The Chinese Mayflower

Dear my fine feathered friends,

A long overdue post is finally here, and I do have my reasons for not blogging for so long...mainly that I am super lazy. I also tore my MCL in my knee this past November playing on my all-Italian soccer team besides American me, and had knee surgery for the third time in three years in the States this past January. This is becoming an almost annual extravaganza of sorts for me. Nevertheless, after having knee surgery in the States and spending a month on my parent's couch eating Mexican food; watching countless hours of Tosh.O and Jersey Shore; and going to Physical Therapy and pissing off all of the physical therapists with my sarcastic wit and lack of any sort of enthusiasm or pleasantry. I returned back to the Orient this past Tuesday to what was arguably the most reprehensible flight of my entire infamous and unfortunate career of flying.

So a few hours before takeoff for my midnight flight from Los Angeles to Beijing I wandered around the airport. I think a blind man would have little trouble spotting the Chinese in the crowd because they are constantly coughing, not to mention that very few of them cover their mouths while coughing. I used to think it was the lack of mouth-covering which was most annoying, and it is annoying; however, it seems that Chinese people in general cough more than any species of man or animal on the planet. I'm not sure whether they have poor immune systems or that maybe that they have lived with terrible pollution for far too many years, but I would say that one-in-three Chinese travelers was coughing at least every five minutes. Ridiculous but true.

My employer was kind enough to pay for my travel, but that was exactly where the kindness ended since they paid for the cheapest and most asinine of airlines available to mankind...the dreaded "Air China Airlines": where dreams definitely DO NOT come true. I have a tendency to get screwed when it comes to the seating arrangements on these flights, and as always I crapped out with a snake eyes. I had an aisle seat in the back of the plane in the middle-section, and on this flight it was 3-4-3 seating chart so I was originally seated in the middle-section right aisle seat. As I sat down and uncorked my PSP video game for a little FIFA gameplay this middle-aged Chinese man with an awful suit and a moustache compiled completely of whiskers waddled up to me like a penguin and asked me the question that I knew was coming. Would I be kind enough to switch places with him? For some reason this happens to me on every flight, but after getting served a multitude of times I didn't just agree right off the bat. He told me that his seat was on the left aisle of the same section, and mine was on the right aisle so I figured no harm no foul. Of course he wanted to sit near his family and I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. This event would come back to bite me right in the ass soon thereafter.

Five minutes after switching seats I saw a screaming baby with overly preoccupied family about thirty feet away and I knew instantaneously exactly where the baby and his baby-worshiping parents would be sitting...directly to the left of me of course! Meanwhile, he man who had switched me seats quickly looked to expand his territory as if we were playing the board-game "Risk", and he tossed his miniature shoes in front of the seat to the left of me. Soon thereafter he began to eye the seat to the right of me as if he was cast under the spell of its magical powers. However, I instinctively threw down my magazines on this seat so that there would be no confusion on the real estate lines. I figured a 50%-50% split is something I could live with as each of us would get our own two seats. After eating an atrocious meal and playing a few hours of my PSP I finally decided to try to get some shuteye, it had been a LONG day and I was hoping for at least a six-hour nap.

45 minutes later I heard an ear-piercing screech from the crying Chinese baby to my left. Startled for a second I decided to flick on my lights and read the magazines that I had put on the seat to my right to recapture my composure. But instead of magazines on this seat there was instead the moustached face of the Chinaman who had switched seats with me and was snoring like a F^&*ing banshee. The son of a bitch had expanded his territory to all three seats while I was asleep and his head was almost a few inches from touching my thigh. Seriously, WTF! I thought I had done this guy a good deed and in return he showed me the kind of manners and etiquette that the majority of Chinese people possess: which is of course... NONE! I hate to stereotype but it has been my experience that Chinese people are the rudest breed of mammal on the planet. I decided not to wake him up, but when he did wake I was going to use my newly-improved Chinese curse vocabulary to tell him what I thought about his migration into my defined territory. Nevertheless, after playing my PSP for another three hours or so I finally fell asleep again.

