The question I've been asked most is how my flight was. Well, I made it interesting for myself.
The bus to the airport leaves from Sannomiya, which is 3 stops from my apartment by train. When I arrived there on the morning of the flight I noticed that something wasn't quite right. I was missing something important. And then it finally dawned on me that I left the laptop bag at home. Now I would have taken it as a loss and continued, had it been anything else but the MacBook. I don't do well without mobile communications devices so I left the rest of my luggage with the bus loading and unloading crew and went back again.
This resulted in me being borderline late. But at the end this was also the reason why I got my fortunate upgrade as well, so as my father very kindly put it I have way more luck than brains.
The girl at the check-in looked a bit unskilled. There was a guy behind her watching over her every move, and sometimes when the girl seemed stuck he helped her out with some instructions. She didn't challenge me for the little overweight I had, and finally told me that they have to upgrade me to Business Class because the Cattle Economy Class was full. I asked if I had to pay, because I wasn't going to believe first that they'd just do it. But apparently they did.
So I watched smugly as a huge line of people formed at the gate, and then strolled lazily through the fast lane for Business Class. The best thing about the upgrade was that I didn't have to spend ten plus hours confined in a space fit for a child. In Business Class it seems as if every other row of seats was taken out. The seats are also bigger, and everyone has their own armrests. The seats can also be folded into an almost horizontal position to serve as a bed. All this of course done through a control panel.
The other thing that's different is - naturally - the service. The sheer numbers were in our favour, we had 3-4 flight attendants working for our 5 rows of 7 seats, half of which weren't occupied. So there was nothing like the seemingly endless wait for food in Economy Class when the air's already full with the smell of others' already served lunches. Also one doesn't simply get a plastic tray of food. At the same time when we received our sanitary napkins bright white tablecloths were also laid on the foldable tables. And the napkin ring holding the cutlery revealed a serviette, which - as I noticed later on - had a buttonhole to fasten it to the top button of one's shirt. The trays were also covered by napkins, so it looked a lot more like a real meal in a restaurant than McDonald's.
The food was nothing like I've ever eaten on a plane. It reminded me of those scenes in movies when the characters eat in some fancy restaurant. Everything was neatly ordered and tastefully arranged. We had a wide choice of wines, not just white or red. When there was a choice of different meals an attendant went around beforehand and asked everyone about their preferences, rather than doing it on the fly.
This all might sound a bit over-enthusiastic, but I believe everybody likes being treated well. Also when you spend that much time in the air, even the small things that'd irritate you start to matter.
Of course when we were about to land I couldn't wait to finally get out of the plane nevertheless.
In Amsterdam there's now another checkpoint between Schengen and non-Schengen gates for passport check, and - to much of my annoyance - a metal detector gate and scanner. I hate emptying my pockets and taking off my belt, etc n+1 times.
I also learned from the information monitors that my connecting flight to Budapest was delayed by one and a half hours. That and my mounting headache did not help raising my spirits. There're also no free wireless hotspots in Schipol, only paid internet access. I ended up buying 90 minutes anyway to inform my family that I'll probably be very late. (I thought I forgot to pack my Hungarian mobile phone, which I later found on the bottom of my rucksack, after much self-chastising.)
The delay finally became more like a good two hours caused by the fact that just before we arrived there was a heavy storm at Schipol and almost all planes were delayed causing a domino effect affecting subsequent flights.
Eventually we boarded, took off and landed. I also got some painkillers on board, which I should have known better not to pack by now. After briefly pondering on the complete lack of customs and other personnel at Ferihegy I walked out to conclude this summer's return trip.
Signing in from the airport. I was a bit late but now I'm ready to board. They told me the plane's full so to my great surprise I got upgraded to Business Class! This is definitely going to be a first. :P
Update: the seat massages. I could get used to this. :)
Ever since I started using Nike+ I wanted to have a way to share my statistics. It was all good that I could see my own data, but nothing's more motivating than the watchful eyes of sesam.hu readers after all. Back in the day there was no such option: only registered Nike+ users could see some basic statistics, nothing more. But now - as I'm sure you all noticed the bright orange thing to the right - here comes the new widget. Which is nice and shiny, albeit malfunctioning most of the time. If you only see NaNs (not a number), don't worry, it's the widget that's broken. I can't do much else than wait for a fix, it's out of my hands. And then god help me, because I can't really slack as much as I did before...
I just got back from the Apple Store with the ill-fated black MacBook. It's working fine, good as new, after the repairs.
Originally I asked for the keyboard to have swapped, since apparently it was the only part malfunctioning. The Apple employee I talked to defined the issue as "tier 2 accidental damage". (If you're new to the story, I poured half a liter grapefruit juice over the keyboard.) I explicitly asked the repairs to be canceled if the damage exceeded that of the keyboard's and the LogicBoard needed to be replaced as well. The main reason of this being the fact that a LogicBoard replacement costs almost as much as a brand new MacBook.
