ANATOMY OF THE WORLD LONGEST FLIGHT IN TWITTER FORMAT

800 pm (Singapore time-8am EST) Thursday. Returned by bus from party for our group hosted by US Embassy. Held at Charges d’Affaires home. Fun, but I am sure his family gets tired of these nightly events.

Told my fellow delegates farewell. It had been a good 9 days.

900 pm. Walked to Starbucks & bought two Venti non-fat Lattes. Goal is to stay awake all night.

930 pm. Began a 3 hour Webcam conference call with Dave McDonough. Drank one of the Latte’s during call.

1230 am (Friday). Concluded staying up all night would not be as easy as I thought. Packed my bags.

100 am. Went to lobby and asked if they could microwave my second latte so it would be warm. They looked at me suspiciously.

130 am. Hopped up from second Latte-wish there was a disco so I could go dance.

200 am. My Wi-Fi access stopped and I had lost the code. Went back down to reception and they gave it to me. She asked me if I had actually drunk that large coffee in the middle of the night. I told her yes and tried to engage her in the meaning of life.

230 am. They must have left the caffeine out. My head hits the pillow and still dressed, I fall dead asleep until 4:45.

445 am. I wake up and don’t know where I am. I start doing emails. At 5am the phone rings with my wake up call-I have no recollection of leaving them a request to call me.

630 am. I am first customer at the hotels massive buffet. I feel an obligation to eat as much salami, prosciutto, American Bacon, British back bacon and Roasted Ham (just cooked all night) as is possible. Washed it down with fresh pear and mint juice, fresh passion fruit juice and fresh melon juice. It should be clear I am not concerned about the so called "Swine"Flu.

700 am. Running around the room like crazy I take a shower and finish packing as car is picking me up at 720 am. I make it to lobby by 719.

738 am. The group organizer comes down. I asked her where the car is. She informs me it was 740, not 720 for pick up. I could have answered another 33 emails.

740 am. An Academy colleague (Dale) from our delegation joins me and 20 minutes later we are at the Singapore airport.

742 am. In typical Singapore Airlines style, a former Miss Universe checks me in, taking less than two minutes. She notes I am in a row by bathroom and suggests I change it. I agree. She moves me to 32A.

747 am. I am already through passport control. I spend next hour trying to find the boys tee shirts. I had been looking all week. There is a shortage of tee shirts in Singapore. I finally find them.

850 am. In this airport that has everything, I see a massage and reflexology place. Sounds good. For $80 (Singapore) they will give me a full massage and a reflexology. I say okay. Quan Yu is a pretty, shy, recently arrived from China masseuse. She brings me a cup of herbal tea and proceeds to use me as a punching bag for the next 50 minutes. We try and talk. She is from Yunnan Province. I tell her we were there in 1985. She doesn’t believe me until I tell her we went to the Stone Forest.

950 am. I walk to gate and go through security. I bump into Steven and Debra Epstein, friends from DC who were also at the Academy with me this week. We chat about the fact we will not see night on way back since it is flying west from Singapore to Newark and it is already day time in Singapore.

1000 am. We board this all Business Class brand new airplane. It has one seat on the side, than a wide aisle, two seats, another wide aisle and the 4th seat in the row. There are 38 rows so it can take 152 passengers. Today it is one third full. We are about to depart on the world's longest non-stop flight-18 and one half hours.

1020 am. The flight attendant asks me what I want for lunch-my choices (quite similar to Delta of course) are:

1. Tournedos of beef with black pepper cream, seasonal veggies and Lyonnais potatoes.
2. Singapore style prawn noodle soup cooked in prawn and pork stock with bean sprouts.
3. Thai style chicken curry with seasonal vegetables and steamed rice.
4. Grilled Atlantic Cod served with tomato herb coulis, mixed veggies and olive oil flavored mashed potatoes.

All of the above are served with an appetizer of Sautéed Prawns with potatoes, green beans, olives, quail eggs, and Mache lettuce served with citrus vinaigrette. Yep, just like on Delta.

For dessert you can have one or all of the following: Haagen Dazs strawberry cheesecake ice cream, Vanilla Caramel Brownie Ice Cream or Fruits in Season.

I order none of the above as I had ordered through Book the Cook, Singapore’s unique website where you can pick from a long menu in advance what you want.

