International Superstar

Once again, my family has made the trek from home (Boston) to Seoul, Korea. For those that might care, I will be a visiting professor at Yonsei University this summer, teaching a version of the Olin Principles of Engineering course. I’ll write more about that experience as it unfolds. Anyways…Carter, our son, is a full 20 months old now. Talking, running, climbing, and generally appreciating being able to move around under his own power. Now, combine that with 20+ hours of flying, you get one cranky-ass toddler and two worn out parents.

So, we broke up the trip by flying to Seattle first and visiting friends and family for about a week. Only then, did we attempt to fly over to Seoul through Tokyo.

Some random musings:

• Breaking up the trip was a truly great idea. I highly recommend this.
• Long airplane flights suck with a child. Really, I didn’t know how awesome I had it when I didn’t have a kid. To all those without rugrats, no more complaining about flying. Seriously. I spend my entire flight trying to keep my kid off your nerves, so no complaining about him, either.
• Flight attendants are generally great. Anyone that brings me food and drink gets props in my book. Some, though, suck big time. To the asshat that kept reminding me that the fasten seat belt light was on while I was trying to get Carter to stop screaming his head off, thanks a ton. Didn’t you notice the half dozen other people standing around near the lavatory stretching their legs? Why didn’t you glare at them and snap, “I can’t be responsible for you if you get hurt” at them in your snarky voice? And to the crazy bitch that answered every call button request with, “okay, who pushed that? Because you know, if you push it, I have to come, and if you didn’t mean to push it…”, gold fucking star to you. Sheesh.
• Airline employees should be charged $1000 every time they use the fucking all-plane intercom to make an announcement. The only useful pieces of information that come over that intercom are the final destination of the flight and the expected flight time. Seriously, I could even do without those. Surprise me if I’m on the wrong flight. You do not need to tell me when the drink service will start. You do not need to tell me that you are about to dim the lights so we can get some rest. You do not need to tell me that we are about to land. And you certainly do not fucking need to tell me that, “on the left side of the plane you can see Syracuse, NY.” Holy mother-of-all-that-is-holy, let us just put our heads down and try and forget we’re on a plane full of airline idiots clamoring to use the “bother everyone via intercom” button. Really, the only announcement I might like to hear is something along the lines of, “holy shit people, we just lost engine #2. Might be time to start praying and hoping for a water landing.” God. Damn. Just shut up and let my kid sleep. Win for everyone. Oh, and quadruple the fee for international flights, because they announce everything in four languages.
• Narita airport in Japan is under-air conditioned.
• Incheon airport in Korea is over-air conditioned.
• The security lines at SeaTac airport in Seattle are stupid long and ridiculously slow. I don’t know if it is the TSA employees there, the passengers, or what, but man, SeaTac always has long lines. The kind of lines where you think you are joining at the end, but really you are just at the middle point where they had to split the line to let people pass perpendicularly because the line stretches all the fuck the way across the airport. Boston Logan by comparison has very short lines. I think it is because the TSA employees in Boston are meaner. They have one or two people continuously shouting at the passengers in line to remind them to take out and hold on to their boarding passes and identification. It is totally obnoxious, but the number of people that get to the security checkpoint without that shit together is really small. Compare SeaTac also to Narita, a totally over-staffed and smooth operation with polite, competent, and sincere people. Wow, what a concept.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’ll be posting more this summer, so stay tuned.