JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Quiet and melancholy, as all airports should be. Happy airports are freakish.

Trip to London off to an excellent start: on the flight to HK I fell asleep the minute I strapped myself into my seat. Could be the (I suspect) lack of oxygen at NAIA 1, which was crammed with people. I was unconscious by the time the plane took off, and woke up only when the snack was served. If I can repeat this feat on the London flight I am a happy traveller.

Very multicultural population on the flight: attractive if balding mediterranean-looking guy in flip-flops reading a book, some Germans, Indians, lots of Pinoys including the two guys obliquely across the aisle from me who’d brought eggs for their snacks. They were either hard-boiled eggs or balut, I couldn’t see.

On this trip I’m reading David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

This is the back cover of the review copy I got from Lola at National (Lola who picks the fiction titles, not Lola as in the founder of National who is Nanay).

David Mitchell is particularly good for long trips. Years ago I read his Cloud Atlas on a train from Pisa to Paris. I felt like a real citizen of the world. Now that I think about it, all his protagonists are on journeys (not metaphorical, literal) everywhere. The Thousand Autumns starts on a Dutch ship arriving in Nagasaki, port of Japan, in 1799. The port officials are searching the ship for bibles, which are absolutely forbidden in the hermit kingdom.

But before that, a concubine is having a baby, and the details are enough to make you pass out. Remember the first chapter of Corelli’s Mandolin where the extraction of a pea that has resided in a human ear for many years is described? Like that, but a different orifice.

By the way if you blog, don’t publish an article about how paint killed Caravaggio. You will get tons of spam.

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There’s a lovely story by John Carney in today’s South China Morning Post about how Manila has become a haven for refugees everywhere, and how the Philippines which has massive problems of its own is the one nation that welcomes refugees unquestioningly and allows them peace of mind and a fresh start.

Unfortunately access to the article is for SCMP subscribers only.

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Aargh, my 1230 am flight to London is delayed by two and a half hours. On the other hand, all the waiting (2 hours in NAIA + 5 hours in HK + another 2 1/2 hours) has given me lots of time to write and email my column for Friday, so I’m still ahead.