Long flights and wandering hands

After 23 hours of continual travel, I finally made it to Bahrain - that small, unknown island that is its own Country and is an hour flight from Abu Dhabi. Now, I started my long journey, that spanned the globe, traveling 16 hours over Canada, across Russia, and down through Bagdad. An odd flight route and with a even odder seat mate. The gentleman next to me, for this leg of the journey, promptly ignored me for the first, blissful 8 hours, but then my earphone covered head in a book could detour his personal inquires of my life no longer.

To quote the immortal words of Tyler Durden, I now had "a single serving friend". Lucky me. He was a nice Indian fellow who studied hard, gained two masters, and now works for Sysco Systems in San Jose. We talked about the usual first meet type stuff and then a little about India, which is where I will be headed in 4 days. Apparently, when you talk with your seat mate, it is an unofficial license to have them feel a tad more comfortable around you and so, this turns into a very tall, lanky man stretching his legs into half of my foot room area and then his rather large palm, slowly working its way to land on my tigh while he sleeps for 4 of the remaining flight hours.

Me, being the nice wimp that I am, contemplated removing his hand by force or stabbing it with the fork issued with dinner, but instead, I internally rationalized for hours whether he was cognizant of his wandering appendage or just a sprawling sleeper and therefore spend several hours very uncomfortable. I need to figure out how people talk to other people, in a friendly manner, but leave it so they don't feel they can invade my personal space. It's a flaw I will need to work on. Luckily, I didn't have that problem on my last flight of the day, Abu Dhabi to Bahrain, as my seat mate decided that I was a "loose woman", wearing a hoodie and pants instead of a burka, and so he promptly moved a row away from me. Too bad I only got to enjoy the blissfulness of a whole empty row to myself for a short 52 minute flight.

24 hours after I left San Fransicso, I lost a day in travel, was slightly molested on a plane, smelled a little ripe, felt like I needed to see a chiropractor, and was $70USD poorer due to an unexpected increase in Bahrainan visas. But I passed through customs and into a new adventure.