All those years travelling around for Cisco finally paid off when I used 67000 air miles plus £365 tax to buy a one-way “upper class” (Virgin Atlantic’s first class) ticket London Heathrow to Shanghai. Is first class better than economy? OMG yes. Is it worth the £5300 list price? Probably not.
My life of luxury started in the special check in area for special people (3x 32kg baggage allowance!) and a private elevator to the fast-track security channel. No need to shout “out of the way plebs!” as there was a screen to hide the regular passengers.
Virgin Atlantic lounge
I’ve spent a lot of time waiting in Heathrow Terminal 3 but this time I deliberately arrived over four hours early and went straight to the exclusive Virgin lounge upstairs. OMG it was good. The seats were so comfy and the decoration was very classy and all the food was FREE. I had this salad and fish for lunch. Felt like a right doofus for paying £10 for breakfast in the hotel before I came to the airport.
Totally free lunch
The toilets were so luxurious! They had proper hand towels and everything. Not like the regular airport toilets on the floor below.
Nice toilet
Eventually I boarded the plane via the special people channel and went right to my window seat at the front of the plane.
My seat
I say “window” seat. It’s actually rather difficult to look out they window as you need to crane your neck awkwardly to the side: the seat actually points diagonally into the cabin. I found this most strange when the plane took off as the acceleration pushes you in a weird direction. But the side panels mean you can’t see any other passengers, which I rather liked.
In-flight meal
The food was excellent (why am I eating fish again?!) and served on proper plates with proper cutlery. This was actually my favourite part, makes such a big difference to eating out of a miserable plastic tray in economy. And if you want tea they bring it to you an a proper mug, and after you finish and ask for a refill they’ll be like “do you want a biscuit with that??!”. OMG yes please. Service.
Fully flat bed
After dinner it’s time for bed! The seat folds into a fully flat bed and there’s a duvet and sheets hidden behind. They even give you pyjamas if you want. I don’t think I slept that well, and it didn’t help that the flight landed at 3am UK time, but I’ve flown on VS250 soo many times in economy and I always arrived exhausted and nauseous, but after 12 hours in upper class, I just felt a bit tired.
And the breakfast was fantastic too
Ignoring the price, I’d give the whole experience 10/10. I think maybe I’d be prepared to pay 2-3x the economy fare, but at close to 10x it’s a little outside my regular budget. :(
I’ve been carrying this key around with me for at least 10 years, since I lived in York. I’m pretty sure I’ve not used it in that time, and have completely forgotten what it’s for. It’s possible it opened the padlock on the storage room we used when moving student houses, or perhaps I misappropriated it from one of those houses. Surely one of the great mysteries of our time.
Was sad to hear Barry Chuckle, the shorter Chuckle Brother, died today. 1990s CBBC wouldn’t have been the same without endless repeats of ChuckleVision. And some of the jokes are surprisingly still funny (ish)!
Someone reminded me recently that doof.me.uk has been pumping out content for over ten years now. Let’s take a moment to remember the heady days of 2008…
The first public release of xcowsay, happy times
Although judging by my visitor stats most of what I’ve written since has been read by almost no one. As of April 2018 my most popular articles are:
I remember when I went to university in the UK the washing machines in the laundry were simple coin operated affairs. But because China has ALL THE TECHNOLOGY the washing machines here are exclusively controlled by chat-program-turned-app-platform WeChat. You are basically screwed if you don’t have a smartphone.
First you need to add the laundry service as a contact, and then find the one nearest to you
Now you can select the kind of wash cycle you want and the time you want to book the machine
Now you need to log in to the washing machine that was reserved for you on this control panel
After it’s done washing, the machine sends you a helpful reminder to go collect your laundry
Yes I know it’s Christmas already but it’s not too late to share the results of our office mince pie survey.
In all 24 pies were sampled: a record! The best is Riverford organic pies but the Waitrose “all butter” and M&S “star” pies are decent too. Stock up now!
I found this little probably-not-genuine Tintin book on a stall in Jixi Longchuan a few months ago. The original story is obviously “Tintin in Tibet” but the Chinese title – which I read as 柛校的“雪人” – was initially a bit of a mystery. 雪人 literally “snow-man” is clear enough, but what is 柛校? The only unhelpful thing my dictionary has to say about 柛 is its unicode code point. Inside, it turns out the actual title is 神秘的“雪人” or “mysterious snowman” and I’d been confused by the font. And there was me thinking I’d found an interesting investigative blog post topic. :-(
Tintin’s name in Chinese is 丁丁 “ding-ding” which incidentally also seems to be Tinky Winky’s Chinese name as well.
The dialogue is an incey bit beyond my reading level at the moment, but it’s somewhat understandable. Better than my failed attempt to read Doraemon anyway.
I’ve been decorating my home recently! These two oil paintings I bought on canvases from some student art market. The framer was a bit snooty about the quality, and actually I paid more to get them framed than the paintings cost originally, but they liven up the walls and I’m no art critic…
This one is a painting on rice paper I bought when I was in China back in April. Again I got it framed separately back in the UK. The lady in the shop didn’t speak English and my Chinese isn’t great, but I gathered it’s a painting of Suzhou in autumn by a local man who is old, famous, and blind. Hanging in my hallway now: looks really good.
There’s an alarming trend among clothing manufacturers recently, particularly those in the “outdoor” sector, to make coats without the little loop used to hang it on a coat hook. Seriously! WHY??! This is a £130 Berghaus “Light Hike” jacket. How am I supposed to hang it on the coat hook, eh? By the hood or something?? A little fabric loop would have cost about 5p.
Well the joke’s on you Berghaus, because I returned it and bought a different one. Here’s another example from a Craft running raincoat. This is almost tolerable as it’s a special purpose item I can chuck with the rest of my running stuff, BUT HOW HARD WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TO PUT A TINY LOOP ON IT???! There’s already even a little elastic thing for tying up the hood.
And just to prove it is possible in 2016 to put a normal hanging loop on a coat, North Face managed to get it right.
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