0115 UA 896 SIN HKG 0645 1020 744 16H

Slung my stuff on the belt, headed through the metal
detector; beeped the thing. I told the officer that it was
these wretched walking shoes, which were the only shoes I
have, as I'd thought I'd have to have room for bottles of
essential oils for Carol; after a quick wand, the guy
agreed and off I went. Boarding was clogged up by numerous
monolingual Chinese families with Row 99 seats; the girl at
the door was patient and diplomatic and got the Red Sea to
part with minimal hassle. Which leads me to wonder: why not,
on the hydra jetbridges, have the very front and the very
back board and then gradually fill in toward the middle?

A look at the upper deck showed it 1/3 empty, with the
coveted 15B and G empty and the 14A that I'd asked for
likewise (I ask for 15A or H and then 14A, 22A, 22H in
no particular order). Haven't figured out the charm of the
middles in the 20s, but then I've never bothered to actually
try to sit there.

I'd flown with both of the upper deck FAs before,
a very cheerful guy for whom I'd written a letter
before and a somewhat grumpy girl who was, however,
not so grumpy as she had been on the previous flight
when I'd met her. Both of them are Chinese.

Breakfast started with a good fruit cup of an oddly salty
starfruit slice atop surprisingly sweet, tasty strawberry;
grapes; watermelon; honeydew; and papaya; then came a
flakyish croissant. My bee hoon mee were baked hard on the
outside and gone to mush on the inside: I was tempted to
write half petrified and half putrefied, but more
accurately I say half ossified and half Osterized. Bay
shrimp were okay, except where a couple had baked hard
to the side of the dish. Atop all this was a serving of
sweet-salty "char siu chicken," the meat of a smallish
thigh in a cornstarch-thick red sauce.

Orange juice came from a carton but tasted as if it
had come out of a can.

My IFE console was wonky, so I had no overhead light
and could get only channel 8 on the audio; so even
though the pilot had announced that ATC was available,
I couldn't take advantage of that.

Quick flight, a few bumps near the end. Landed a few
minutes early, so I figured I had lots of time to
check out the new catering I've heard about at the RCC.

It's okay; the dim sum machine isn't properly vented,
I think, so the pastries tend to be a little limp. A pork
bun was a bit sweet; a chicken-mushroom tart was a
bit dry; the spring roll had lost all its spring. The
best thing was a pineapple tart made with unsweetened
fruit and salty lard pastry.

There's a little buffet station with four compartments -
from right to left:

beef and lentil stew - odd, heavily herbed, somewhat
sweet; rather gristly strips of meat in a gloopy
thick sauce with a few lentils here and there

fettuccine - looked as crusty as the mee on the plane,
so I passed

yang chow fried rice - okay, plenty of shrimp and little
cubes of roast pork

a foil covering the fourth compartment with a handwritten
note - EMPTY TRAY NOTHING INSIDE.

In addition, the things I remember from years past: Oreos,
Lorna Doones, potato chips, Australian cheese, bread, and
a toaster that smoked intensely.

Peculiar beer machine dispensing Carlsberg, plus San Miguel
in cans.

I couldn't get on the house free wireless, whose password
is [well, think of the most obvious possible ones].

Eventually they called the flight, and I pocketed a cup
of Nestle's sesame ice cream for later. Ingredients:
water, sugar, fat, milk solid, sesame powder, emulsifier
& stabiliser, colour, salt.

UA 896 HKG ORD 1135 1140 744 23H

Asked a pleasant FA for a spoon so I could fully enjoy
my ice cream, which was an ugly gray but tasted pretty
convincingly of sesame. Enough was enough, though, and
I discreetly tipped the end of it into the trash.

On this one the upper deck was chockablock by the time
I even thought of booking, so I'd asked for 22 ... ended
up in 23H. Who trumped me? This little guy who was wearing
what looked like a tour badge. On the other hand, the FAs
were fawning on him, and he was asked way early for his
dinner selections. So I figured him for some kind of
eccentric UGS until it transpired that he didn't know how
to work the IFE controls and couldn't find the tray table.
Maybe he was famous or beautiful or something.

