343 words
After our flight's departure was delayed by half an hour because there was some problem with the plane and they had to get a new one, everything went smoothly. An A321 airbus is quite a large plane I found and 23F is quite a bad seat with Lufthansa at least. Somehow there's an emergency exit close to it and the wall is 'thicker', stealing a few of those precious centimetres. The crew even tried to be humorous on the plane, pointing out that while you surely will have fastened your seat belts already, we're required by law to show you how to fasten your seat belts
before take-off and advising people to enjoy those few precious minutes of quiet with your mobile phones switched off
right after touchdown. Not bad. For a German airline.
I went onto campus this afternoon and visited the maths department but none of the people I had hoped to meet were in. Probably all out for conferences and so on. Actually, my former tutor emailed me beforehand that he'll be in Germany these days – lean back and enjoy the irony.
In a sad way, arriving at Birmingham airport still feels a bit like coming home. If this were London I'd be flattered perhaps but the Midlands are hardly among the more desirable areas to feel home in. I didn't get a tabloid to round off the experience although my guess for the difference between pictures would be lack of colour management rather than editing (along the stupidity instead of malice theme). Also note that both of the front pages depicted have stories about lies.
Now I'm going to try and get some sleep in the vicinity of Pete's computing closets with probably zillions of megaflops and more networking present that I can cope with – not that it helps. I believe that Pete only claims to be working on databases or something and actually tries to create the Matrix in his living room. There are so many wireless toys around that I can almost feel the radiation.