plane-TV
Originally uploaded by Mishaone.

Having never travelled via Emirates before, I had assumed my siblings were kidding about me not forgetting about them as I watched TV on my flight. Turns out even economy class seats in Emirates flights have a touch screen TV on the back of each seat with dozens of movies, radio channels and TV shows to choose from. Due to my flight being barely two hours, all I could squeeze in was an episode of Scrubs, one of the last FRIENDS episodes and the opening sequence of the Lion King before the captain announced the flight was coming to an end.

About an hour into the flight, the stewards and stewardesses start to being down the food trolleys. Rubbing my hands in anticipatory glee, I kept an eye out for the trays to come to where I was sitting (aisle seat, unfortunately, the window seat was occupied by a thirteen year old girl with no appreciation of a fantastic view). When they finally showed up, I was handed a steaming hot tray of assorted goodies. Little Emirates chocolates first, of course, then the icy mineral water, then the mini can of coke found themselves disappearing rapidly and soon, it was time for the main course, which was hidden beneath the tin foil of a platter larger than the other little plates. Carefully, I peeled off the tin foil to reveal yellow colored rice with some odd geometrically shaped green chunks stuffed into the corner of the platter. Eh? I looked over at the mother of the teenager who was oblivious to the view from her window seat and saw her gingerly poking the (mystery meat?) green shapes with a plastic fork. I steeled myself for the worst and grabbed my own plastic knife and fork and started my own little poking party. Optimistically, I was still hoping it would turn out to be some form of chicken or even bits of liver. Unfortunately, resolutely pinning one of the green chunks down with a fork and hacking away at it with a knife revealed it to be made of (if I were to venture a guess) some form of elastic spam that refused to allow itself to be broken down into smaller, bite sized bits. Bah, I muttered and dug into the yellow rice instead and stuffed a forkful into my mouth. A few seconds of chewing cured me of my optimism with regards to airline food and I replaces the tin foil on the main course and turned my attention to the other little packs and sachets instead. In the end, I found a small round bun, which I cut into half and buttered and ate with my coke. And it wasn't half bad, I might add.

Soon after the tragedy that was the food tray, the captain announced that we would be landing in ten minutes, which brought me to frantically exploring the touch screen television to ensure I hadn't missed anything. This was when I stumbled upon the Plane-cameras. Apparently, Emirates planes have one camera attached to the very nose of the aircraft and one to the belly and passengers within can tune in to the live feeds from either camera on their screens and watch landings, take-offs and all the views in between. What an absolutely brilliant idea, I must admit. Completely made up for the lack of a window seat being assigned to me as I watched the lights of Dubai sparkling below the aircraft as we approached the Dubai In'tl airport and eventually as we skidded to a halt and were instructed to exit the aircraft.