Then another sonic boom of a baby scream woke me up maybe a half hour later, and to my utter shock a new face had appeared on the seat next to mine. The moustached man's wife had switched seats with him while I was asleep and she had nestled her unpleasant and oddly-shaped dome to my right and was now using my magazines as a pillow. I wanted to scream very bad things at this point. Very bad things! But what was I gonna do; it was a woman and I was not exactly in the majority in terms of ethnicity on this airplane. Therefore, I went back to my PSP and killed off some more brain cells by busting out another FIFA Soccer tournament. As always, I made it to the finals and lost; made it to the finals again and lost; and made it to the finals and lost in a penalty shoot-out...stern!

I got up some four hours later to go to the bathroom and the woman was now gone. I quickly grabbed my backpack and put it on the seat to my right so that there would be no more confusion on whose territory was whose. I was tempted to spread out three seats over and take a nap like my Chinese neighbors had, but I just cannot be that type of passive-aggressive person; except when it comes to this blog. and, it really feels good. After walking around the airplane for awhile to stretch out my newly-repaired knee I saw my whiskered nemesis thrust something up into the air with extreme jubilation; almost as if he had won the lottery or had caught I giant fish. I hurried over to figure out what had the heck had happened and after careful examination I recognized the red wrapping of a bag of Skittles in his hand...my F'ing SKITTLES in his hand! The Skittles that I had had left in my original seat. I walked over to see him sharing the Skittles wish his family in their three other three seats on the far right side of the plane and it was an utterly strange incident. Almost identical to the scent in "E.T." where the extra terrestrial is eating the Reese's Pieces...except there were three of them. So I guess it was more like an alien's Thanksgiving. This is when my blood had finally hit a boiling point that there would be no coming back from. Like what was this guy thinking??!?! That the airline was giving away free Skittles?!?!? Why didn't he ask me if they were mine?!?!?

So as I started to watch the Chinese family eat my delightful snack I soon realized that there will only three of them. For some reason when the plane had taken off I thought that there were four of them; as some very fortunate families are allocated an additional Chinese in the Orient. So why then had they have purchased a seat on my aisle when in reality they should have just sat together in the three seats on the plane's right side? Or, why would this Chinese guy asked me to switch him seats when he already had the properly allotted number of seats for his wife and the maximum number of children a Chinese family is supposed to have? That's when it dawned on me that the whiskered Chinese Dad had probably hustled me from the very get-go. As I heard boom-shattering baby screams in the background all I could think about was what curse words I could get away with saying to this guy without being deported...unfortunately, I would not get the chance. As I locked eyes with him he seemed to understand that the jig was now up. Nevertheless, the bastard had one last ace card up his sleeve to play and he was not through with me just yet.

For the remainder of the flight the whiskered man and his wife switched seats on the right aisle seat while using their child as a divider/shield to the seat in between me and them. They figured correctly that I would not grill them with their annoying child seating two seats to my right jumping up and down like a monkey. As the child looked at me like an albino polar bear the screaming baby started to get more and more riled up...and then the airplane started to hit turbulence. Just an FYI: The Chinese are the world's worst travelers. You can always spot them on vacation as they are simply just being annoying. I was trying to come up with a more politically correct word but this is the best adjective that I can think of. For example in Thailand you can find the Chinese tourists splashing around in three-feet water of with life preservers on as if they are being chased by a great white shark. When it comes to air turbulence on an airplane it is as if they are taking a kayak straight down Victoria Falls.

As soon as the first of the airplane screams reigned supreme like we were going down the world's scariest roller coaster. Families were holding onto each other as if they would never see one another again. Babies became toxic sound polluters with screams of horror that will forever deafen my ears. Panic-stricken Chinese travelers kept hitting the airline help button for the stewardess to come save them. HAHA! Which is just ridiculous in thought and theory. I mean what do they expect to happen? That the he stewardess is going to use her almighty stewardess powers like a character from "World of Warcraft"? It was ridiculous, hilarious, annoying, and entertaining...but mostly annoying.

I had little to no contact with the neighboring family for the rest of my flight but if I ever see the Dad again without his kid or wife I may punch him as hard as I can in the stomach. The flight came to an underwhelming end and fortunately my bags were not lost and I was not deported. It has been almost four days since I hit Chinese soil and I have been completely jet-lagged ever since. I hate Air China airlines and the majority of the people who fly on this infamous airline. End of story.

I start teaching this coming Chinese Monday and will be up to my usual hijinks's. Giving my students ridiculous names like Grouse, Mauricio, Caesar, and Erskin while ruling my class with an iron laowai fist.

TO Death with Air China,
Professor Atkinson