this; it was a very large serving,
and he ate all of it.
Portobello mushroom stuffed gnocchi with basil cream
sauce, toasted pine nuts and shredded Parmesan cheese
1B had this, and it smelled good.
DESSERT
Ice cream with sundae toppings
Very chocolatey and very vanillary ice creams served
with a pirouette wafer. I passed on the sauce.
Continued to snooze through most of the flight until we
landed about an hour and ten late. My Carol had circled
the airport several times in the little Forester but
was reasonably gracious, not razzing me the way she had
in 2000 and 2001 about United's on-time performance.
She's a Southwest and Valujet flyer and has no real
right to cast any stones about anything anyway.
And so back home. Miles: 22892; segments:7; 134 hours,
57 1/2 of them under the control of UA.
= =
US 607 BWI PIT 0945 1044 752 14A
Why anyone would want to upgrade on a 40-minute flight I
don't know, but of course there are many in my boat, with
500-milers to burn and noplace to use them. Anyhow, my
upgrade didn't clear, and I was none the worse. Slept for
the entire flight.
US1002 PIT PHX 1150 1430 321 3A
A fairly attentive crew, although I'd gotten a weird vibe
from them, especially from the older lady whose accent
seemed to change with the situation.
Lunch choices were a chicken salad wrap or a beef salad,
the latter being about 3 oz of filet medium-well, coriander
and pepper crusted (so the taste was like pastrami, only
nowhere near as good), with a mixed-green salad (smelled
like mildew), cooked red onions (wretched), grilled red
peppers (ok but insufficiently peeled), pastina salad
(the pasta were in little clumps like insect eggs but
nowhere so tasty as insect eggs), and a dressing that was
95% oil (cheap salad oil; I found a few chips of garlic
in the bottom, but it was hard to get them out with the
utensils provided (no spoon)). I got many of my calories
from Courvoisier (4) and packets of cashews (6).
The Hungarian mushroom soup was also on offer; it's the
gem of the US Air offerings, but it greps me every time,
so I passed.
Landed pretty much on time, nothing fancy.
= =
Dinner with Ann and Bill - steaks, of which I ate barely
12 oz. I made dan dan noodles to go with. The wine was a
SE Australian Shiraz packaged for the US market, some
aboriginal painting of an animal or something on the
bottle, oversweet, underflavored. Pulled out a Lindemans
that was many times better.
Carol was due in late, but nobody was up to driving 30
miles drunk to pick her up, so she had to take the
StupidShuttle, which got her there around 1 at a cost of
only 22.50.
= =
Breakfast a la Phoenix: fajitas and beer. I marinated
the 5 lb of skirt steak (there were 4 of us) in cumin and
vinegar and grilled them on the gas grill; chopped up a
few tomatoes, cooked some onions and peppers; Carol
marinated some avocado cubes in lemon juice (trees on
premises), and we had a feast; home-squeezed orange and
tangelo juices completed the meal. Friends Carl and Ellen
and John showed at 11 to take us off-roading in the
Tonto National Forest (sort of a misnomer, as there are
hardly any trees); an exciting trip through a wash under
glowering skies, then up to Cottonwood Spring, which is
this funny little oasis in the desert, then out to the
Apache Trail, where we discovered the gate locked and
the combination not working, so we retraced our steps
partway and then south and out another gate. Despite
the overcast, it was very beautiful, and Carol had her
new 4-megapixel toy ($100 or so at some remainder place)
to take plenty of pictures. And back home for beers and
more fajitas (there were of course enough left over for
the whole lot of us the second time round), then to
wait around for dinner, which was turkey, mashed taters
(scratch, with garlic), stuffing (Wal-Mart), and more
Shiraz. Bananas Foster for afters.
= =
Bill had to run off to Philadelphia, so we said goodbye
and went to the flea market, apparently a very famous
one. I didn't care for it, of course, but I bought two
kokopelli place mats for Carol and a Chinese new year
beanie monkey and some Arizona pistachios for Ann.
Decided to go to Royal Thai for lunch before taking
Carol to her Southwest flight back to BWI. Had a seafood
hot pot - squid, shrimp, mussels, the usual suspects,
with bean thread noodles in a very scanty (almost all
absorbed by the noodles) black-pepper scented broth,
very yummy, came with a chile-lime sauce to hot it up
as required; penang beef spicy, which was ok but not
spicy at all; and fried catfish in basil, medium, which
came extra spicy and extra good. The owner was reasonably
nice to us but not so nice as he is when Carl is eating
with us (Carl is his landlord). Then to the airport,
where we dropped Carol off and headed back out. Telephone
call. Flight cancelled because of weather. So we picked
her up and went off to Carl and Ellen's for cocktails,
after which we all went off (after some discussion of
possibly going back to Royal Thai) to this Mexican
dive called Susie's I think: pretty standard food, with
tamales, enchiladas, and the like, which everyone else
but me had; my stuff was more interesting, a bowl of red
chile (3.50) and a carnitas taco and a lengua taco (1.25
each). Back to Carl and Ellen's for a chat, and then it
was time to take me to the airport.
US 174 PHX PIT 2355 0539 321 3D
Got there in plenty of time; no line at the check-in or
at security, so I had an hour or more to waste at the
gate - spent it attempting to do some work on the computer
(no success). I had seat 3F, but as the Mexican food had
sort of upset my stomach, I asked to change to an aisle,
so they gave me 3D instead. When it came time to board,
it turned out that the plane was half full at best in both
classes, so I had row 3 to myself anyway. They offered a
"small roast beef sandwich with potato salad," but I just
had a Courvoisier and a couple packets of cashews, and
then off to the land of nod. We got in quite early - the
flight took just 3 hrs - and I thought I could make the
next flight, so I went to the US Airways Club desk -
no offer of space on the earlier flight (as there would
have been on United). So I sat and drank grapefruit juice
and read e-mail for a couple hours. Back to the gate,
where I finally had my upgrade clear - the agent asked,
"do you STILL want to sit in first class?" to which the
answer was, "I guess so."
US 930 PIT BOS 0750 0932 734 1D
Short flight, piece of cake. I passed on refreshment and
slept for the whole hour flight.
Carol, turns out, got out at noonish and home about
half a day after I did.