Well, my adventure has started.

I don't know if a blog is the best way to do this, but I figured I’d try it for a while. I’ll write a little bit in each post so you can decide to read whatever you have time for.

I could do this in a one big email to everyone, but I was thinking this might be easier. This way if you’re not interested in a post, it doesn’t fill up your inbox.

The flight over started in the afternoon on Thursday in Portland. I flew down to LAX and then took the direct flight to Singapore on Singapore Airlines before taking the connection to Penang. I believe LAX to Singapore is the longest non-stop flight in the world, clocking in at over 16 hours. In case you haven’t had the chance to fly Singapore Air, it’s the best airline I’ve ever been on (I’ve heard there are similar quality airlines in Asia, but so far I’ve only flown Singapore).

What makes a great airline? Well, their flight attendants are all nice, helpful, and friendly. Their meals are the best airline food you’ll ever have – it’s still airline food, but there’s a lot of it and most of it tastes really good. Between meals, you can walk to the back of the plane where they have water, fruits, and other snacks. All the alcohol they offer is free if you want help falling asleep, and you get hot towels after takeoff and again before landing to clean your face and hands.

But the best part of flying on Singapore is their “KrisWorld” entertainment system. You get a full remote control (similar to a Tivo or “on demand” system). You get a HUGE selection of movies, including recent releases like King Kong, Underworld: Evolution, Failure to Launch, and Pink Panther. You can also use the remote to play 36 video games, plus foreign language lessons, current flight path and tons of music selections. If you have to sit on an airplane for 16 hours, this is the only way to do it. You can start any of the movies at any time, pause them, rewind them, etc. Amazing. And there’s a power supply in each armrest, so if you get bored, you can fire up your laptop and play some video games.

In between the meals, I had time to watch Crash, Pink Panther, Layer Cake, and Shaun of the Dead and play some games on my laptop. Of course, the flight was so long, I also managed 6 hours of sleep, but at least while I was awake I was entertained.

I landed on Saturday at 9:30am local time. Then the challenge is to stay awake and busy all day so that I can get my internal clock reset. More on that first day later, but I did manage to sleep from 9pm to about 4am and took a nap 7am – 9am. The time difference from Portland is 15 hours, so I find it even harder to adjust to than Israel.

I go to work tomorrow for my first day, so hopefully I’ll get a good night’s sleep. Normally, I’d take sleeping pills to help get my clock reset, but I managed to pack them in boxes I sent over before I left which haven’t arrived yet. So looks like I’m going au-naturale.