301A — Remember me, though I have to travel far...

This section was written starting at 5:41 PM Pacific Daylight Time/8:41 AM China Standard Time, in a Boeing 787 going 550+ miles per hour at 36000 feet.

We are currently three hours into this flight, and I have finally reached the point where I am bored enough to begin writing this blog post, which is honestly kind of impressive. There are still seven hours left in this flight, which is kind of awful, but I refuse to let myself sleep, since it’ll probably help me with the jet lag to stay awake from here until evening in China.

I allowed myself to sleep for a very brief period at the beginning of the flight, and then woke up somewhere around an hour (or two?) ago. So far, we’ve had a drinks service (I got tea, which is probably the single best feature of international flights), a meal that came far too close to our previous one (although I did eat most of it), and then a second drinks service, where my Chinese was pronounced too softly and misheard as orange juice instead of tea. Oops.

A little bit into the flight, someone was moved into the empty middle seat to the right of me, which was kind of the worst. He is currently PTFO and leaning into my airspace, which is excellent. This, combined with the fact that the person in front of me is leaned back at like a twenty to thirty degree angle, is really not making this flight the most enjoyable. I was reading The Secret Life of Trees (if that is the title, as I am not able to currently reach my phone) earlier, and got through about a fifth of it before I got kind of bored. I’ll probably return to it later.

For now, however, we are still 3500+ miles away from our destination, so I will spend some time brainstorming what else I can waste my time with. I’m probably going to spend some time trying to write something interesting, and then maybe reflecting on MIT plans, before finally resorting to Minecraft if all else fails. Hopefully, this plan can sustain me seven hours. Fingers crossed.

This section was written starting at 11:38 AM China Standard Time/8:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time.

The last three hours were interesting enough, although, if my memory is correct they are all accounted for. Instead of following the plan I had previously state, I proceeded directly to Minecraft, spending around an hour working on engineering a system for automatically taking ores and coal from an area and smelting it, collecting the materials, and then returning the carts with requisite materials (thus creating a mobile system). At some point during this planning, the ‘fasten seatbelt’ light came on, and I got hit with a huge dose of nausea, so I ended up not quite finishing the system and putting my laptop away.

Left again with nothing to do, I decided to watch the movie Coco, which I had heard many spectacular things about. Of course, if you’ve read this blog for any significant amount of time, you’ll know that I have many anxieties about social conflict, especially when it comes to family (in re: “Bao”), so I paused the movie at many points and regrouped before continuing. It was exceptionally good though, and I cried at points, which is saying a lot. It just hit all the things I’ve had to think about recently, especially “Remember Me,” on so many different levels. Now I’m going to have the music stuck in my head for the next few weeks.

I just had my second cup of tea, and now there are “just” three and a half hours left in this flight. The last thirty will be the descent, which will be exciting enough in and of itself, so all I have to do is make it through three more hours. I’m going to start by perusing the classical music catalogue, I think, and just sitting here and letting my mind wander. Just 1800 more miles. (Also, the ground speed of this plane right now is just under 600 mph. Jesus.)

I'm about to fall asleep, so I figured I'd write this quickly. It is now 5:56 PM China Standard Time, about two hours after we got off the plane. I don't know what I wasted the rest of the flight on (reading and music, mostly, I think), but the descent was a bit rough, especially following 10 hours of flight. That, combined with the fact that we had to wait on the tarmac for a bus to get to our Dreamliner, was kind of awful.

The customs and border entry process was relatively smooth, although it involved a lot of waiting and walking, and eventually we were picked up by an uncle. Now, we're negotiating some of the scariest and weirdest traffic on a Beijing highway, which is kind of wack, but here we are. Hopefully, we'll get to Tianjin soon. (That is, in less than like two hours.) Returning to China is kind of cool though, and I'm glad I'm here. Also, the first store you see on exiting customs is a KFC Select, which seems fake, but ok. Interesting enough.

It is now 9:17 PM China Standard Time.

Unfortunately, I did fall asleep on the way into Tianjin, which I think ruins (to some extent) my plan to adapt to jet lag. We'll see what happens in the morning, of course, but this feels like a bad omen.

We eventually got into town and picked up my maternal grandmother to go to dinner, which was dumplings. (They were so good, but I could not eat as much as I would have liked). We returned to the place we're staying, and I got set up with the MIT VPN, which is quite nice. All-in-all, today was a pretty good day, and I'm glad to be in China, which, despite all the air pollution and smoking and absolutely awful and unacceptable driving, is actually quite a fun place to be. (I also really enjoy speaking Chinese, because it exercises a different part of my brain in a way that is tangible, but ineffable.)

Tomorrow, who knows? We'll see what happens.