San Francisco to Taipei on China Airlines B747-400 in business (SFO-TPE CI C)
By the time I'd gotten through immigration check in was just opening up. Nonetheless I opted to use the kiosk so I could double check if there was an empty row. This was a mistake. While I could view the seat map for my next flight the subsequent one did not give me the option to view or change seating, and my two boarding passes were again without my FFP number on it. So I visited check in anyway to get this sorted out.
The queue at security wasn't too bad so I reached the lounge when it too was just opening. It was very basic and didn't have the computers which the website said existed. No shower either, so I was glad to have gotten a shower before my flight to San Francisco. OTOH food and drinks were considerably better than say the Korean Air lounges, with a decent range of hot and cold options. I found a corner to curl up in and read until about 90 minutes before departure when I left to do some laps of the pier - partly to stretch my legs and partly to keep awake without resorting to coffee. After midnight there are no shops or cafes open, despite there being a few late departures from this pier (and also a couple of late night arrivals).
I opted to board late and once again I had an empty seat alongside. Normal service resumed - no problems with my drink orders and the meal tasted better. I went to sleep straight afterwards and awoke about 7 hours later partway through breakfast service. I managed another hour or so of dozing - not really asleep but not fully awake either.
We landed almost an hour early. I'd noticed in the early part of our flight our ground speed was over 1100 kmh, which is unusually high for a westbound flight.