Back in Berkeley

I've flown to and from Europe quite a few times in the last four years, and generally find it to be a pretty uncomfortable experience (with the exception of that one time when I was upgraded to Business class!). Today however, I think I found the best economy carrier for long flights: KLM. In an unheard of occurance, all of the meals were actually very good and I might even have considered eating them outside of a plane. Things started off a little rocky though, since their video system wasn't working at all, despite a few calls to the IT guys back home in Amsterdam. As luck would have it, the Scottish guy sitting next to me on the plane was a video engineer and sorted it all out after fiddling with some cabling. I found it a bit strange that they didn't even acknowledge him. An eleven hour flight with no movies leads to some serious resentment of the nearest representaives of the airline = the flight crew; I know because I've been on a SGO-Paris flight where the projectors stopped working. While they were trying to fix the movie system (=cycling the power multiple times), I worked on a presentation on my powerbook until the battery went dead. Then I listened to my ipod until it went dead, and discovered that I have a battery problem with the stupid ipod now. One hour of listening isn't normal. I did manage to have kind of a freaky moment listening to Paul Williams/Blackalicious's Release:

I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane 
I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal
I can think of nothing less likely to fly

I have to admit to being a little bit of a phillistine as far as poetry goes, but I really love Saul Williams' section of that song.

ANYWAY. With all my electronic pacifiers dead, I resorted to the in flight magazine with bonus Duty Free Section. In it, I found one of my top ten most bizarre items. I took a picture for your pleasure:

It's the last line that really gets me. What can you say, really?

When they finally got the video fixed, they rebooted it, and I was pretty floored to see a linux penguin and a boot screen happily chug along and start up the movie GUI. I guess other people have seen this as well. Once the system was up I was very impressed with it: you can pause and fast forward through the movies, play games etc etc. Sure the little controller things is a bit awkward, but come on: I had around 50 movies to choose from! I ended up watching the Incredibles (since Chloe won't watch animated movies with me ... snifff), the Assault on precinct 13 (boring, predictable and ethan hawke should just give up already), A Japanese movie that I can't remmber the title of, which involved drunken haircutting and a dude stuck between two buildings, and finally Une Hirondelle a Fait Le Printemps (aka "The Girl From Paris") . The last one was my favorite, not the least of which because it is set in my climbing stomping grounds of the Vercors. Sleepy time now.