With the holiday traffic, the airport was only an hour away. We had a three hour allowance before departure until we learned that, thanks to technical glitches, the plane left London late and that we were now looking at a five hour wait. It looked as if we could finally use the waiting lounge for what it was designed for: waiting. Waiting meant, in this case, sitting uncomfortably to pass the time and staring zombie-like at wherever one's unsupported neck led one's eyes to. As the mood saw fit, I merely observed other people and thought about the one thing that people shouldn't think about on or before a flight (but always do anyway) - I thought about plane crashes. In particular, I thought about Alive. A local two rows in front of me had dozed off in a rather awkward position, neck bent at an acute angle. He had the fashion sense of a Japanese metrosexual who was trying to look blonde and Western. Several seats away sat a Caucasian male with a graying ponytail and a muscle shirt. I hated him that very instant because he reminded me of Super Macho Man. I never could defeat him at Punch Out and he never failed to taunt me with his pixelated man-boobs. If we were to crash in the Andes, I realized that I was going to either eat bad sushi or super macho beef.

The airline must have felt guilty for the delay because they started serving refreshments before noon. There was no bad sushi or super macho beef for me, however, but an airport ham and cheese sandwich (school cafeteria standard sans mayonnaise). I was thankful for this because I wouldn't have paid for that overpriced sandwich in any currency.

I watched the multilingual airplane safety demonstration video after takeoff, which demonstrated exactly how passengers would not act in an emergency. The in-flight entertainment had back-to-back Simpsons episodes, and I watched those while the cabin crew served me my second ham and cheese sandwich for the day (coffee shop standard with warm crusty bread) and a plate of fruit. I thought back to the days when airlines served actual airplane food, with soggy vegetables, an aluminum cover, and more cups on your tray than you would actually need.

Clearing immigration, we were met by our travel agent who told us that we missed our hotel transfer due to the delay. Instead, he booked us a free limo service to the hotel (something good from the delay, finally). I sat shotgun and pondered the miracles of German engineering, specifically how the sedan appeared larger from the inside. I also saw my life flashing several times before I had to consciously remind myself that I was riding a right-hand-drive vehicle (and therefore not going against traffic) and that I didn't need a steering wheel because I wasn't in reality driving the thing.

We reached our hotel in less than an hour, to be served by a doorman wearing a top hat (a sight that could be appreciated further with sleep deprivation). The funny thing about the hotel was that the lobby wasn't situated on the ground level. The ground level was practically empty save for an elevator lobby and a giant sculpture resembling a Lego Man. The lobby itself was on the fourth level (designated the 'lobby level') which was connected to the mall next door and thus making the ground level redundant.

Langham Place hotel in Mong Kok was only about a year into its operations and everything was fairly new, including the room furnishings, which included a wall-mounted flatscreen and a region-free multi-system DVD player. The audio-visual experience actually extended into the bathroom. A volume control knob was placed above the toilet bowl, right next to a phone extension. While there wasn't anything new with these, the hotel saw to it that you could actually watch the wall-mounted TV wherever you were inside the bathroom, having walls that were lined with mirrors except the one wall dividing the bedroom from the bathroom, which was made of glass. Of course, having a glass wall meant that you could very well be putting on a show from the bathroom, but thanks to a well-meaning vinyl curtain, your roommate could be spared the sorry spectacle of you going through your big brother bathroom rituals with your exposed little brother. The mirrored arrangement posed one problem though, and that had to do with reading reversed subtitles.

Being Halloween, the shopping complex hired several guys to dress up, including the Filipino house band. With this, I basically met a bunch of Cantonese people doing cosplay and four Draculas singing Hotel California with a telltale accent. I listened to their standard videoke repertoire as I went up the express escalator to check out a curious shopping section called 'The Spiral.' I eventually found out why it was called so... it was configured in such a way that if one were to keep strolling counter-clockwise through the complex, one would eventually end up at the top floor. It was quite ingenious, really, except that it was also tiring because the express escalators were designed to skip several floors. I was more than halfway up The Spiral before I realized that I had to go all the way to the top just to get back to the lobby level.

I wouldn't normally complain about taking the stairs, but I had already done the initial rounds of my usual haunts in Mong Kok before The Spiral and my shoes were starting to disagree with me. The first day rounds yielded a used Faith No More Live at Brixton Academy CD for PhP250, a widescreen DVD of The Who: The Kids are Alright for PhP350, as good as new (a personal holy grail at a third of what I expected to pay), and lastly, a sealed German issue AC/DC Family Jewels DVD for PhP700 which I would later discover to be PAL (idiot). At any rate, having already gotten a couple of DVDs, I figured that I would be able to watch something without subtitles for the night... from the comfort of the bathroom if needed. It's starting to look like an enjoyable trip.

[the rest of the trip included wife cakes, a Little Sheep that almost caused a bloody stool (thanks Claire), Curry in a Hurry, a couple of engrish shirts, an ex-boss who champions facial hair, a flirtong scholar (sic), synchronicity, a muscled suspect being hauled screaming into a police van, mochi ice cream, a previously mentioned Filipino house band, and various other stuff that you would doubtless find either so disappointing or so boring that I decided to just write about them on a single lumpia wrapper before I ate it on the flight back with a tuna sandwich]

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