1025 am. As people are boarding I look out the window. That's all I remember.

1150 am. They wake me up. I think we are still on the ground. They hand me the appetizer, served of course on china and real linen.

Noon Friday (which is now midnight Thursday night in Atlanta so I will switch this report to Atlanta time). They bring me my Book the Cook order of Risotto and Sausage in a wild mushroom sauce. It tastes like I am eating at Le Cirque.

In the middle of the Hagen Dazs I must have fallen asleep. I have some foggy recollection of them helping me up while they made my bed. Every seat converts to a completely flat, full size bed. Later I worry that I may have left some of the Hagen Dazs in the cup when I fell asleep.

200 am Friday (Atlanta time). I wake up and have to pee so bad I am about to explode. When I come back from bathroom I get in bed and notice on my TV that we are flying northeast rather than northwest. We are currently over Vietnam and Cambodia. I fall back asleep.

312 am. I wake up and see on the screen that we are now going over the South China Sea and that the Philippines are to the right of this. I feel like we are going the wrong way. I fall back asleep.

430 am. I wake up, ask the Miss World flight attendant for a cup of coffee. She offers me a choice larger than Starbucks. I take the cappuccino. For the long time readers you know I love the cappuccino on Singapore Air. I see we are now over Fukoaka, Japan and I wonder how our friend Mobu who lives there is doing. Soon we pass Tokyo. The TV says we are 13 hours until our destination and we are flying at 646 mph and at 35,567 feet. We are clearly headed east instead of west. I decide not to tell the pilot he is going the wrong direction.

530 am. I finish reading the six newspapers I brought while devouring the package of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies the flight attendants passed out. I read in the Singapore Air magazine that you can tell a steward or flight attendants rank by the color of their uniform. If it is blue and gold you are a flight stewardess, green and gold the Leading Stewardess, red and gold the Chief Stewardess and if purple and blue, you are a female in-flight supervisor.

535 am. I continue looking thru the Singapore Air magazine, probably only the 4th time I have ever looked at an airline magazine in 5 million plus miles of flying. I see that in each of our seats, in our own personal entertainment system we have 112 movies, 180 TV programs, 740 CD’s, 22 radio channels and 65 interactive games. And I never turn it on of course.

600 am. We are over the East China Sea and are headed northeast to the Arctic Circle. We just passed Vladivostok, Russia and then North Korea. I flipped the finger at the North Korean leader Kim JongII as we flew over. We really need to help him on to his next life.

630 am. I still can’t figure out this flying east thing. I flew from New York to Frankfurt and then from there to Singapore on the way over so I was sure this plane would simply reverse that without the stop in Germany. I opened up the airline magazine again and looked for their maps. Sure enough, I’m actually on a round the world trip and didn’t know it. This flies up to the Arctic Circle (we are just passing over Siberia) in a northeasterly direction and when we get at the top of the globe, we arch downward to New York. Amazing. So I won’t be reporting on passing over Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Turkmenistan and all the other places we passed over on the flight over here. I’m disappointed. I’m on my 5th around the world trip and didn’t even know it.

642 am. They asked us to tighten our seat belts as we are about to hit some bad turbulence. Interesting-we have been flying in horrific turbulence the last two hours. Maybe almighty ruler Kim Jong-II in North Korea is launching a missile at us. I hope not. I doubt he saw my finger.

645 am. I suddenly remember that I have to teach Financial Training Classes the next two weeks in Chicago and I haven’t prepared the 90 or so PowerPoint slides I will need. I open up the PC to start that and see I have 239 emails in my in-box. I take the chopstick left over from the Risotto and start to jam it into my eye but recovered and ordered a glass of red wine. I have a choice of a 2004 Cru Bourgeois Bordeaux from the Medoc region of France, a 2005 California Cabernet from Monterrey, or a 2006 Barbera d’Asti from the Piedmontese region of Italy.

I can’t decide so I tell her to bring me a glass of all three in whatever order she wants. After all, it is 645 in the evening in Singapore I rationalize.

703 am. We are still bouncing all over the place but the wine is good. I decide to meditate after my first glass as wine and meditation don’t mix. We are flying at 39,000 feet-exceptionally high.

740 am. Had a great meditation. Here I am on a Singapore Airline, with a Malaysian crew, flying over Siberia and the Aleutians, doing my Mantra to a Drummers of Burundi CD in my ITunes. What else could I ask for? Well, perhaps being home would be a nice selection.

