Crash landing

Today I have achieved something monumentous; I have made a blog. I am fulfilling a lifetime ambition, and for those of you that know me you will understand how much effort I have had to put in to reaching this stage, overcoming my intertia has required a lot of mental and physical stamina. I've wanted to do this for so long, I've even dreamt about it. In my deams, generally I finally finish writing my first entry, then the comuter crashes, I wake up with a start, realise I have achieved nothing and go back to sleep. Which is funny, because I just finished writing my first blog entry, then the computer crashed. So here goes, second time round.

I've been in Nepal just over a week now. Every day we cycle through a maze of backstreets, of variable degrees of smoothness (please see road surface grading system*) from the lovely house of the even lovelier Rhian and Richard where we are staying to Kathmandu Medical College, a funny building with a big grey ramp at the entrance, which looks a bit like they nicked the last 100m of an airplane runway. Sounds unlikely, but actually is entirely possible because the airport is only minutes from the hospital. This is actually very strange, because every day I see, hear and feel the vibrations of planes leaving; I think of you all only a plane ride away and miss you (a little bit)

It also means that when I'm bored at the hospital, I often think about planes as their jumbo jet engines penetrate my thoughts, like the other day I made a list of all of the things I learnt about Air India flights on the way here, might be useful one day.

1. Despite the budget appearance, Air India is actually an upmarket airline that provides touch screens; not realising this I spent a good half an hour pressing every button on the little remote thingy and waving it at the screen, trying to get Mamma Mia to play, finally this old wrinkly woman next to me took pity, or maybe she was fed up of me waving, because she reached out this knarly old finger, prodded the screen, sighed and went back to cackling with the woman over the aisle.

2. Coke cans open differently, its a bit hard to explain exactly how but what I'm saying is be prepared for this. Also on the subject of cans, the coke can were really beautiful, you know how I like cans, so I carefully saved it, and washed it out with a bit of water, but then when I was asleep one of the extremely helpful flight attendants took it away, put your cans in your bag!

3. The food was the best airplane food I have ever had and it keeps you on your toes with an extremely hot chilli disguised as a green bean.

4. The foot rests have been customised, either by accident or design and act as really good foot massagers, don't miss this.

All in all an excellent Air India experience.

*Road Surface Grading System
Grade 1; tarmac, minor potholes and raised manholes only.
Grade 2; used to be tarmac, major potholes, very large speed bumps plus raised manholes
Grade 3; stony dirt path, man made holes and mounds that appear and disappear daily, lined by stalls and cows
Grade 4; dirt path without stones, similar to grade 3, but extremely slippery when wet
Grade 5; not yet experienced, due to use when mountain biking with Rhian