I would be remiss at this point not to comment that upon landing in Hong Kong just now, 11 hours after departing from London, the world has in fact not ended.
This is of course in direct contradiction to my prediction of its imminent demise when I made the original post.
And thus, in lieu of drowning in emails for the majority of the flight, I instead slept, ate, and caught up on some reading, and have now arrived refreshed and collected.
My worldview has been changed by this experience. I’m talking paradigm shift. Maybe I’ll leave this “airplane mode” thing on a little longer...