Once on board and seated at 40A (always window if possible for me, I love the views), my neighbour greets me with enthusiasm, somewhat surprisingly so. As it turns out, I had the privilage of spending the next 12 hours next to a Japanese-born, Taiwanese-American artist/ physics teacher/ holistic doctor/ inventor/ singer and violinist/ kung-fu guru/ 5th degree blackbelt Judo master. He looks 50 but before letting me guess this out loud he’d already happily told me I would be needing to add 20 years to my guess. Funny guy: very nice, and I got a kick out of how he would leap onto his seat in his slippers when I hit the washroom.

San Francisco was beautiful from the air as we departed the Bay area. The eternal wall of fog seems to meet against the eternal wall of, well, good weather from the mainland just inland from the mountains to the west of the peninsula. It makes for a gorgeous, almost mystical scene where the clouds flow down and into the metropolis, disappearing in the concrete and palm trees.

*snooze*

Mmm, Chinese airline pork
Mmm, a decent nap (as airplane naps go anyway), a bit o’ airline cookin’ and a couple hours with the ol’ X-Men gang (definitely not the movie it could’ve and should’ve been) and that brings us to just after 6am PST or 9pm in Taipei. We should be landing in about an hour and I’ve got about an hour and a half of juice left in the Macbook. Let me mention a couple things about Eva and the flight itself.

Eva Air has been rather good so far, Air Canada take note. They don’t have all the latest techno wizardry like online check-in or computerized ticketing booths with self-help luggage check. (Is this actually a benefit? It might save us a bit of time initially, but you often end up waiting in long lines for the self-help check-in anyway. They miss an opportunity to connect with the client as well.) However, they do offer a taste of yesteryear in line with the absence of over-relied upon dummy computer terminals.

The 747-400 we’re flying in is the first 747 I’ve ever flown in. My old roommate in Barcelona used to rattle on and on about the 747 and how impressive it was and how lusterously serendipitous and simultaneously brilliant the engineers at Boeing were in its creation. Needless to say that with a bit of a thing for hot vehicles and cool tech, my first experience with Boeing’s nearly 40 year old aircraft is slightly under-whelming and yet impressing too. Eva’s 747 is big. Not as big as I remember imagining when I saw my first jumbo jet at London Heathrow in 2003, but still big. Beautiful too. The transition between fuselage and wing is organic and the way the cockpit hangs out so high in the craft works well with the rest of the plane.

Eva’s stewardesses (or is it “flight attendants” these days?) are quite good (take note Air Canada!!!). Always carrying a bit of a smile and mystical Chinese patience, they make their way through the 3-4-3 seating with towelettes, drinks and two full meals during the 13 hour flight. How long is the flight from San Francisco to Taipei? Yes, that’s 13 long hours, an hour more than I’d predicted and 5 hours longer than any other flight I’ve taken in my life.

Time to put away the laptop. We’re landing…