743 am. One of the flight attendants came and asked me if I still wanted my lamb chops I ordered for dinner through Book the Cook. Doesn’t it seem a little early for dinner? I decided to see what my other options are if I don’t take what I preordered:

1. Braised duck with lotus root, Chinese greens, red capsicum and steamed rice.
2. Sautéed prawns and scallops served with creamy shitake mushroom sauce, buttered green peas and pappardelle pasta.
3. Teri Yaki Rosu which is Japanese style US choice sirloin served with seasonal veggies and steamed rice
4. Grilled Kuro Buta pork loin served with an assorted mushroom sauce, roasted veggies and sautéed potatoes.

I almost go for the pork loin in lieu of the lamb but since I drank 6 bottles of water on this flight, no doubt related to the pork pig-out at the buffet at the hotel, I decide to stick with the lamb.

With all of the above orders, or a book the cook order, you get an appetizer of Satays (my favorite thing on Singapore Airlines) and an Antipasto plate with marinated scallops, Parma ham with endive and tomato mozzarella.

And for dessert we can have one or all of:

1. Peach Clafoutis
2. Flourless Chocolate Cake served with vanilla sauce
3. Plate of Cambozola, Farmhouse Cheddar, French Boursin served with quince paste, biscuits, grapes and pecans.

Yep-no doubt they are copying Delta’s menu.

932 am. Just finished the dinner-a little early to my taste but it was a good meal. Having a cappuccino to see if it will either wake me up or put me back to sleep. We are over halfway there, having flown 9,777 Kilometers and with only 6,906 to go. We are flying parallel to the Aleutians and are in the Bering Sea. We should hit the outer banks of Alaska in an hour or so at a town named Bethel which I have never heard of. Actually, we should be over them then-I hope we don’t hit them.

It’s another 8 hours until we land so I hope they feed us again. They always have snacks of course and one they serve is Fried Chicken with Macaroni and Cheese which for whatever reason seems funny to me.

The guy behind me has been coughing, wheezing, blowing his nose, sneezing and coughing up phlegm for the last hour. I hope he doesn’t have the swine flu.

Another amazing thing about this airline is that they always remember every passenger’s name. For a long time I thought they would just look at the roster but they actually memorize them. I was in the back after my mediation doing some stretching and one of the women said “Is there anything we can get for you Mr. Thomas?” Later I was walking to the bathroom and a different one said “Here, let me open the door for you Mr. Thomas” which, as an aside, is one of their traditional courtesies that always seems a little odd to me. I don’t really want a stunning flight attendant holding the lavatory door open for me every time I have to pee.

1017 am. Just got up to go to bathroom. When I stood up, my feet felt like noodles and my back like putty. Then I remembered I had a massage and reflexology what seems like 75 hours ago. I was sitting on one of those massage chairs with my head down in the ring when she put her knee squarely on my back and took my arms and pulled them back, effectively changing my skeletal structure so that my back is now where my chest used to be and vice versa. I never had nipples and a bellybutton on the back of my body prior to this. It felt pretty good at the time, but less so now. I’m wondering if was using that waterboarding technique that is all the rage in the newspapers.

1058 am. Flying right over Anchorage but still headed in a northerly direction.

1248 pm. Four hours and 32 minutes to go. Man this is a long ass flight. Just woke up from hour and 20 minute nap with wild dreams. Currently flying over the Yukon Territories but have gradually turned in a southeasterly direction.

137 pm. In the compartment that my seat is in, there are two USB ports for charging a cell phone or any other device using USB, a power port that has actual power (rather than the DC used on most planes that require you to remove your battery on your laptop while using it), and an IPod port where you can put your IPod and it will be charging while playing through the planes private audio system that they give you headphones for. They also have the yellow, red and white AV Input plugs so that you can play any video games you brought with you.

They think of everything at Singapore Airlines. Just like their country.

159 pm. We are now over Canada, having moved southward from the Northwest Territories. The names on the map are more familiar: Regina, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon. And then I realize-although I’ve been to 80 plus countries, I’ve never been to any of those cities, whose names are so familiar. Why?

Memo to spouse. Pack your bag.

