a thousand and one memories

continuing on my niche perfume mania, i blindly ordered a couple of interesting-sounding scents from black phoenix alchemy lab. their scents are oils and very reasonably-priced, so you can definitely chance it and just order up a couple that sound good without breaking the bank. so i ordered kit (it had me at "pen ink") and café mille et une nuits. there are many other promising-sounding scents on the site and they were kind enough to send four samples with my order, so i will likely be going back.

when i put on café mille et une nuits, i was slightly put off by a sweetish, candy scent, but it soon dissipated and settled into a smoky, retro scent that transported me to the afternoons i spent studying at great midwestern in iowa city in the late 80s. like an underlying sweet waffle cone layered with smoky patchouli and freshly-ground coffee that brought to mind images of shopping the secondhand racks at ragstock and wandering into the soap opera for some bath goodies. i was reminded once again how scent is inextricably tied to memory and just a faint hint of an old familiar scent can cause a tidal wave of memories to wash over you. i've been so taken with it, that i haven't even tried kit yet.

have you ever been transported by a scent? tell me your story in the comments below!

reading and listening and strangers and historical perspective

i just finished the last book of ken follett's century trilogy. i know they were novels, but as historical fiction, i feel like they gave me a more personal take on the sweeping history of the 20th century and a greater understanding of things like the cuban missile crisis and the fall of the berlin wall. literature can do that, as can 20+ years to reflect on the events. it struck me that it's very hard to know the meaning of things immediately after they happen. or even a decade after. i think we are definitely still struggling to make sense of september 11, 2001. and i think our round-the-clock style of news doesn't do us any favors. the nature of today's media means that analysis must begin immediately, before we even really know what's happening and i think it's diminishing the human race. we can't possibly know the meaning of things without reflecting on them. but that certainly doesn't stop the relentless talking heads on television. makes me glad i pretty much only watch netflix and hbo nordic these days (plus my guilty pleasure of a few programs on tlc).

i've also been listening to as many of the strangers podcasts as are available on iTunes. they are filled with stories that make me long for more stories. stories of people who were strangers to one another, strangers to themselves, and then strangers no more. since the host is danish and refers to that fact quite often, i feel a strange connection with her that makes me wonder if it borders on stalkerish. she's been in my country a little bit longer than i've been in hers and she is at times as bewildered by the US as i am by denmark. she seems like someone i'd love to invite over to dinner.

this listening, coupled with reading the edge of eternity got me thinking about marina ivanovna, the very soviet-style russian teacher i had at iowa back in the early 90s. she struck fear in our hearts - using public humiliation as her main motivator. that works for me, i must admit, so despite how tough she was, i quite liked her. she lived in russian house, a big old house on a tree-lined iowa city street where a bunch of russian majors lived - kind of a sorority/fraternity house for slavic geeks. and i wonder what she made of it all? so weird that i never wondered that at the time - i thought of her as a teacher, not as a person. i think we all did with teachers at some point in our lives - being surprised at seeing them outside of school with their families or just mowing their lawn or something entirely normal. it seemed so strange that they were just ordinary people, living ordinary lives.

but here was marina ivanovna, a professor from moscow university who must have lived her entire life under the soviet system, plopped down in iowa city, just as the soviet union was dissolving. it must have been so bewildering and overwhelming in many ways - the nature of the students, the abundance of consumer goods, the informality of it all. i wonder what she made of it and whether she had aching moments of homesickness or whether she felt so fortunate to be there. what did she think? did she find it all so strange? was she happy or frustrated or overwhelmed or puzzled? she was probably all of those things at different moments, just like i am here in denmark, even after all of these years.

we can all feel like strangers at times, even when we live in our own cultures, but it is magnified when we live abroad. i guess all we can do is keep telling stories to try to make sense of it all, and remember to be patient, because it may take the vantage point of years before it does indeed begin to make sense.

the teachers you remember - a post without pictures

we all have teachers we remember...sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for not so good ones.

