Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

I’m supposed to be in Zurich for work, but my bad luck with airports seems to be continuing. My flight from Seattle to Amsterdam went well (as well as a 10 hour flight can go), but my Amsterdam to Zurich flight got canceled because KLM, the “Royal Dutch Airlines”, didn’t have a crew for the plane. Which is understandable, it’s not like KLM operates a lot of flights or anything; how would they know that they need a flight crew for the plane? With modern marvels like distributed computing, nano-technology, and peanut butter and jelly in one jar, I can see how you would assume a plane can fly itself. Sheesh.

Anyway, after the cancellation announcement, we were all asked to “sit tight” while they figure things out. An hour later they announced that they were able to get a bigger plane for a later flight to Zurich, so we could all get on that flight. The outcome was that my 2 hour layover turned into a 8 hour layover. And what was to be my one afternoon to explore Zurich, would become a long stay in the Crown Lounge at the Amsterdam airport.

On the plus side for the few people in the world that read this blog, this gives me lots of time to write.

On the Seattle to Zurich flight, I didn’t get bumped up to business class, but I did get “coach select” privileges which lets me use the lounges at the airports. Since the Seattle flight left at 1 pm, I didn’t really feel the need to sleep while on the flight, so the tiny coach seat was adequate. Instead, I read a little of Blink, thought a lot about life and stuff, and watched 3 movies (though I wasn’t paying much attention): Rush Hour, Wag the Dog, and Kingdom of Heaven. I’d seen the first two, but it was my first time seeing Kingdom of Heaven.

I remember seeing previews for Kingdom a few years back and thinking, it’s Ridley Scott directing, Liam Neeson acting, and there are lots of swords; I have to see it! Now, I’m very happy I never paid money to see it. It was really bad. Really bad. It could have been good, but the plot had no flow and it seemed like huge parts were missing. A plot element like “royal father finds and acknowledges bastard son, deep bond forms, father dies, son assumes mantle of responsibility” usually takes time, but in this movie 5 minutes are all that we get. We didn’t even get a montage of the son learning warfare. I guess it just sort of happened magically.

On the plus side, it did pass time. And speaking of passing time, I’m going to go see what they have to eat around here. Hopefully next time I write something, it will be from Zurich.