Business Class!

I made our reservations for our flight home. Flying to Detroit from Thailand is miserable. It’s about a 23 hour trip, with a 2-hour layover in Tokyo. That 2-hour layover is just enough time to clear security, use a restroom, and board the next flight. Having to clear security again in Tokyo baffles me. I have been nowhere but the airport boarding gate or 35,000 feet since the last time I cleared security. Precisely how was I supposed to acquire any contraband?

Flying Coach, aka cattle car, is a horror. There is enough leg room for your knees to clear the back of the seat in front of you, and not an inch more. The food is barely edible, and frequently barely warm. Trying to use a restroom is an exercise in quick reflexes, as they no longer allow a queue to form. You might be terrorists standing in line by the restroom doors to plot, not merely passengers who desperately need to relieve themselves.

Thank God for frequent flyer miles.

I was able to use those miles to upgrade our Coach price tickets to Business Class. Flying Business class on an international flight is almost a joy. I will be able to sleep, because my seat will recline nearly flat instead of nearly reclining. The food is quite good, and comes on a real plate, with metal utensils, fabric napkin, and even a small fabric tablecloth for my tray table. I particularly enjoy relaxing with a free glass of white wine while cattle car loads, and it comes in a stemmed glass, not a plastic cup.

You get greeted by name, and they really do try to make you comfortable. You get a pillow, blanket, slippers or socks, toothbrush and toothpaste, comb, and one of those nightshades to cover your eyes for sleeping. They will let you sleep through a meal in Coach, but if you do you simply miss the meal. In Business Class they will bring you that meal as soon as you wake. You have three feet of leg room, and all seats are either aisle or window. Best of all, you have a place to plug in your laptop, PDA, or Kindle to recharge it for the long, long trip.

I like flying Business Class.

Cafe Vienna

Jim loves the General Foods instant coffee Cafe Vienna. It’s only available here when somebody hand-carries it in their luggage. (Thanks, Helen!) Poor Jim has been feeling deprived for three years. But even in the US that stuff is unconscionably overpriced. We have tried just putting a bit of cinnamon in a cup of coffee, and I’m sure you all have, too, so you know how well that works.

Two days ago I found a recipe for copycat Cafe Vienna at a forum online. Yesterday I made a batch. This stuff is so good we are unlikely to ever buy the General Foods product again! She also has recipes for other General Food instant coffee flavors.

Copycat Cafe Vienna

1/2 cup instant coffee

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup instant nonfat dry milk powder

1/4 cup powdered coffee creamer

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 cup store bought instant butterscotch or vanilla flavored pudding mix (optional)

Measure all of the ingredients into a blender and blend well. Transfer the mixture to a resealable container, or a pretty jar. Makes 2 1/2 cups.

To Prepare: Place 2 tablespoons of dry Cafe Vienna into a coffee cup. Add hot water to fill up the cup (about 3/4 cup hot water). Stir and serve.

More about Moving

The date to sell the house has been moved up from October to mid-August. That’s when the loan is finalized. We expect to be out of Thailand and back in the USA by the end of August. The best part is that it means we will not have to renew our annual visa in September!

I have arranged for an apartment to be available for us the day after we arrive. We will have the actual address before we leave here! I should know it in about 3 weeks. Then we can begin the misery that is address changing.

I have a quote from a very reputable moving company for shipping our household goods. It’s the price I expected to pay, so we will be accepting the offer and setting the date for probably the 17th of August. We won’t be moving any furniture, not when the cost is roughly $500 per cubic yard. We shipped $25,000 worth of household goods here, and will be shipping about the same back, for about $5,000 each way.

Once the household goods are shipped, we move into a hotel downtown and sell the car. We transfer the money from the sales to our US bank, confirm the arrival of said funds, and then we are free to go. I plan to leave a window of about a week for the money to be transferred. It shouldn’t be necessary, it only takes 1 or 2 days, but Jim is cautious that way, and any issues will be easier to resolve from here than the US.

I have not yet purchased tickets for the flight home. That’s the next thing on the to-do list after the details for the household goods shipment are arranged, which I will do tomorrow, since it’s Sunday here.

We are “eating down” our food, trying to run out of things. Unfortunately, the swine flu has finally arrived in Thailand. I’d like to have some food stockpiled to get through a few weeks without having to visit The Mall. It seems that circumstances just aren’t cooperating.

My Other Blog

Here’s a quick request to all 6 of my regular blog readers: please visit my blog The Once and Future Expat. It’s a blogspot blog, and lets me track visitors better, especially if you become followers. I currently have no followers. The content of both is the same, but  Google’s blogger Dashboard is an easy way to keep up with blogs.

Calibre

I love my Kindle. I hate my disorganized folder of e-books. Sure, they are all neatly in folders by author name, and sometimes by series name. But I finally have a solution, and even better it converts formats my Kindle won’t read – lit and rtf – to mobi files that my Kindle will read. Who could ask for more?

I could. I want to be able to sort my e-books by author, by series, by genre. Calibre lets me. Even when a series is started by one author and added to by another. I want iTunes, only for my e-books. Yo, Steve – some of us still read.

It’s not a perfect app. It crashes quite a bit, particularly when accessing the database for the meta information via the Internet. It hasn’t ever lost any data due to the crashes, however. I’m going to be sending the developer of this app a donation. He deserves it, and it may improve Calibre.

It works on OS X, Windows, and Linux. Go download it now!