The eagle has landed...

For the longest time my miles were accrued on Singapore Airlines. This is my first flight on EVA. My Taiwanese colleagues swear by EVA, and after flying it to LA, I must say, SIA still rules. Objectively of cos, disregard my bias of being Singaporean. Service is comparable - Taiwanese hospitality is great, but really SIA have the entire system down to a pat. And I had to ask for a toothbrush, SIA gives out cool amenities kits on long haul flights default.

However, on SIA flights into US, with the code-share with Air India, I typically never have good experiences. Not about racism, it's just I never had a good experience. Now EVA's flight into LA originates from Vietnam. I had this little old couple sit next to me, who speaks zero English. The EVA stewardesses kept asking them, coffee/tea? chicken or the fish? They'll just point at me - don't ask me why... (now I never developed the knack to sleep on flights, I usually watch endless movies with my headphones never out of my ears) so, elderly Vietnamese couple points at me, Taiwanese stewardess looks at me, I usually look at everyone with a 'huh?' look?

Eventually, nice stewardess gives up and dishes out whatever...

Later on in the game, I realized they liked coffee. But they speak absolutely zero English, so even when holding a pot of coffee and the stewardess goes, 'coffee?', they don't get it. But they'll hold out their coffee cups after meals, seemingly hoping for something. I eventually ordered 2 cups of coffee for them, and they seemed very pleased with this gesture. After I offered to fill in their US immigration embarkation forms - this took a long time for me to make them understand that I WANTED to help them fill in their forms, they kept wanting to squeeze out of their seats to go to the stewardesses who by this time, are quite tired of playing charades with them. And it's not even obvious what they wanted anymore. I filled their forms and they took it out to the stewardesses... Why? Who knows...

But as I was walking off the plane, the Vietnamese lady pounded me on my back 3 times - I take it as a affectionate gesture even though it was pretty violent. Either that, or she was just saying sorry for sitting on my bag strap, I had to yank it out of her butts. Oh well... I'll take Vietnamese over India anytime.

Now I am in my Houston hotel room, it's Sunday morning but I can't go to mass or to the gym or to the mall - I am trapped since I'm carless. Sigh...