pm215

Just got back to the flat from Beijing, after the usual 11 hours in a tin can (there's got to be a better way!) The pilot made a sufficiently heavy landing that he felt he had to apologise for it ("it's been a long flight and that wasn't one of my better ones"...)

If you're ever in Beijing's terminal 3, don't go to the 'Lucky Shamrock'. Firstly, it took me three tries to hit something on their menu they weren't sold out of (at 11am in a half-deserted terminal -- they're still in the early phases of moving airlines across to the new terminal, and I think there were just three departures scheduled for the day). Secondly, they took ages to produce the food despite having an absurd number of staff standing around doing nothing (and being slow is really stupid in an airport where by definition everybody has a hard deadline to be elsewhere). Then when the food did arrive, my allegedly 'medium' steak was cold and uncooked in the middle, so I had to send it back (they cooked it a little longer so it was just about edible). My colleague's porridge never arrived, and they told him they were out of boiled eggs and would a fried egg be OK...