221 pm. I have my emails down from 239 to 198 but still don’t have the class preparation done. About ten minutes ago I was thinking to myself “Man, between Peru and Singapore, I’ve had enough traveling for quite some time.” I realized after I said that to myself that it was just 3 minutes earlier that I typed an email to Cathy saying I hope she will join me in Mali in January with my Freedom from Hunger colleagues.

312 pm. Down to 186 emails. This is a loooooooong flight. This flight is longer than the time it takes to read some of my Blog postings. Still over Canada. Two hours and one minute remaining.

402 pm. She just brought me my 9th Cappuccino of this flight. I’m wondering if that may be too much. I guess that is just one every two hours. But I am sure typing faster. We are over Lake Huron so we will be above US soil in the next ten minutes. Thank goodness.

420 pm. Sheer terror grips us all. How quickly things can change on a plane. A minute after I typed the above note about the cappuccino we were going along smooth as silk and there was not a cloud in the sky. The seat belt sign was not on. Next thing we all knew, we hit what is called clear turbulence without warning. Suddenly, the plane dropped and kept dropping and the wings were moving up and down rapidly. The cappuccino shot all over me as it flew across the aisle and the cup and saucer broke into many pieces when it hit the seat across from me (no one is in that seat). People screamed-I mean really screamed. I’ve traveled enough that I wasn’t scared shitless, but I was a little on edge. It felt like we just kept dropping and looking out the wings looked like they were flapping like a bird as they tried to get it stabilized. The captain leveled off and of course they were announcing that we should not move and not worry about anything that had flown thru the cabin. My arms are soaked with cappuccino as is the floor. The woman on the other side (the aisle on the other side of the plane) had bought a bunch of perfume on the plane thru duty free-it all broke-she was crying (not about the perfume) and the whole plane smells like a bordello. There are two Flight Attendants trying to calm her. We are still bouncing like crazy but it is more like normal heavy turbulence. Wow. It was pretty scary. It seems to be smoothing out some just as I have typed this, which I couldn’t do for the first ten minutes or so as we were bouncing too much. I thought for a second the UAW might be shooting at us since we were over Detroit and they are not happy about consumers patronizing foreign companies. That’s the funniest thing I can think to say in the middle of what was a pretty serious thing I think. Even the flight attendants seemed to be a little ruffled.

In the end, it turned out that two of the flight attendants were injured because they were standing in the galley when it happened. None of them weigh more than about 100 pounds and one sprained or broke her ankle and the other one had a shoulder injury when she hit the metal storage boxes. I am glad I always keep my seat belt fastened even if it says we don’t have to.

502 pm. We land in Newark and the passengers applaud. They tell us we are 20 minutes early so we end up waiting for a gate to open another half hour.

540 pm. At the gate a gate agent comes on and announces to us as we are getting ready to deplane:

“Welcome to Newark Ladies and Gentlemen. I have some unfortunate news. If you look out the left side of the aircraft you will see several police cars and federal agents. They have locked down the section of the airport where the bags are taken before they are brought up to luggage claim. They will not tell us why or how long this will delay you. I know many of you have connecting flights but we have no other information. Please go through passport control and then wait in the luggage claim area for further notice.

6:10 pm. We are all sitting around the luggage claim area. They won’t let us out of the Customs area until we have reclaimed our bags and taken them through the Customs area exit section. It is the same for all flights. All of the other airlines are saying there is nothing they can do and it might be several hours. People are getting riled up. An Asian man from Singapore Air comes up along with a group of his employees and asks the passengers from our plane to gather around him. He first apologizes profusely for the inconvenience (it is certainly not the airlines fault) and said that he has asked all of his employees (there were gate agents, ticket agents, baggage people) to hand carry all of our bags one at a time off of the airplane and he had gotten permission from the Customs officials to bypass the quarantined baggage area and bring the bags directly to us. And they did.

Over the next 15 minutes, while every other flight was waiting for the problem to be solved, the employees of Singapore Airlines hand carried each and every bag from the plane up to us. So, after 18 and a half hours of flying 16, 683 kilometers (10, 329 miles), I took my bag, passed through Customs and went to the Marriott Hotel at Newark airport to crash for the night so that I can get a flight back to Atlanta tomorrow morning.

And if you ever wondered why, for decades, every single survey of airline service and quality has always named Singapore Airlines number one in the world, you now know why.