Crossing the Pacific on the Wings of Dragons

Let's begin this Blog properly, with a definition of terms:

Racing Game: An interactive software application that simulates the thrilling experience of staring up the tailpipe of the leading car for 10 laps, only to crash out while trying to pass on the penultimate corner.

Dragon Racing: Listening to power metal whilst playing a racing game. Power metal, with bands such as Blind Guardian, with their album "Nightfall on Middle Earth" and other bands like Rhapsody of Fire with their song "Sacred Power of Raging Winds" forms an excellent soundtrack for doing epic things…

like racing…

With Dragons.

Dragon Nap: Etymologically, the Dragon Nap can be traced to overtired friends of the Dragon Racer who find themselves on his/her couch. It is defined as sleeping to power metal. This at first would appear difficult, but power metal's clean sounds (for metal anyways), straightforward rhythms and fast, but regular drumming make Dragon Napping an eminently possible activity. In fact the Caltech Roommate of this writer, and the roommate's girlfriend appear to feel that power metal has soporific qualities, as they tend to fall asleep when it is played.

Now that that's all understood, I can explain the title; I dragon napped across most of the Pacific, chewing my way through the full works of Blind Guardian and a good deal of those of Apocalyptica (while not strictly power metal, the term dragon nap can be extended to other forms of metal, as long as they sound suitably epic… or are about dragons). This is what happens when one doesn't really sleep before leaving. Even though I usually can't rest on a plane, all I did was half sleep with metal blaring in my ears for thousands of miles.

When I wasn't busy trying to get tetanus through the forceful insertion of metal into my head, I got a chance to explore the in flight entertainment system aboard my ANA Boeing 777-200. Despite being in steerage class (as defined by being not only in coach (or economy as ANA are very careful to always call it) but also being near the back of the plane, where every time the plane hits a jostle, it's amplified for your entertainment) the setup was rather impressive. They give you a remote control, which is not built into your armrest, but rather is on a retractable cord and removable. Why? You might ask, what's the advantage. Well, look for yourself: Not only can you watch movies (from a big selection) which you can pause, fast forward, and rewind, you also have access to a selection of videos and TV shows, music and even games (hence the game buttons on the bottom) For games you hold the remote sideways and Voila, instant controller. Now, the games aren't exactly Duke Nuke'em Forever, which is to say:

a.) they exist, and you can play them and

b.) they haven't run out of gum yet,

but it was fun to play breakout, pong, and centipede. There were also trivia games, card games, and golf games. Furthermore it appears you can play multiplayer with other people on the airplane, so the whole place is one big lan party, but I never tried.

Despite all this gee-wiz technology, my first experiences with the system strongly reminded me that it was all in fact, a computer, which is to say the first time I picked up the controller, the system promptly crashed, leaving me with an awesome controller with which to command my "SVGAlib FP exception 35" screen. After a few minutes though, the system rebooted itself and was mostly trouble free after that… until I went to the map screen where you can track the plane's progress, and when it cycled to English I discovered that it apparently had lost all its l's. It displayed our current "A titude" as 32,000 feet and showed us as we passed the Hawaiian city of "Hono u ". This too, eventually fixed itself, but provided a reminder of the fact that computers only work because the phase of the moon is just right and the gnomes inside the chips have been properly fed…. Then zapped with a cattle prod.

Once the gnomes had been properly tazed (I feel like someone I know may have been involved, but she's a mechanical engineer, not a EE, so maybe not) the system worked fine and I was able to enjoy Valkyrie, which, as it turns out, is not a bad film at all. I then discovered a 50 minute long collection of JPOP music videos, which was disappointing as I didn't actually recognize any of the artists, and J-POP is steadily moving towards R&B, which doesn't help it in my opinion.

I then turned my attention to "Best Hits USA: Time Machine Special". This is apparently a TV show of some sort, and it features an older Japanese Man explaining older American hit songs, accompanied by him playing their Music Videos. I'm not entirely sure what his theme was, it seemed to be passionate songs or soulful ones, but I'm not sure. What I do know is that he played "Sexual Healing" and the Bee Gees among other songs. He then went over the Top 20 songs on the American charts right now, and I got rather embarrassed for the state of the music in my country. He finally got to the top song in the US, which is "You Spin Me Round" by Flo Rida, which he then carefully explained for Japanese audiences is a pun on Florida. I'm sure that not knowing the origins of rapper names causes literally 10s of Japanese people to lie in bed unable to sleep at night, so I'm glad he's doing his part to help those poor people.

Having explained the etymology of its maker, he proceeded to show us the songs music video, which I fast forwarded through (best feature ever).

Having avoided the agony of hearing a classic song re-interpreted into oblivion, I heard the old man explain that that song was in fact inspired by an older song, and without further ado, they began to play the original song by Dead or Alive. In addition to being a terrifying video of its own right, that was damn close to getting meatspun at 30,000 feet, well played ANA.




Upon arriving in Japan, I found that perhaps Japan had been misnamed, A more accurate epithet might have been "Land of the Overcast Sky". Though this was quickly replaced by "Land of the thunderstorm over the head of the gaijin who is waiting at the bus-stop to be picked up by his advisor".

Oh yeah, and one more comment, coming back to the title of this post, ANA Dragons could use a bit more legroom in coach.

-CMD