Flying Mum’s Log

I’m back in KL and strangely unable to fall asleep despite (or because of?) my fatigue. So I blog!

My return flight on KLM was a pleasure, as always. The flight left on time. The huge aircraft with its recently redesigned interior looked and felt spacious. Their free hot meal, although not the best, was most welcome — fried rice with chicken, cucumber and pineapple salad, a dessert resembling the Filipino maja blanca.

And even though the flight was only 1 hour and 40 minutes long, the flight attendants still distributed earphone so that passengers could enjoy the in-flight entertainment. I was one of those passengers. I watched ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ — the first half on my KL-Jakarta flight, the other half on the return flight. Yup, yup, that’s one of my little secrets: I catch up with the movies I’ve missed by watching them when I fly. It’s not exactly the same as watching them on the big screen or on a HDTV, but at least I get to know what I’ve been missing.

Air traffic must have been heavy tonight because when I took a peek at the flight path on-screen, I saw that the plane made a huge loop somewhere above Malacca. As in, it made a turn just like a car would make a U-turn. Then it continued turning until it made a circle and went back to its original flight path.

So if I’m to go with the heavy air traffic theory, the pilot did it to kill time because he couldn’t possibly have been practicing how to do fancy maneuvers with a huge plane.

Traffic on land was even worse. I’ve never seen KL’s road so full of cars on a Friday night like tonight. It took twice as long as usual to get home which made me all worked up because I got a sick little boy waiting for me in my mum’s house — RoundBoy.

Oh man! He was burning with fever when I touched him! I estimated 38.5º C from the heat emanating from his skin, which was a pretty good guess — the thermometer registered 38.3º (that’s 100.94º F, people!!). So I gave him some paracetamol syrup, gave him a tepid sponge bath (wet a washcloth with tap water, wring off excess water, wipe, repeat) then took his temperature again — 37.8º. Only then did he manage to fall asleep…and his poor mother to breathe normally again.

The only problem left now is how to tell his grandmother that his mother has to fly to Jakarta again on Monday… *groan*