Taara and I have a bet on how many
people will figure out the riddle in the
title of this entry. Don’t let me down.
Hint: focus on the last two words.

~~ Around 5:30 PM (KST) ~~

We are about to leave Inchon Airport in Seoul on the continuation of our Singapore Airlines flight. It will deposit us in Singapore in approximately 6 hours, where Singapore Airlines have arranged accommodations for us overnight, since our flight to Dhaka only leaves Wednesday night at 8:30 PM (and we arrive there at 11:30 PM tonight).

The trip so far has been mostly uneventful. Can you believe it? A trip, that I’m on, that’s uneventful. I’m seriously in shock. I had forgotten that air travel could actually be trouble-free. I guess I have been going through the US too much in the last few years.

If any of you ever get a chance to fly Singapore Airlines, I highly recommend it. The economy seats are comparable to business class in other airlines for leg room. Plus, each seat has its own entertainment center with (get this) OVER 80 MOVIES, a ton of TV shows, documentaries, music that you can set into playlists and listen to, games (Nintendo and others). It’s just insane. Continental’s little system doesn’t even come close.

As we went through airport security in Vancouver, I thought for sure I was going to be pounced on by a dozen very well-fed Canadian security personnel when they X-Rayed my bag. I have three hard drives in there, besides the one in my laptop and the one in my iPod. But the guy just snickered and said “that’s a lot of hard drives”, and then said “Next!”. I’m telling you, I’m still in shock.

We arrived in Seoul after about 10 hours in flight and were told everyone had to de-plane. So we walked out of the plane, into a line, so they could tell us to go through security. Uhh…allo? We were just on a PLANE, folks. Don’t you think we’re secure enough by now? But noooooooooooooooooo…. Anyway, so since we were “In Transit” to Singapore (as in, getting onto the same freaking plane in about 20 minutes), they stuck these red “Singapore Airlines Transit” stickers on us. Well, Taara is wearing a tank top, so you’ll know where the lady decided to stick the sticker…anyhow, I joked with Taara that she looked like Brazilian women during carnival who wear stickers to pretend like they’re wearing some clothes (except Taara really was wearing clothes or I’d be writing this from behind bars).

We barely had time to see any of the Seoul airport before being called back to board. Hopefully we’ll be in Korea again in the future.

~~ Around 1 AM (SGT), July 27 ~~

Singapore remains true to its roots as a free-trade port. Its immigration and customs personnel could not have been friendlier. The US could certainly take a lesson or two on courtesy and manners from these people. At no time did I feel security was lax, either, but everyone was able to do their jobs without being confrontational, abrasive, or obnoxious (and my experience with American customs and immigration folks has generally proven them to be all three of these).

Even though English is said to be “spoken everywhere” here, it is actually a variant commonly called “Singlish” which prevails. Often times understanding simple things like directions to the nearest bathroom or how long we must wait before the shuttle to the hotel arrives takes some effort. I’m sure the helpful lady got as tired of hearing “Pardon?” as I did of hearing “shottoawiveinfiffeenminas.”

We finally arrived at the hotel at about 1 AM. The three-star classification was right on the money, and circumstances were worsened by the fact that the hotel is currently undergoing renovations (i.e. one of their elevators is being fixed and they decided to do all the rest of the noisy work at the same time). After checking in, we proceeded to our rooms only to find that there was no electricity. Shocked and appalled at such a lack of professionalism, I stormed back down to the front desk and informed them of our discovery. I then listened sheepishly as the kind clerk explained that I needed to “inso’cawdintoslo’bydoh”. I returned upstairs and sure enough, without any markings, directions, or indications of any kind, there was a white panel on the wall beside the thermostat, with a thin slot just large enough to accept my keycard. For a brief second I felt what it would have been like to witness the first words of creation, as the room lit up magically at the drop of the card.

After briefly surfing the available TV channels and commenting on the variety of languages and nationalities represented, we made some plans for the next day’s activities and finally collapsed into a deep sleep. We had tried to keep sleeping on the plane to a minimum, so our internal clocks were telling our brains it was 11:00 AM and we hadn’t slept all night.