Blogging may be incoherent, as my internal clock and the clock on the wall in the cafe are having a serious argument. Just got done with 18 hours of deep immersion in British Airways reality. The experience has been oddly Tolkien-esque, packed as it has been with second breakfasts and elevensies.
Around midnight, the stewardess came by: "Chicken or beef?" I'd had honest-to-god homecooked roast beef meal four hours earlier (bless the girlfriend's parents straight to heaven!), so I wasn't hungry.
And yet it was free. And I am low on dough. So my brain said, "Beef please." And I ate it all, with a glass of red and a can of beer. Oof.
Then there's breakfast, at 5:00AM NYC time. "Egg, please." Hoo. Yeesh. Ugh.
In London layover terminal, my jet is still lagging behind in Brooklyn. So I grab a stool at a cafe/bar: "Latte."
"Ah, it's two o'clock," says the French bartender, his nationality compounding my discombobulation. "You sure you want that?" I have no idea what this means. If he were Brit, like he's supposed to be, I would know what he meant. It's too late in the day for yuppie java. Tuck in your skirt and have a stout. But he's French. Is latte a French word? Faux paus is French. Am I making a faux paus?
"No, latte please." He brings it, I inhale it and sing along to Tears For Fears's "Everybody Wants To Rule the World." Then back on the next 7-hour leg--during which BA stewardesses place before me two salads, four deserts, five drinks, four fruit containers, three rolls, one muffin, one main course.
Maverick voice: "I have the urge. The urge to purge." Blork.
But the payoff: Johnnyblog now reporting from Accra [pronounced "uh-KRAH"], capital of Ghana. All evidence thus far is anecdotal, but Ghana looks to be freaking wonderful: clean, warm, friendly, and cheap to the second power.
Three months ago I wrote about how nice it was to drive into the Ugandan capital of Kampala not be jolted by the potholes, the rampant begging, the abject spirit that permeates Nairobi.
Today's epiphany: Maybe Uganda isn't so incredibly great. Maybe Nairobi just sucks really bad. What do you think, America?