~ mrs. polly, who made us try sardines on saltines in kindergarten and who made sheila madsen disappear after she cried at school, leaving one thinking one had better not cry at school or one might disappear oneself. tom pranger also cried and both he and his brother tim, who did not cry, disappeared as well. crying was not a good thing to do in kindergarten.

~ mrs. bushman, who divided us all into blue birds, red birds and yellow birds according to our ability to read "saw" as "saw" and not "was" and to not leave a puddle of pee beneath our desks on a regular basis. come to think of it, you could still be a blue bird and pee your pants regularly, as jody hoekman proved again and again, so it must just have had to do with reading ability.

~ mrs. luze, who was the subject of a horrible joke by my father, who stamped one of my worksheets with a "horseshit" smiley stamp and asked her if that wasn't a little harsh. she stared at him in wide-eyed horror, her jackie o bouffant perfectly coiffed (it was the 70s, but the 60s lingered on in south dakota, we were a little behind, after all).

~ miss maryann. my favorite grade school teacher. she who taught us about chicken soup with rice and allowed us to choose spelling words like uruguay and triskaidekaphobia. she was in a horrible car accident and ended up in a body cast in pierre. i think i had nightmares about that for years afterwards. i think her husband owned the seattle mariners for awhile at one point. or was it the super sonics?

~ mrs. petersen. she put up with horrendous plays we made up ourselves, based on various combinations of nancy drew and the hardy boys. they were interminable and she allowed them, but she punished us by making us sit together in desk groupings with boys.

~ mr. teller. he lived in the apartment across from my grandmother and always had the yuckiest warm coffee breath which he breathed on you in a moist, uncomfortable way if you asked him a question. not that long ago, dad mentioned that he was a vietnam vet with issues. that i did not realize at the time...the vet part at least (tho' of course, for years, i thought veteran's day was veterinarian's day, so there was that aspect), i do, however, think i picked up on the issues.

~ mrs. blunck. she had been a teacher for too long and hated children. i remember when i wore my first pair of high heels to the 6th grade...they had awesome wooden, chunky heels and were brown leather with colorful leather stitches. she told me to wait to grow up. which, in retrospect, might have been wiser than i thought it was at the time. but i still maintain she hated children. and i think she might actually have been a man. a very short, stout, child-hating man.

~ mrs. walker. the superintendent's wife, with her severe haircut, gabardine pantsuits and cowboy boots. on the day ronald reagan was shot, they announced it over the school's pa system. i, perhaps a bit too cheerily, and with more than a tinge of hope in my voice, asked, "is he dead?" and she made the entire class stay after school because of my disrespect for the president (that made me very popular, i tell you). i was already a liberal in the 7th grade. i will say tho', that she taught me how to draw using perspective and for that, i am grateful, tho' i've never been that fond of polyester since then.

~ mrs. tappe. she always seemed classy and a little bit above the fray and like she didn't really need the job but did it just for fun. she taught us girls how to take shorthand and do other officey-things, like filing, that girls should learn in those days. i liked her and i liked shorthand too.

~ mrs. leistra. gabardine and cowboy boots - she and mrs. walker clearly shopped the same fashion crime scene, but she had an even more severe haircut. i learned to type from her on an ibm selectric. i'm still using that skill at this very moment (tho' i have thankfully graduated to an apple product) and no, i don't need to look at my keyboard. tho' maybe i'd have learned it anyway as i'm pretty much bred to be good at typing.

~  mr. hirt. they gave him history because it didn't matter that much (maybe they knew we'd eventually be able to google any historical knowledge we needed to know). he was actually the football and wrestling coach. he could be easily led astray during a boring recounting of the civil war and made to tell stories of the brave wrestlers of the university of iowa, which always seemed a little bit like being in a john irving novel, so i liked it. i believe i eventually went to the university of iowa because of him, but oddly, i don't think he went there himself.

