Blake Anthony Johnson

Keep in mind that this post is just a collection of thoughts over the past day.  It may not be in order, but my thoughts are there.

• I was walking around the airport, and I noticed that in some parts, people can smoke.
• Hard to breath at first in Shanghai airport, but it may be the humidity (there is a lot of that.) I don’t think the terminal had air conditioning, but if it did, it was either off, or very low. Not a blue sky in sight. Anyone who is complaining about Minnesota’s weather needs to spend a day here.
  Have Asthma? You probably don’t want to stick around in this weather too long.
• Before being able to exit the airplane, each passenger had to be shot with a laser temperature reader. It was interesting to see about 6 -8 guys board the airplane immediately after landing to do that. A lot of people were taking photos of them.  After going through that, each (international) passenger had to go though the  “Inspection & Quarantine” line.
• After my flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Newark, I barely had enough time to make the Newark to Shanghai flight. Well, I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but by the time I got on the plane, it was virtually full.  Maybe a bit more of a grace period would be nice in the future.
• Got a couple meals on the international flight. That was nice. Tasted like airline food though I suppose.  My snack on the domestic Continental Airlines flight was a little bag of pretzels. My snack on the domestic China plane was a small meal. Chinese airlines > American airlines.
• I used the in-flight entertainment system. That was pretty cool. Not very good quality (video / audio), but the selection was really nice. I watched X-Men, X-men 2, Back to the Future, Penn & Teller (although, censored), The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond.
• Overall, this airport stuff has been a bit easier than I thought. Newark airport seems to have tighter security than MSP / Shanghai did. Shanghai was easy-squeesy, small lines, etc.
• There are a few Americans (that I can see) that seem to be waiting for a flight to Wuhan, so I’m not the only one.
• I’m going on no sleep. I’ve been up for almost 25 hours on about 5 hours of sleep. It’s day here right now, (4:08PM) and it feels like that to me. I didn’t sleep at all on the flight. I think the meals are doing a good job keeping me awake.
• This hotel is really cool. I’ll take some photos of it later.
• I set up Rebtel so anyone can call me. Jajah I have not set up, so if you are using that to call me, it’s going to my normal phone, which I have voice disabled on that right now. (Hint hint to whoever has been calling me.)
• It still has yet to really hit me that I’m in China. A lot of what I’ve seen in China seems similar to the US. But also, a lot seems different too.

Update: Jajah is now set up too.  Here are some photos too.

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