from Hong Kong airport (from my diary en route)

I am flying the Great Circle Route I guess…

I raised the window shade and it is all white outside. It is blinding as I am sitting on the sunny side. We are cruising at that place between sky and clouds, so it seems we are neither here nor there.

Such an odd place to be. I set my watch for Hong Kong time as we took off from SFO (1030am Friday to 330am Saturday). So I am following the map on the seat monitor in front of me. We are flying the great circle – going north to go south – Such as it is. (I am posting this in Hong Kong as I wait for my plane for Kathmandu which is going to be at least 7 hours late – we flew north over the Aleutians, then over Tokyo, Mt Fuji, Taipei… en leu of a pic just visualize a pic of Mt Fuji from 32000 ft… it was great, but the camera was stowed…)

To enter a plane, especially one this large is a marvel (777) – it is another world. A really long flight like this is really a time machine transporting me to another world. Even the more so as it became another day as I changed my watch ahead even before we cleared San Francisco’s runway. Such power one has to give and take time like this. The simple act of moving the watch ahead, I erased a day of my life… and so did everyone else on the plane.

So what is time? (I have 14 hrs to think about it) I never seem to have enough of it, and here I am giving a whole day of it away to the ether. As I write I have spent about 5:49 of it in the air. Daily each of us bumps along (I will make free use of the turbulence metaphor for obvious reasons) we grow older, we love, we change…

My father has been going through chemo and found out that he has beaten it for now and his cancer is in remission. He has been given some extra time as well!

I am writing this as we have turbulence… I looked at the map there was a bump as we crossed the international dateline (now what day is it?) curious… I wonder what happens on board a ship… So it is a new day, after all this is where it starts…