~ mr. schaefer. i'll never forget the day he droned on and on about filling out tax forms while dressed as gilligan (tho' i have a more hazy recollection of why he did that). he looked strikingly like gilligan even in his regular attire and it was very difficult not to laugh during the entire hour. i think there was more to him than we realized at the time. he coached girls basketball.

~ mr. harvison. bitter man who, despite the triple major to which he loved to refer, never really seemed to amount to all that much himself. he was, naturally, appointed guidance counselor, as we weren't really supposed to amount to all that much either, being from a small town as we were. we shouldn't have too many aspirations. after all, we could never live up to mr. harvison's own triple major. i was never clear what it was in, but when he taught psychology, he liked to use, by name, various people in town and former students as examples of the various psychoses (there's likely a whole other blog post in recounting those). i spent my time in his physics class reading dostoevsky. i think it's probably why i eventually got a fulbright. funnily, enough, i don't think mr. harvison ever got one of those.

~ mr. markhart. the math teacher. he had a ruler and he wasn't afraid to wack it against a desk. i think i was actually better at geometry than i was supposed to be as a girl, but managed to pull myself back to the level where i belonged where algebra was concerned. mr. markhart wanted us to think he was strict, but actually, he liked kids and got more of a kick out of us than he let on. and we really did learn stuff from him, and not only how much force it took to break a wooden ruler, but actual math and things.

what teachers do you remember?

throwback thursday mother's day edition: young reporter

since mother's day is approaching, i thought i'd share some photos of my mom as a young markets editor at the sioux falls argus-leader in what must have been the late 50s. i wish she'd saved ALL of these clothes, as i'd love to have had them.

looking very serious about her work. i remember we had a typewriter like that around the house when i was a kid - i think it's a royal and it was a real workhorse of a machine. i do love the clickity clack of a typewriter.

how great is that skirt and jacket? i'm not sure what that is she's looking at, but there were a few of these photos that seemed staged for some purpose or other. unfortunately, i don't know the story behind them, but i hope when mom sees them, she tells me.

apparently even then, you could be too busy to leave your desk for lunch. bad habits carry on through the generations, tho' i try not to do this too often.

this one is obviously staged. i remember that yellow dot-tape from my childhood - mom used to set type in our back room and the tape from the compugraphic machines would come out in long yellow ribbons, filling a big plastic garbage can. you had to type into one machine and run it through another machine that looked the same, but turned those yellow ribbons into set columns of type for the paper. i love that one shoe has fallen off. this photo has penciled crop marks on the top and side and on the back, there's writing.

i think it says, "keep deep (as marked) Sunday" and i'm not sure what that signature says - andy? or wiley? it was obviously used in a photo spread in the sunday paper.

happy mother's day (a little early) to mom and happy throwback thursday to the rest of us.

icons of soviet design

whatever else you say about the soviet union, they did come up with some design classics. these coin-operated fizzy water machines were still in use and to be found on the streets and in train stations when i studied in russia in 1994. the glasses, which you can see below, were always a bit suspect and the water had a strange smell and taste, but it was still a classic and you had to try it at least once. once you had survived it the first time, you felt pretty invincible and oddly unafraid to try it again.

these glasses were ubiquitous in homes and restaurants and on trains throughout russia. you were likely to be served hot tea in one, but they also held cold drinks and, of course, vodka. it has a good heaviness to it and i imagine they wear like iron. they were produced by the millions from 1943 onward.

and its design pedigree isn't too shabby either - sculptor vera mukhina (she did that monument to the new soviet man - the worker and the peasant girl) designed it and it's said her design was influenced by kazimir malevich (he of the black square painting fame). i wish i'd slipped a few into my bag, but alas, i don't have any of them. they're still manufactured to this day and ikea has even copied it!

