Travel Post II: Chocolate Thunder Hits Korea

As usual, my obsession with trying to get everything done at the last minute leads me to run late. You don’t realize how difficult it is to prepare for a trip like this in the last minute by yourself. The only thing I forgot was to turn up the heat. Right now my kitty Cats are at home lounging in 75 degree temps.

So, I bet you’re curious about the flight. The Flight from Seattle to Tokyo wasn’t bad at all.
I had very little leg room and the guy next to me not only had bad breath but I had the luxury of staring at his toes for 9 hours. When he told the stewardess Coke, I smelled Ka-ka. He should have brought a separate seat for his breath. To make matters worse he
had the nerve to sleep with his mouth open the entire time.

Now, the good part. Each seat had their own little personal video player in the headrest of the seat in front of them. They had old and new movies to choose from.
I watched:
“Something New” with Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker (who had great screen presence- you will see him in “The Devil Wears Prada”). I think it was a great movie about interracial dating; very tastefully done, without being too cliché.

“Failure to Launch” with Sarah Jessica Parker and Mathew McConaughey. Since when does Sarah Jessica Parker get to be the bombshell girl? Decent Movie, but the ending was super cheesy and predictable.

Then I took it back with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and finished up with Danny Devito’s “Hoffa”.

While I watched movies, I ate like a king. At home every night I eat chicken, rice and frozen veggies. On the plane I had that and more. We had chicken and rice, with bread and butter, and chocolate cake. I haven’t had cake since I got rid of my "fat guy" pants.

Life was good until the ice cream sandwiches. What made me think that I could eat ice cream with no after affects. 5 minutes after using my teeth to scrape the ice cream sandwich cookie off my fingers, I felt the tummy bubbles. The passengers and the crew thought we were experiencing severe turbulence.

All in all, with no phones, no email, no PDA, plenty of food, sleep and movies to watch, for 10 hours life was good.

Once arriving in Seoul it looks like my daily life has made me immune to Jet-Lag. It’s 10:30 AM USA time and 11:30 PM Seoul time. I can’t tell the difference. People are looking at me strangely but that’s to be expected. I haven’t seen a black person since I looked in the bathroom mirror, and even I had to do a double take.

While riding the bus from the airplane to the airport I was holding on to the rail for support. This girl points to my bicep, and her two friends start laughing. Of course everybody is looking now. When we get through customs they asked me to take a picture with them while I flexed my arm. I thought, "Why not"! After the picture they start laughing and said something in Korean. I think they called me “Chocolate Thunder”. I was thinking that was also appropriate after the ice cream.