Warm nuts; I had the Wente Chardonnay,which was a sweetish
opening wine that was somewhat out of balance, with sweet,
salt, bitter, and sour flavors sticking out and obtruding;
sour won in the end: heavy oak, some tropical fruit and
lime on the palate. Strong oaky raspberry seed aftertaste.

My seatmate Larry was a guy in the import-export business
who had just had a dream trip, two days in Shanghai and
four in Hong Kong, all the time being feted by business
associates. His first trip to Asia, and he loved it, he
told me, loved the food, but it was time for a steak.
Fair enough, said I.

The choices were filet, sole and salmon with lobster
sauce, and Szechwan chicken with chili and pine nuts.
There was a relative dearth of Asians in the cabin. So I
told the pleasant FA that she would be happy to hear my
first choice. She was; you got it, she said immediately. It
turned out to be not too bad. The chicken was tender if a
bit artificial-tasting, in a sauce with real chiles, sided
by this time decent mee noodles and quite fresh baby bok
choy and mushrooms. The appetizer was kind of weird - a
slice of prosciutto wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with a
piece of smoked Gouda with the rind left on, a peculiar
quiche thing (freezing cold), and a couple of extremely
firm, almost hard, shrimp. The salad came drowned in Asian
sesame dressing, which this time was saltier than usual.

Larry didn't get his beef. The fish looked pretty decent,
and he ate it all, commenting fairly good-naturedly that
he really had been looking forward to the filet. I told
him that steaks were hit-or-miss anyway, and he could just
take his staff (there were 5 of them, in paid business;
I told him I wished I could work for someone who took his
subordinates along in biz class) out to Morton's tonight.
He chuckled and said maybe.

The red wines were the same as on previous flights;
the whites were the Laboure-Roi Chablis and the Wente;
and the Duval-Leroy Champagne.

I slept about 8 or 9 hours in toto, between the two meal
services, counting a little twilight semiconsciousness.
I was interrupted a couple times by the girl behind me (one
of Larry's charges, pretty clearly not a frequent flyer)
grabbing my seat to get out, and by the PA, which overrode
Channel 0, so the quiet channel ended up suddenly blasting
announcements when the seat belt sign went on or off. There
was nothing audible on Channel 9, btw.

The second meal service: a fruit plate with yogurt or the
fruit appetizer followed by an asparagus omelet with a very
sweet tomato sauce sided with spinach and a big Vienna-type
sausage thing. The fruit were not stellar this time,
although nicely arranged in the bowl. The omelet wasn't bad,
but the filling was this white salty goo with extremely thin
shards of cut-on-the-bias asparagus, which shardiness is
okay if the vegetable is fresh and tender; but this wasn't,
and every second bite I got something that felt like a piece
of glass in my mouth.

A croissant had this weird bitter taste; I guess
that made up for the lack of taste of the spinach.

Speaking of weird, how come the Crystal Geyser tasted as
though it had colonies of some organism living in it?

We landed a bit early, and customs and immigration were
negligible, so I was back in Terminal 1 by the time we
were scheduled to touch down.

UA 536 ORD BOS 1604 1907 735 2D
was 1355 1723

Tried to get on the previous flight, but it was full in
both cabins, so I decided to retreat to the RCC and chill.
Was roused by the PA, which said that the Boston flight I
was on was leaving on time, so off I went to the gate,
where I caught an announcement that was ending "and that's
why all of us gate agents are alcoholics." I asked the
agent what that was about, and she informed me that they'd
called to delay the flight and then 60 seconds later told
her to announce it was on time after all.

We got settled quickly in our seats, as requested, only to
be told by the captain that in fact we had a wheels-up of
an hour and half after scheduled, but that that could
change (which of course it did, to 2 hours 10). I of course
knew that already, as Channel 9 was playing for the first
time today, and had ordered a Courvoisier, which came as
a double.

My seatmate, a rather perky blonde, asked me if I was
allergic to cats. Affirmative, but no problem - I'll just
pop half a Benadryl. Chatted with her until the Courvoisier
was gone. When I woke up, we'd been in the air for half an
hour. Lunch was Supreme Mix (not even Supreme Nut Mix).

Service throughout was quite acceptable, provided by a
twenty-something Asian woman.

It was 15F with 45 mph gusts when we landed.