Airplanes!

Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 28, 2008)

A totally random subject. 

I have a lifelong love of commercial airplanes--jumbo, large, medium, small, Airbus, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Embraer, you name it, I love it. And I love everything about commercial airplanes, from the shape of the engine all the way down to the seatback pockets, the fold-up tables, the little personal TV controllers, the air-conditioning nozzles, the no-smoking signs. 

Perhaps it's because I came to America on an airplane, a Pan Am Boeing 747, as a tot. (One of my earliest memories.) Perhaps it's because my childhood home was a seventh-floor apartment right underneath the flight path for LaGuardia. Perhaps it's because I've always associated commercial jets with going to visit my father; the somewhat dank, sterile odor of an aircraft cabin is a comfort smell for me, while overcooked brown-sauce-drenched "meatloaf" or "chicken" and undercooked couscous are my comfort foods.

This might sound kind of weird and irrational, but part of the reason I was drawn to working on "Layover" was that it tangentially sorta kinda maybe had something to do with airplanes. (The title, the fact that the characters are traveling from the Mainland to Honolulu and from Honolulu to Asia.)

I don't know.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Kwok