Picking At Freebies

Flying back home to Beijing, somewhere over South Korea I suppose.  I can’t see out the window.  The ANA lounge there at Haneda was well stocked with papers.  I picked up a Financial Times and an International Herald Tribune.  (That must be why Herald Square is named “Herald” as eight blocks up Time’s Square is named “Times” with the newspapers headquarters located there.)  There was an older copy of the Economist and I sat in the morning sun, sipping on the complimentary miso soup, reading article after article, editorial after editorial about Brexit, about Orlando. 

It’s so damn early all I really want to consume is a smoothie.  Rather, I’m picking at the freebies. Salad and the perennial Japanese free food favorite of airline and hotel lounges, bits of deep fried chicken.  I’m not even sure if I want a cup of coffee as I’d like to sleep on the flight.  But I have one anyway.  I passed a sushi spot on the way up here and if it were a little later in the day perhaps I’d indulge, but at eight in the morning, it just doesn’t draw me. They are offering three types of free sake to sample but fortunately the requisite will power is properly in control of my cerebellum. This time. 

The Air China flight home is always down at gate 141, which is the absolute furthest gate from anything.  They make a last call announcement and I pack up my papers.  There is a second and a third “last” call announcement in Japanese, Chinese and English as I make my way along the moving walk ways, past the oddly named store “Books and Drugs.”  Sounds like my undergraduate experience. 

I will not be the last person to board.  A couple is arguing with the flight staff about how many bottles of liquor they can bring on the flight.  Their bag is open for all to see.  From past experience I know that I am not really holding anyone up.  We will all sit here now for quite some time.  Does Air China get a discount parking all the way out here?  There must be some trade off for this compromise of the outer-most boarding gate.  Automatically I scoop up the English language China Daily and the Chinese language Global Times from the stand by the plane door.  I’ve now made my way through all four papers and half the Economist.  I now know how read ‘Florida’ and ‘Orlando’ in Chinese characters.  

And as always happens with this flight I feel oddly at home, suddenly asking for a pillow in Chinese.  My kindergarten Japanese and my exaggerated polite affectations fall by the wayside and “hey, what’s up?”-like casual normalcy reasserts itself.  I can feel my shoulders relaxing.