I’m at the Vienna International Airport lounge, which unlike the lounge at the Beijing Capital Airport offers free internet access.  The flight itself was a nine-hour transfer from smog to fog.  I sat next to an Austrian retiree who knows Chinese friends from his former job with the Austrian railways and had a hard time stopping once he got going about the delights of Chinese cuisine.  Even so, I managed three films: Spiderman 3 (I identified, except for the constant attacks, scripted romance and not having gossamer shooting out my wrists), Georgia Rules (I thought it interesting to have a Mormon setting but doubt the simplistic portrayal does them justice), and Hot Fuzz (yes, I’d seen it on the flight from Korea to Singapore, but I still laughed just as hard – it’s not for all tastes, but it yanks my chain well).  We landed with a bump and a bounce that set the plane atwitter with commentary, and it was indeed eerie to fly through clouds for half an hour and in the space of a few seconds see the runway appear, notice the elevated vertical speed, bump, bounce, go through that moment of “uhhh” and then, softly, thud back onto the runway.  It reminds a traveler of the constant grace accompanying me, and of the absurdity of hurling a big metal construction at a long slab of concrete at high speeds and expecting neither to suffer damage. 

I was going to close the China reports with another toilet humor sing-along, this time the best-known title of the musical Chess, but that piece has more lyrics than Waterloo and I couldn’t finish it.  Maybe later.  Maybe never.