Takeoff

My voyage to Japan begins at LAX, probably the largest and most cumbersome of airports to take an international flight from. The TSA asks you to arrive two hours ahead of time under the pretense of security, and if standing around in lines until you are near collapse is their intent, then LAX puts Fort Knox to shame. From the time I was dropped off until sitting on the runway, I must have spent the full 120 minutes in a near-robotic mode: wait, detect movement, follow a step, wait... If I were to fly out from there again, here's what I would do differently: pay the sky-caps a meager sum to take my bags from the street immediately instead of waiting in line to check them, sit and read for 1.5 hours while eating/drinking the food I brought, wait until my flight is almost boarding and run to the staff, telling them I need to get through security ASAP, cut in line in front of 200 or so sorry bastards (savor this moment as everyone stares at you with utter contempt/envy), walk through the metal-detector and out into freedom. Being white, I can at least entertain this thought, your race-specific results may vary.

Dear TSA: really, why have a queue at all if you're just going to add more people to the front of it every five minutes? Doesn't that defeat the entire point? You have 10x the number of people in your airport, but only 2-3x the extra resources being utilized. That 4th security screening checkpoint that isn't being used? Guess what, you already forked out a million bucks for that machine, why not pony up the extra $6-an-hour for someone to run it? Then you would nearly double your capacity to humiliate and antagonize travelers!

The flight wasn't much of an issue once aboard. Eleven hours in the air is a breeze compared to the madhouse you have to endure on the ground. I didn't strike up any conversation, but it was relaxing to simply sit and read; I finished two of my books and got some sleep in-between. The in-flight dinner sucked a lot less than usual, with 80% of the items qualifying as "edible" and an astounding 50% of those being items you wouldn't later feel guilty or disgusted at having consumed (they always have that "motion discomfort" baggie just in case). Yes, I fly economy-class.

More to come as time permits - it would be rude to arrive here and immediately lock myself in when so many people are waiting to introduce themselves. As a quick FYI, there is no Internet access at the dormitory. The current procedure is to type out something on my laptop at the dorm, put it on a USB stick, take it in to work (security implications!), and upload it from the net-bound PC here. This will be remedied sooner or later, but sadly not soon enough.