Turbulence, vomit and great views

Wednesday was way hectic and included the worst flight I have ever taking in my life. I stopped in at work for a while before our 2 PM flight which was no good because I needed to pack and did not leave the office until 45 minutes after I should have. Luckily we were able to get on the plane because it was delayed for a while. We were further delayed on the runaway and it was at this point the vomiting started. The woman next to me was pretty nervous and managed to throw up once in a very quiet polite fashion into the sick bag while we were waiting. She followed this up with another nice quiet session as we had hit our cruising altitude. It was at this point that I turned up the music loud and tried to pretend we were already there.

As the flight attendants were handing out drinks we hit the worst turbulence that both I and my father have ever experienced. I thought I was going to die. I had my phone out and was planning on who I could call and approximately how long I would have on the phone with each person. The plane was not only dropping and bouncing up 50 feet at a shot but bouncing sideways about the same distance which is rare. All through this I expected there to be a fountain spewing forth from next to me but luckily enough the woman was too worried about dying to get sick. The most surreal thing about the whole experience was the fact that the attendants continued handing out drinks and standing there smiling when the turbulence got too bad to do that.


After that finally stopped I started to relax and at that exact moment the fountain began. The woman next to me managed to fill up three bags which I had to pass to the stewardess and pass back empty bags to this woman. When she started dry heaving is when I started thinking well this is good because at least she won’t be filling up any more bags. She threw up / dry heaved the rest of the flight and it was not the polite quiet sick of before. This was a full fledged sound that the pilots could here. When the attendants asked me to take off my ipod for landing I almost got sick myself. Motorhead played at loud volumes was one of the few things between me and being sick. Somehow I managed to keep it all down though and even kind of help the woman.

After such a spectacular flight there was a nice reprieve as we were staying at the nicest hotel in Shanghai. The grand Hyatt is beautiful and in the largest building in China. We were staying in the 83rd of 88 floors. We were also on some special level where we got to take advantage of the lounge on the 83rd floor which had the craziest view I have ever seen. You were staring down on towering skyscrapers which would dwarf any building in Seattle or Beijing (Forget about Michigan). The hotel also had no rooms in the middle of the building just a giant atrium that went down 50 some floors. It was when I pointed out this awesome sight that I realized my dad has a horrible fear of heights. He fell against the wall and almost could not make it to the room. The rooms view was just as awesome, we were looking out on the Huangpu just south of the Bund.

After showering and some food in the lounge we headed to Jean George which is one of the premier restaurants in Shanghai. The décor was really cool but the food just did not match up. You expect it to be pretty spectacular with the way people talk about it but it was not that good. Having said that we did end up staying there for 3-4 hours talking and looking out over the river at the view we had just left on the other side. A crazy eventful day with a noticeable lack of pictures. I am getting a camera in Hong Kong though so it will be back to normal soon.