20 October 2015, 6 pm
So. Here I am. At last. On board a plane which is apparently heading for Washington. Not that I would be able to tell, because I cannot see out of the window, but I presume the pilot knows where she is going. One has to trust in these things. I have been given a complimentary plebeian blanket. This is nice. I also have a complimentary cushion-type-thing, which is not big enough to be a pillow and certainly not big enough to stifle a fellow passenger, but certainly big enough to get in the way when I try to use my laptop. Also nice. The EyePeePee is already on board. She was allowed into the priority boarding lane because she has Airmiles. This is not a medical condition, like it sounds, but a source of tremendous privilege. It allows you to sit in comfort while the plebs and their luggage are loaded. It appears that despite the Airmiles, the EyePeePee has not been upgraded, and I feel bad about this because it is almost certainly due to the fact that she was on the same booking as me, and I am carrying a grubby rucksack with bits of the Andes still stuck to it, and only got my Esta at the last minute thanks to Daniel’s tablet. God bless Daniel. Still, I now have both an Esta and a gin and tonic. And there is a smell of food. What more could a girl want? I follow the gin and tonic with a half-hearted but twice-baked piece of rolled up fish (which I suspect is actually rolled up carpet underlay but has a sufficiently high salt content to make it fish on a purposive construction), a plastic goblet of half-hearted Cabernet Sauvignon and a tub of chocolate orange means (which also requires an element of purposive construction). Then I open a can of Red Bull® and write my diary. And it is actually quite pleasant to be at the laptop just writing, without the emails coming in, and without people from CIPA contacting me every few minutes to say I am a reckless and untrustworthy Pee. Apparently there are five and a half hours of flight time remaining. I kind of want it to go on for ever. 20 October 2015, 9 pm OK. I do not really want it to go on for ever. I check the “flight path” option on my seat-back screen. Unsurprisingly, there is little to be seen but ocean. I am worried the pilot will get bored and stop paying attention. I know I would. I write more of my diary to keep myself awake. Due to the gin and tonic and Red Bull® cocktail which is coursing through my veins, combined with being cooped up in a dark metal box when I should be curled up with a good book and a whisky, the diary entries come out just a teeny bit grumpy. I will edit them later, when I am not feeling grumpy. Er, hum. 20 October 2015, 10 pm I dutifully fill out my US Customs landing card. It asks me if I am a terrorist. I tick the “no” box. It asks me if I have broken any laws recently. Again I tick “no”, hoping no one finds out about my failure to get IGC permission to travel here. Then it asks me if I have been down on the farm lately. I check the undersides of my boots. Most of the mud and the straw dropped off at Heathrow, so I think I will get away with ticking “no” to that one too. Luckily it did not ask about trekking in the Andes. 20 October 2015, 11 pm There are a lot of patent attorneys on this flight. Not all of them are here without permission, of course. The EyePeePee and I compare notes with another International Liaison Committee member who will be accompanying us to meetings with USPTO and AIPLA folk. On the plus side, our notes are all pretty consistent. On the minus side, they are consistently sketchy. We do not know where we need to be for many of the meetings, much less how to get there. My thing that looks a bit like an itinerary takes us little further forward. I am glad I at least have my Esta. I don’t imagine they let people into the USPTO without an Esta.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |