It's been a while

Over the last couple of months, I seem to be apologizing a lot for not posting on my blog. I just got back from a business related trip to San Francisco along with now being outside of Guangzhou. I had a lot of prep for my San Francisco trip, so that took up my free time, so again I apologize.

I will try to catch you all up on things going on since my last post. First story related to my plane flight to/from San Francisco. My flight went via Beijing, so there was a small layover in Beijing. While I was walking through Beijing's new terminal (two quick things to note about this, Beijing's new terminal is actually made up of many new terminals and is pretty much a new airport, also I came from Shanghai's new terminal, so I am just walking through all kinds of new terminals...now back to the story), for some reason I was thinking what I would do if someone wanted to switch seats with me on the flight (flight duration is 11.5 hours). I came to the resolution that I would give up my seat if asked. Not sure why I was thinking this or why I came to that conclusion, but thus are the thoughts when you have free time in an airport terminal.

Well, you can guess, when I got onto the plane someone sitting in my aisle seat said that he was sitting next to his friend and asked if I could switch seats and he pointed to the middle seat in the row in front of him. My first thought, 11.5 hours in a middle seat, my second thought was to quickly scan the people who I would be in between....a petite middle aged Chinese women and a red haired normal sized Australian (at least I found out the Australian part during the flight). But I went with my conclusion from sitting in the terminal earlier and said it was okay and sat in the middle seat. Actually it worked out okay, the middle seat is not that comfortable, especially for those long flights, but I had a good conversation with the guy I was sitting next too. Note that he worked for this economist Larouche that I had never heard of, but he had some pretty interesting views on things (not always the right views as you can see from the website, but it made for interesting conversation).

To wrap up this story, it should be noted that on my flight home from San Fran to Beijing then from Beijing to Shanghai the plans were not more then 1/4 full, so on both flights I had a full row to myself. Some may say coincidence, but I am convinced it was because I gave up my seat that the planes home were empty. Actually the person checking me in said the plane is rarely this empty...so there you go.