Airplane Reviews - Flying to China

I enjoy flying Emirates Air. It's much more comfortable, even in coach, than other airlines. The food isn't terrible, and there are tons of choices on the personal televisions at every seat. The one drawback is that they cater to customers of several different nationalities so when they make announcements, they make them 4 times in 4 different languages. It's annoying.

I was flying to Beijing for work. The last time I flew Emirates, I was able to fly business class, which was incredible. There was no such luck this time. I flew in the afternoon, so I didn't sleep on the first leg of the flight from Vienna to Dubai. I skipped the meal because I wasn't hungry and I wanted to eat in Dubai to kill time during the 5 hour layover.

After spending about 20 minutes looking through all the movies and TV shows available for viewing, I watched The Company Men. I had heard about it when it was released recently and wanted to see it. I don't think it was out in theaters very long. The movie stars Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, and Tommy Lee Jones. The plot centers around the high level employees at a large ship building corporation, who one after another are let go by the company due to large scale layoffs as an attempt to try and stay afloat during the economic meltdown. The story has a ton of holes in it and things escalate from bad to catastrophic in a very short time, but the acting is good. It's an entertaining movie, but a little too manufactured and Hollywood-ized for me. I am not that cold-hearted that I can't appreciate a happy ending, but when it feels forced and fake, it rubs me the wrong way. The movie really tried to force the viewer to understand how layofss and budget cuts affect higher-paid executives, but the problems they have are difficult to relate to or sympathize with when there are those much less fortunate than them with much bigger problems than having to sell their Porsche and move into their parents' house. I really like Rosemarie DeWitt, Don Draper's mistress in the first season of Mad Men, who plays Ben Affleck's wife in this film, though she seemed a little too easy going and relatively unaffected by what was happening to her husband and family.

For the remainder of the flight, I watched old episodes of Parks and Recreation. Many people have told me good things about the show, so I've been giving it a chance. It's pretty funny.

The five hour layover in the Dubai airport was uneventful. I had chocolate, pralines, and caramel ice cream at Haagen Dazs, so it could have been worse.