Well, they called me yesterday, saying the repairs were done and I can pick the MacBook up any time I wanted. I went to Osaka today to do so. The laptop I received honestly looked identical to the one on the day when I just unboxed it. They cleaned the whole thing. I didn't even bother looking at the maintenance reports until I got home...
And boy, was I in for a shock! They didn't just replace the keyboard. According to the repair staff, they swapped - besides the whole top case with the keyboard - all the cables inside, including the HDD connector (which was corroded I admit, but it worked fine nevertheless), the cooling fan and the AirPort wireless card (which was also functioning, I downloaded updates with it before I sent the MacBook to be repaired).
And that's not all of it. The report then continues to explain that during the standard testing the built-in camera was malfunctioning as well, so they replaced the LogicBoard too. And they did not charge me for it, for a reason still unknown to me. The MacBook is way out of warranty now and the damage was entirely caused by my clumsiness after all.
Thinking about it, the black MacBook now only has the DVD drive and the bottom casing with the monitor that are original. Everything else had been replaced.
My last exam was today. I've been doing all sorts of things I've been deprived lately, like sleeping, running (although I did run a few times to clear my head while studying), WoW and updating the Journal as you can see. Expect more frequent and less superficial posts (than the 1337 one). A slight change: I might just decide to write in English for a while. We'll see how it goes, but since I'll be in Hungary for a while and no longer in Japan, the Journal loses its function to keep my friends and family up-to-date with the latest events, it will merely serve as an outlet for my thoughts, an electric pensieve.
If you like that kind of humour you might want to check this new blog about running with Nike+ by Index people and Angelday. I was bored with their first video, but I suppose it'd get a little better when/if they actually start doing some workouts.
Időközben az volt, hogy például hétfőn vizsga után lefeküdtem kicsit délutányi szunya céljából. Majd arra ébredtem, hogy sötét van. Elsőzör megrémültem, hogy átaludtam az egész délutánt, de aztán kiderült, hogy csak az ég borult be jó alaposan időközben. Hálát adtam a sorsnak, hogy nem vizsgára menet kapott el az ítéletidő, aztán filmet néztem... volna, ha a gép nem kapcsolt volna ki rendszeresen minden külső behatás nélkül. Amikor már a hifi is ki-be kapcsolódott kezdtem kapiskálni, hogy ez itt a vihar műve.
El is feledkeztem a dologról estére, de jött ez email, hogy mi van itt nálunk, állítólag emebrek haltak meg egy kiáradt folyótól: Sárlavina lett egy áradó folyóból Japánban. A kiáradt víz elsodort egy anyukát három kisgyerekével. Namost a Toga-folyó konkrétan gyalog 10 percre van innen. És valóban rendszeresen játszanak gyerekek benne. Nemrégen építették ki a medret is díszkövekkel. Normális esetben inkább csatornának mondanám, alig csordogál benne vanami - mint minden japán "folyóban". Az esőzésektől azonban hajlamosak ezek a patakok tényleg durva víztömegeket összegyűjteni, amúgy Brunien-style.
I have seeneth the wickedness of my ways, és ma elvittem a PET palackjaim és az alumínium dobozaim a bolti kukákhoz. (Értsd: bármit csinálok csak tanulni ne kelljen.)
Az ominózus üveges eset óta a házmesterünk vérszemet kapott, és legutóbb a műanyag flakonokat pakolta vissza a postaládák elé, mondván azt sem ide kéne dobálni. Ez amúgy a problémamegoldás folyamata nála: a nem tetsző dolgokat visszahordja a bejárathoz, ahol aztán az egész ház egy hétig hasraesik benne jövet-menet, míg végül valaki meg nem unja, és elviszi. Amikor beköltöztem hónapokig kerülgettünk egy csomó egyetemi tankönyvet, amiket valamelyik végzett diák próbált meg naivan a kukásokkal elszállíttatni.
Na most én visszadobtam (száraz, penészes) kenyérrel, és rendeltetésszerűen kidobtam a pillepalackokat. Az üvegeimmel továbbra sem tudok mit kezdeni, mert a boltnál nincs üveges kuka, és csak kéthetente viszik valahonnan a vasút melletti clean stationről. Valamint nem értem, hogy a fenenagy szelektivitás közepette, hogyhogy nem veszik külön a papírt? Még a bento boxok tálcáinak is van külön kuka, de a papír az megy az éghetőbe. Illetve Zsuzsi és Magdi Master's kurzusának az épületében gyűjtögettek papírt, de oda felcipelni azért nem kicsi fanatizmus.
Szerintem is igénytelen napi néhány youtube videónál többet nem postolni, de Human pont most írt erről a Guinness vírusvideó-kampányról, és mégiscsak a kedvenc sörömről van szó. Már várom, hogy feminista szervezetek mikor kezdenek vehemensen tiltakozni. Pedig szerintem ötletes, ha nem is tévébe való:
