Made out of people

Flying to Vienna

The CHI 2004 conference is in Vienna. I'm joining a workshop, then giving a talk. I'll write more about various news as they strike my fancy. For the moment, though, travelogue.

Sitting in the coach in the eleven-hour flight to London, looking out over endless oceans (if I was on the left side of the plane, I mightbe able to look out and see Rejkyavik, according to the little monitors on the backs of the seats), on a seat where the integrated, all-in-one controller has, finally and entirely, died. While this might not be a great loss were it just one or two of the functions, this small broken miracle of technology (a game pad, telephone, and channel remote control all in one) means that I have been without stewardess, and with overhead light, all night.

Those who read further than this will find that this narrative rapidly diverges from the topic of the user-interface of a broken hand-held controller, and will instead begin to discuss unsubstantiated gossip and stream-of-consciousness notes on the my seatmates. You have been warned.

I was able to coax enough life out of it to watch the final Matrix movie, whose (scant) merits need not be retold in this forum; I was unable to keep it alive afterward, and thus was saved the choice between old CSI episodes and Big Fish.

The woman next to me watched Kill Bill, twice, before she fell asleep. (The second time, to her credit, she spent chatting with her friends in the next seat over). She is one of a group that is startlingly well-dressed and styling next to me, and while they might just all be a little more LA than I am, I am enjoying the idea that I may be seated next to a line of b-list celebrities.

(I suppose I could talk to them. But that might break the illusion.)

The one who looks like Vanilla Ice--albeit with a mohawk, and an ipod--is stretched out across three seats in the cavernous center section of the plane.While that's fine for the empty center seat, and his own second-from-end seat, his feet are proppsed on the tray table of the woman next to him, an Asian girl in a red sweater. The girl next to me is a lovely chocolate-cream color, and had a model's poise when she was awake.

When she's asleep, I'm glad to say, she flops, just like everyone else.

She and the girl past her (the one with Vanilla Ice's feet and tatoo'd ankle on her tray table) spent the first bit of the flight, the take off portion, reading a variety of magazines that semed to have in common mostly the fact that they feature attractive women being photographed.

One was a fashion magazine. There was both FHM's "100 Top" list, and Maxim's latest issue. And there was a juvenile "Seventeen"-genre magazine. My seatmate examined each of them thoughtfully, gravely. Where my eyes might skim over a page of revealing figures, she studied the arched back, the curved leg, the artful airbrush. In the teen magazine, she seems to linger over the Britney pictures (and there are lots of Britney pictures). And she would be hard-pressed to claim she reads for the articles. I somehow like to think that the interest is professional.

A few rows forward and to the left are a couple of guys who look like motorcyclists. They each carry a wide assortment of scars and bruises on their faces, and talk with noisy northern-British accents. My first impression--and I just can't get it out of my head--is that a bunch of the British equivalent of Hells Angels have just come back from a trip to Bakersfield to hang out with their Yankee cousins.

I have, of course, no idea what time it is, but I'm trying to soak my head in the sunglight outside, and see if I can convince myself that it's more like the cloudy noon over Ireland that the sun claims, and less like the 3:26 am that my computer foolishly continues to think.

Update, spirallin toward Heathrow I am largely unable to talk to people on planes until we are about to land--it feels safer, like we've survived something together. Exhaustd, everyone looks like an axe murderer; there are no secrets between strangers who have slept in uncomfortable seats.¹ Turns out she and her friends are dancers with Britney Spears. They're doing two days in London, then on to Italy, and Germany, and a bunch of small towns. It's a monthlong European tour.

fn 1. There's an interesting song--can't find the reference offhand--off of the Sounds Ecelectic Too CD that gets stuck in my head whenever I'm on one of these long trips. Called "Jesus on the Grayhound." When I have an internet connection, I'll provide the right links.