Anger Burger

Something I keep forgetting to discuss is my curious bad luck with Air New Zealand.  They are consistently rated among the top airlines for a whole array of things (punctuality, food, etc.) and yet, somehow two of the three flights I’ve taken with them have had a major minor plane malfunction occur.  The first was on my return from Auckland to Los Angeles in 2005.  Our plane was badly delayed for takeoff due to (get ready!) the failure of an engine.  It just wouldn’t start, and all within my delighted eyesight at the Auckland airport.  The workers swarmed over one of the engines with carts and tools and duct tape¹. After an hour the engine started and we all boarded on the plane as though nothing catastrophic had happened.

Until about an hour into the flight, at which point a major chunk of the plane’s electrical system went down.  I happened to be sitting next to the panel that housed the plane’s breakers, and watched as a pilot came back and helped a flight attendant throw the electrical to try and reboot the system.  When it didn’t work they made the announcement that since none of the outages affected the plane’s ability to fly, we’d carry on.   Fine by me, even though it meant I had to sit in darkness.  About an hour after that, a passenger who was fairly actively dying of cancer began to have seizures.  Oh yes, I said that.  Apparently the woman essentially smuggled herself onto the plane, since the airlines have strict rules about passengers with unusual medical needs having to register with them before flight.  I was sitting near enough to hear the entire story, which basically was: she wanted to get to America to be with family before she died thought it would just be okay if she laid down in the floorboards (!) during the flight.  The attendants refused, telling her that if she were incapable of sitting in her seat we’d have to turn the plane around and remove her.  She informed them should could sit just fine.  An hour later she had a seizure, requiring that oh-so Hollywood of requests “Is there a medical professional onboard the plane?  We seem to have a passenger who could use some attention” from the pilot.  There were two ER nurses onboard, each of whom couldn’t decide if she needed immediate attention.  Upon learning that the closest airstrip for said attention would be in Guam, the nurses decided to heavily sedate the passenger with a morphine drip (which they have on planes!!!) (I then faked a seizure but got no attention) and continue on.  We did, she was doped the entire flight, and when we landed she had to be removed via ambulance.  Dramz!

So while the medical drama distracted me from the mechanical drama, it all came back to me this last flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, almost five years later.  About two hours into our flight I started to feel quite warm.  Normally I find these flights rather frigid and had prepared myself with a sweatshirt, the plane’s blanket and an extra pillow.  However, I was sweating like a zookeeper.  I confirmed with Mike: this plane was hot and getting hotter.  Phew!  Eventually we snagged one of the attendants who sort of grudgingly admitted: “Oh yes, the environment is out in this section of the plane, we’re terribly sorry.  But we’ve turned up the AC in the fore and aft to try to cool it down.”  Then, as if in some clumsy bid for sympathy, he said, “You can imagine, they’re quite chilled.”  I can only imagine it, jackass, because it’s almost 90° in an enclosed tin can I can’t move around in².

Add to that the curious fact that not one but three children on the flight were in the throes a horrific flu that required them to scream and cough until they puked - repeatedly – and then you have a pretty unpleasant flight.  I got maybe three hours of sleep, snatched only by uncomfortably propping myself against Mike and removing my shoes and socks so that I could press my feet against the cool metal bars under the seat.  By the time we landed an attendant came around to apologize personally to each of the passengers, holding a manifest so he could address us by name (well, not us – for some reason he didn’t bother with Mike and I) and give us a 1/2 hour international calling card as apology.  As apologies for near-intolerable conditions go, 30 minutes on a telephone is pretty weak.  I’m certain they were counting on what eventually occured: we were so thrilled to get off the damn plane that we ran off without looking back.

Moving on!

Kiwis love potato chips as much as any civilized person, and its always a pleasure to see flavors other than cheese or BBQ.  One of the Kiwi flavors we Americans have never had a chance to love is chicken.  Each brand of chip has a chicken flavor, which of course means I was too tired and out of it to get any.  I will soon, I promise.  Instead I got mince pie and tomato sauce!

Also known as meatpie and ketchup.  A long while back I remember getting “steak” chips somewhere in the US and not liking them very much.  If I recall, they tasted like MSG and little else.  These meatpie chips happily tasted primarily of ketchup – in fact, I didn’t detect any thing that might be considered ‘meatpie’ in there at all.  Still, ketchup is an unsurprisingly good flavor for potato chips and America should get its goddamn act together.  Especially Kiwi ketchup, which has a stronger clove and sugar note than American ketchup.

Later, Mike and I drove back into Plimmerton for more fish and chips.

This time around I got a photo of how lovely the package looks (with a can of Coke for scale).  No plastic bag, no styrofoam, just newsprint, double-wrapped.  It’s heavy and fragrant and stays hot for a unexpectedly long while.

I can’t tell you enough how much I adore this fish.  The batter tastes precisely like a sugarless doughnut, the exterior is that addicting combination of chewy and crispy, and the fish inside is as flaky and fresh as can be.  And the kumara (sweet potato) chips?  My god.  A medal to the woman who makes these, if not only because she’s not afraid of salt.  Fear not the salt.  Salt is your friend.  Dear, dear salt.  Sigh.

¹ True, but also an exaggeration.  There is a particular kind of tape used on airplanes that looks like duct tape from afar but is much, much stronger.  It’s commonly used to increase strength in areas that are suspicious but not broken.  It sounds horrific, but since the tape is arguably as strong as a metal weld and takes less skill to apply, I’d just as soon they taped that damn thing up whenever they felt like it.  There are a few highly watched videos on YouTube of a workers taping stuff, much to the terror of the passenger filming the event.

²We also had a classic crazy fellow passenger experience – we had the window and middle seats, so the aisle seat was a woman that had (I hope) taken a sedative because she was essentially unwakable when we needed to get out and pee about 5 hours later.  When we did finally wake her — and I’m not exaggerating here, we had to shake and yell in her ear to wake her, enough that we woke passengers in other seats — she was a grumpy cunt about it.  She said sarcastically, “Well, if you have to go, I guess,” (yes, I fucking have to go, I’ve been chugging water because it’s 90 fucking degrees in here)  and then acted like removing her blanket and unbuckling her seatbelt were the most complicated thing she had ever done — and then stepped down the aisle in the direction the restrooms were, so that I had to say, “If you stand there,” (pointing at the other side) “we won’t have to try and get by you,” to which she sort of drunkenly glared.