Friday, May 20, 2011

Airplane Food Sucks

I'm sitting at the Beijing international airport with a belly full of hurt. Damn that airplane food that looks like slop from a Dickens novel. Having travelled around the world, I can forgive the appearance of food because sometimes you can be surprised to find ugly food can pack in huge flavour. This was not the case.

I left Sydney on a Thursday. Pretty smart move to get the weekend started right? Even better, I scheduled my 6 month appraisal today as well. Good or bad, I was going on vacay. Needless to say, it went well and I'll be coming back to a new title and higher salary. Take that Chungdahm!

Rushing around, Dave and I ate leftovers for lunch; lemongrass chilli tofu - my favourite. We left work at 3:30pm to go home and do some last minute packing and ate the leftover truffle oil pasta and the last crumpet because you can't waste crumpets-they're delicious!

Off to the Sydney international airport, we we're craving something western and dirty - Hungry Jacks double cheeseburger for Dave and a lamb kebab for me. Hurting, we waddled off the food through the duty free where I picked up a bag of KitKat bites. Gotta have the salty with the sweet.

Preparing for a flight over 11 hours long, we knew we would get dinner and breakfast. What we got was worst than cafeteria, hospital, prison, or your mom who thinks she can cook, but can't food.

*My mom's food is awesome. Period.

I ate the fruit and salad, whereas Dave, who had eaten all of his Hungry Jacks and most of my kebab, ate both meals without hesitation. This includes a hot meal with rice, meat and veg. Then a salad, bread roll, and yogurt. He slept with a small Air China baby in his belly. I feel sorry for the porcelain bank we've had to make deposits into.

Word of advice; eat western food on a western carrier, eat eastern food on an eastern carrier.

So now I'm sitting here at 8am eating KitKat bites-the best thing I've had since the lemongrass chilli tofu lunch yesterday. My connecting flight to Seoul is boarding any minute, and I can't stop thinking about seeing all the people from my 2 years as an ESL teacher in South Korea.

Dave and I decided to back for a visit to:

Stock up on supplies eg. Contacts
Eat delicious cheap Korean food
Shop in our favourite stores because shopping in Australia is over priced and poorly made
See all of our friends who haven't quite left yet.

Seeing all our old friends is going to feel so good and familiar. For two years we set up lives in Seoul, where we had jobs, healthy bank accounts and strong friendships. Two out of three have been accomplished in Sydney. It's been nearly a year since we left and I know it will feel like yesterday where we were staying up drinking because we didn't start work till 4pm the next day and sharing laughs and complaints because we all had the same job at the same school. There is also a bit of mixed emotion too because Dave and I moved on, whereas our friends haven't. It won't matter though. We are seeing friends who knew us beyond our job title and loved us for us. Raise your shot glass of soju!

Two hour flight to go till I'm back to Kimbap Heaven. Bring on the kimchi!

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