We’re now somewhere over Canada- the little displays shows just where, but it doesn’t give the name of the province.

This flight, not surprisingly, has been a lot more pleasant than the one over. Not to crow about it, but the difference between economy and business class is pretty serious. You get space, the flight attendant-to-passenger ratio is slow enough so they can notice whether you’re working and remember how you take your coffee, and the seats are a lot better.

By some unspoken agreement, not long after the plane took off, everyone in business class lowered their window shades, essentially turning the section into a large mobile nap room. Since we’re flying with the sun, we don’t have that experience of having a super-accelerated sundown, compressed night, and sudden sunrise; it’s more like being over the Arctic Circle in summertime. But it meant that I was able to get more sleep on the plane than I did in my hotel room last night.

For some reason, when I’m flying, I like to drink tonic water and tomato juice (not together).

I never drink them otherwise.

I wonder why I do this.

Actually, I don’t wonder too much. I just do it.

Good:

The location is pretty outstanding- 1/2 block from Buckingham Palace, easy access to the Underground, near lots of other major sights. (Though I prefer to be closer to Piccadilly. I just can’t help myself.)

The rooms were pretty good, showers were excellent (no stereotypical bad English plumbing).

The restaurants were great. The first night there, I had this amazing sea bass on vanilla-scented risotto; last night I went to the Indian restaurant (named after a small town and railway trans-shipment center in Kerala), which was just outstanding.

Bad:

The wifi is virtually nonexistent in the rooms.

The Internet access is scandalously expensive. Just incredible. I need to find where the Internet cafes are (assuming I come back before we all have wifi brain implants).

The business center sucks. Old PCs, no free USB outlets that you can use to bring down presentations or documents and print them out (in fact, the keyboard and mouse was connected to serial ports with serial-to-USB connectors). I’ve stayed at Holiday Inns in Cincinnati that had better computer facilities.

I had no trouble with scheduling wake-up calls; my colleague complained that she had trouble with hers.

So good for staying in, not so good for actually supporting work.

When checking in and getting my boarding pass, I was struck at the incredible variety of airlines that fly through Heathrow: Air Malaysia right beside BWIA, SAS just a little ways down, PIA (the Pakistani airline) within sight, Varig just down the hall.

It’s a very vivid, compressed lesson in how amazingly diverse the world is, and yet how connected it’s become.

I picked up a couple books, including a kids’ book about visiting London (which if I have to come back will be useful to read, I figure), and paperback versions of the first two volumes in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle- books that I’ve read in hardcover, but which I figure are still worth having in paperback, especially if the paperback has a tiny bit of novelty to it.

Wandering around the international terminal, I’m struck at how many women there are here who are veiled. Of course such sights aren’t strange in the Bay Area, and my sense is that London is a major terminus for many Middle and Near Eastern carriers; but I still find it striking.

I’m in the airport, and my flight leaves in about 90 minutes. My colleague and I are going to go do a little ethnography (read: people-watching and seeing if we can spend the last of our pounds) before getting on the plane.

I arrive back in San Francisco on Thursday afternoon; will drop into the office; then go pick up my children, who rumor has it have finally noticed that I’ve been gone.

Friday (ack!) I’m supposed to be on an OAH panel, talking about nonacademic careers for history Ph.D.s. I say “supposed,” though there’s nothing conditional about it: I have every intention of going to it, and doing my bit to raise graduate students’ awareness (and arguably sights) regarding the skills they’ll acquire in the course of their training, and the ways to which they can be put to use.

But I think I’ll mainly talk about how jet-lagged I am, thanks to having to fly to London on short notice; and that it would have been even worse, if I hadn’t gotten an upgrade to business class, which allowed to me to relax and get some rest on the plane.

Given that business class advance tickets for this flight were going for $10,000 when I booked my flight, and that I have to essentially step off the plane and right back into my life, my boss (i.e. the other person on this trip) didn’t hesitate when they told me about the option at check-it: she fairly shouted, “Get it!”

And I’ll be able to make good use of the reclining seat, given that I slept about an hour last night. Weirdly, the combination of the release of pressure after the presentation, my body’s continued confusion about what time it really is (which was only made worse by the fact that my computer still shows San Francisco time, so I’m constantly reminded of what time it “really” is), and a bit too much caffeine, conspired to make me more, not less, energetic last night- and this morning, and later this morning, and then it was time to wake up and take a shower.

But at least I managed to get plenty of work done, which will leave me relatively free on the plane to work on my “death of cyberspace” article.

As if I didn’t see enough of Finding Nemo at home… this is what I saw in the storefont of an electronics store here in London yesterday.

Curse you, Pixar!

How many cities have bus systems this accurate, I wonder?