when i studied in kazan in 1994, the tramvai still looked like this, tho' i never saw one so empty as the one in this photo. they were always stuffed with people. i remember once we were so stuffed in that my feet lifted off the ground and i was just held up by the bodies around me. that was a weird feeling.

this is such a clever little tool. a little coil, perfect for warming up a mug of water for a single cup of tea or coffee. i wish i had one right now. much more economical than warming up an entire kettle.

ahh, the original lomo cameras - leningrad optics and mechanics amalgamation. when i studied in kazan in 1994, there was a store my friends and i referred to as "watch world" - they had watches and cameras. i wasn't into cameras at that time and thought these were just plastic junk, but oh, how i wish i had one (or five) now.

now they're all trendy, and back in production, thanks to the lomographic society. but alas, they're no longer cheap as chips.

the bear chocolate. i don't recall it as anything special, and if i'm honest, i think it tasted kinda gross, but even when i was in russia for the first time in 1994, it was ubiquitous. and the little wrapper with its portrait of a mama bear and her three cubs is a design classic.

speaking of watch world - here are models of raketa watches. i did buy quite a few of them when i was there. they were wonderful little mechanical workhorses, the kind you wind and there was quite a selection of leather bands, and they cost nothing. i still have at least one of them and tho' i seldom wear a watch these days (i use my phone instead), after reading this little book, i may have to dig it out and use it for old times' sake.

since i was out in the backwater of kazan, i don't know whether my raketa watches were produced by actual people or on the assembly line (they began fully automated production in 1980) (who knows how old the stock was in watch world), but they are definitely classic designs.

i learned all of this and took a little walk down memory lane reading made in russia: unsung icons of soviet design. i guess i've got russia on the brain, what with the upcoming winter olympics in sochi.

taking down the tree

i don't really know why i put off taking down the christmas tree. it was easier to do so this year, because it was set up out in the brewery and so it was a bit out of sight, out of mind. but today, as the sun shone through the windows, i got out the boxes and began the task of dismantling. i was thinking that it should feel like a sorrowful activity somehow, a reminder that all of the festivities are over. but i couldn't really make myself feel badly about it. i think i had the same enjoyment removing each ornament and packing it gently away in the boxes as i had getting them out.

i was thinking that i should have made sabin help me, but she was a friend's house, and really, i found that i enjoyed that it was a solitary activity. it gave me a little moment with each of the ornaments and i found myself remembering back to where and when they were acquired and pondering how many years some of them have been on my tree. it was fun thinking of those trees of christmases past. i had some quiet, happy moments of reverie tucking away my little fish and the precious bouquet of flowers that started me on my way down the purple ornament road, clear back in 1990. if sabin had been here, i wouldn't have been able to have my own internal monologue in the same way and it was what i needed today. it left me feeling happy and satisfied.

now all of the bright baubles and strings of lights and even my purple tinsel (i lose some of it every year, but try to pick most of it off and tuck it into a zippy bag to be used again next year) are tucked away neatly in their boxes, waiting to come out again next year.

the only moment of sadness was for the trees themselves, the sacrifice they made to brighten up our dark december days. since we cut them down ourselves, they are actually still green and fresh and hardly even beginning to drop their needles. but they served nobly and we enjoyed them, so it wasn't all for naught. we'll use them once again in the wood burning stove when they've dried out sufficiently, so they will serve another purpose and be useful and enjoyed one more time.

and already today, where the welcome sun shined most of the day, we could begin to see the return of the light, it's still light enough to be outdoors doing chores at nearly 5 and just a week or so ago, you'd better be out there by 4. so it was time for the tree to come down and the ornaments to be packed away until we need their shining warmth again next year.

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52 places to go in 2014.

2013: the year in 36 pictures

january

february

march

april

may

june

july

august

september

october

november

december

limiting myself to three photos from each month was difficult and much more happened than is visible here. but looking it over, it seems that cats figured rather heavily in 2013. molly, frankie, frieda, tobias, stella. it was also a fairly creative year (in fits and starts anyway).  i got much more involved in my community. i think that was good for me. we had a real summer, with weeks of sunny days and that was good for me as well. i began a new obsession: lego minifigures. we lost our chickens to chicken rustlers and we got new ones, who finally started to lay eggs as the year drew to a close. trees (and other things) were felled by storms. we made progress on the house and on the garden. it was, for the most part, what you would call a stille og roligt (quiet and calm) year.  but perhaps i've reached an age where that's a good thing. but now, i'm looking forward to whatever 2014 brings.

the soundtrack of our lives

i recently went to hear a storyteller. he had fully embraced the hippie lifestyle back in the 60s and it seems that he even managed to remember a lot of it. as he began, he read some introductory remarks from prepared notes. he was a bit stiff in his presentation and i was a bit worried about how the evening would go. but then, he took off his reading glasses, abandoned his notes and began to really tell his story. he was transformed into a different person - warm, lively, authentic and real.

he had brought a record player along and real LPs and he used music throughout to tell his story, which began clear back when he was in the fourth grade. a substitute teacher introduced the kids to the kind of jazz that was performed by a Danish jazz musician called Papa Bue and it was a revelation for him. in my ears, it sounded much more like 20s and 30s dixieland music, not 60s, but my musical upbringing came later and in a different cultural context.

what i loved was the way he used music to underline his story and to trigger his memories. and even tho' much of the music was before my time, it still brought forth my own memories of music. for him, the radio station you had to tune into was radio luxembourg. he sat with his ear glued to it and even recorded favorite songs from the radio, being frustrated when they interrupted a song before it was over. it made me recall tuning in late at night to AM station KOMA in oklahoma, where they played the beegee's tragedy every evening around 10 p.m. during one long summer in the early 80s. we couldn't get KOMA during the day, only at night, but even that was pretty amazing, considering there were two whole states in between us and them.

it got me reminiscing about my own musical memories. one of the earliest is of sonny and cher. i can remember listening to cher's gypsies, tramps and thieves on our very advanced 8-track player. i recall the feel of the buttons and the click as it moved between tracks and the scratchy blue carpet that was on the floor in front of the stereo. cher's hair and costumes were just spectacular, and i could picture them as i listened to the stories she told with her songs.

there were a lot of country music stations in the area where i grew up, and i remember singing along to the oak ridge boys and alabama and swingin' by john andersen. some of the first non-country music i had, on LP, was barry manilow. "oh mandy, well you came and you gave without taking..." along with the soundtrack to grease, i practically wore those records out. it was difficult to be a rebel when you were listening to barry manilow, so it may give you an idea of what a tame sort of child i was.

after that came the gogos and the cars and steve miller band's abracadabra. there were other storytellers, like john cougar mellencamp, tho' i don't think i ever owned any of his albums. (why oh why don't songs tell stories anymore?) and then there was madonna. and cyndy lauper. i couldn't choose between them, i loved them both, they spoke to my very soul. and prince, i remember thinking his song kiss was a message to all of us ordinary people, that we had a chance (you don't have to watch dynasty, to have an attitude...). there are so many memories attached to all of that music. much of it involving long drives in the car. i can still picture a stretch of road between madison and brookings where i heard dire straits' money for nothing on my way back to college one sunday night.

some music i came to late. i was only able to ascribe meaning to the eagles' hotel california after i lived in california for a couple of years and experienced for myself the soullessness of orange county in the late 80s. then that whole, "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave" line made so much more sense to me.

we all have an individual soundtrack to our lives. some of it shared. most of it deeply private. some of it indelibly linked to memories, some of it just washed over us, leaving no trace. it was nice to be reminded of that by hearing someone else's story. we need more storytelling in our lives, good old-fashioned spoken word.

flashback friday

the beauty of digital photography means that you can access your memories right there in your iPhoto library (or if you're me, in 4 different iPhoto libraries). so i thought i'd take a little stroll down memory lane to what i was doing at this time in years gone by.

we were in istanbul

on july 26, 2004

in july 2005, i was in the badlands of south dakota.

in july 2006, i was in cape town.
and my hair had grown out a bit.

on july 26, 2007
i spent 21 hours traveling on a train to skopje, macedonia from ljubljana, slovenia

husband worked on our a-frame greenhouse

on july 26, 2008

stupid bitch we sold the house to tore it down
oops, was that out loud?

i relaxed in the garden with my laptop

on july 26, 2009

proof that there was sunshine,
but i had just received news that my favorite professor from college died

on july 26, 2010

i came home with dark hair and bangs

july 26, 2011

sabin and mom and i explored old abandoned houses
july 26, 2012

where were you this time last year? or the year before?

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in light of my newfound mantra: you are a mashup of what you let into your life, i've signed up for a fortnight of self-adoration with kylie ballard. it's free, and there's a facebook group, what's not to like? you should join us too.

memorable meals

i woke up thinking about food. not because i was hungry, but because i go in streaks like that...where i feel inspired in the kitchen and the clock's turning to 5 doesn't fill me with dread because i have no idea what i'll make for dinner. i'm in one of those periods where that doesn't scare me, because i know i'll just open the fridge and make something yummy, even if i approach it without knowing what that something might be.


what i awoke thinking about was a fantastic salad i had at a spa restaurant in thailand. it was served in a beautifully-carved papaya and it had crunchy shreds of carrot and green mango, chili, cilantro, crab and peanuts.

it was tossed in a spicy dressing of chili, fish sauce and plenty of tangy lime. just writing about it makes my mouth water right now. it was actually on the edge of too spicy, even for me, who loves a bit of heat, but it felt right at that moment, like the heat of the dish caused me to sweat out the last toxins, not coaxed out by the massage i'd just had. it was the perfect end to my spa visit.

you have to forgive my utterly crap photo of it, it was before my photo obsession began, in addition to being taken at night with the dreaded flash - but it gives you a good idea of how beautifully presented it was. i can still remember scooping out the delicious, cooling, ripe papaya flesh after the salad was gone. it was truly a memorable meal.

memorable meals often occur when you're traveling and we remember less of the everyday meals we eat at home. i can still remember pulling into a little town called larissa in greece, late at night after a long day of driving. my traveling companions and i checked into a hotel and then wandered out to find something to eat. there was a big square lined with restaurants. old greek men sitting out on the warm summer night, having lively conversations over sweating bottles of ouzo at tables covered in actual red-checked tablecloths. we approached such a restaurant and found no one spoke much english, but with gestures and a visit to the kitchen where a lovely elderly lady, all clad in black, down to the scarf on her head, showed us what she could make. it was a simple meal of fish, but imprinted on my memory forever because of the experience and the feeling that we'd stepped onto a 1950s greek movie set.

i remember a meal of walnut-encrusted shark at the linn street café in iowa city in the early 90s. it was so good it actually brought tears to my eyes. i may have to try to duplicate that, tho' i don't think it's so politically (or environmentally) correct to eat shark anymore these days. maybe another fish would do. or perhaps even a steak, as shark has that dark, steak-like quality.

i remember wandering the streets of tokyo with a colleague, looking for a place to eat dinner. we saw some signs and went up to the 8th floor to a restaurant where you checked your shoes at the door (quite normal in tokyo, actually). we were seated in the window, looking down over shinjuku, teeming with shoppers and lit up with neon. however, it soon became apparent that our utter lack of japanese, coupled with a menu with few pictures and a waiter that lacked english meant that we had to reclaim our shoes and go. we ended up back at our hotel, where, tho' it was late, they served us up a fantastic meal. a series of delicious little dishes of all kinds of things - most memorable of which was the gorgeous, tender slices of real wagyu beef. i remember thinking that now i understood what the fuss was about.

and then, there was the wasabi bistro in seattle, where another colleague and i ate night after night during the ten days or so we were there. we couldn't stay away after sampling the white salmon sashimi. it's still the best i've ever had, even including tokyo.

what food do you remember?

a stroll down memory lane: scenes from business class

the view from the business class bathrooms on SAS

i'm feeling nostalgic after having meetings with loads of vendors and old friends from my previous professional life. you know, back three years ago when my suitcase was never unpacked and i didn't know what time zone i was in or which continent i was on without checking my blackberry.  tho' it feels good to be back in the hugo boss suit these days, now i'm all iPhone and ecological and stuff. but those days of jetting around in business class were well, da bizness. i asked a friend yesterday if we properly enjoyed them and he said, "yes, we definitely did."

a few moments for your enjoyment:

~ my first time in business class was on a upgrade that a kind gate agent in atlanta bestowed upon me and a colleague after i got sent back to the check-in by security so i could check in the small kitchen blow torch i'd bought at williams sonoma. he got such a kick out of us, he upgraded us as a surprise and we didn't know it 'til we got to the gate. i still have the souvenir glass i took from that flight. and would you believe the airline was actually air france?

~ my first actual trip where i was booked in business class and there intentionally was together with a colleague who had spent most of his childhood in business class and related how world-shattering it was for him when he realized that all those people downstairs on the plane got to the destination at the same time. sigh.

~  the time we got upgraded from business to first class on thai, but only on the short flight from bangkok to phuket. first class on thai airways is so heavenly - with the softest, cushiest purple leather seats you've ever seen and room for dinner guests and their pony - we said we were staging an environmental protest when it was time to leave the plane. the protest was that we refused to leave that environment. when we encountered the customs officials, it turned out that we should definitely have stayed on the plane. corrupt bastards.

~ the time on south african airlines where i sat next to a hilarious guy from finland (seriously, finnish humor is totally underrated) who insisted we try ALL of the wines (south african, of course) and then do away with most of a bottle of amarula, all while regaling me with stories of his travels that kept me laughing the whole way and not even minding the lack of sleep. strangely, i don't even think i learned the guy's name.

~ one time in chennai when a lufthansa flight was delayed by several hours - really a drag because they tend to be scheduled for 1 a.m. anyway. we were finally let on the plane and seated and served our champagne, only to have the whole plane flash and go dark. a few worrying minutes later, the captain came on and said the plane had blown a fuse and they were looking for it. a little disconcerting in light of how old and un-modernized the biz class seats were on the 747. we said to the stewardesses flight attendants that we didn't really mind that much at that point, as long as they kept the G&Ts coming. it got even more interesting once we arrived in frankfurt, hours late, missing our gate and found that someone had forgotten to order stairs, so we waited on the tarmac another 45 minutes before some were brought out to us. so much for german efficiency. and in the end, we flew back to copenhagen on the same flight with skeptical environmentalist bjørn lomborg, who was wearing his signature tight black t-shirt and trying to act like he wasn't pleased to see the recognition in people's eyes. (i have actually written about this before, but it was a memorable flight.)

~ hurrying through the airport in tokyo to make our SAS flight and we overtake some really elderly SAS stewardesses flight attendants hobbling along making their way to the gate. my colleague says, "i'm sure those geriatric specimens will be the flight attendants on our flight and they'll ignore us the whole way." sure enough, they were, tho' they did keep the wine coming, which was all that really mattered. SAS stands for Sexy After Sixty, i tell you, so it's not too late yet for my dream of becoming a stewardess, unless, of course, they go bust, which just might happen.

~ with the same colleague, we used to choose the same movie our individual screens, then count down and start it simultaneously, since it would be annoying to watch the same movie but be at different points in the film.

ahh, those really were the days and sometimes i do miss them. i blame the hugo boss suit for bringing it all back and making me feel a bit nostalgic.