Ten hours transit at Doha airport. Sleeping is always an option, though with these time differences I’m not sure it’s a good idea. The airport is crowded (and of course about half the people don’t care about the mask requirement) so finding an open seat near a power outlet was a challenge. But at least there’s this weird yellow lamp-bear thing.

Getting here wasn’t as simple as I’d hoped. First, they wouldn’t let me check in until I printed out a screenshot of the Pakistani immigration+covid tracking app. Absolutely hilarious, but considering the whole mess with my visa, in retrospect I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Second it turned out that my baggage was overweight. It was no surprise, just getting the two duffels to the train station was a good zone 3 exercise. The issue was that with the yen in freefall against the USD, the already pretty pricey $50/kg had a really bad sting to it. I made sure to get that extra weight allowance for the way back ahead of time, that way it costed only about half as much.

On the long flight I watched Moonfall and spent the rest of it sleeping. I only mention this because it’s been years since I last watched a movie this bad (then it was some Russian sci-fi action movie on my flight to Elbrus). It’s another Emmerich disaster movie. Some people may call it sci-fi, but calling Moonfall “science” fiction would be an offense even to pseudo-science. It could’ve been a silly fun movie if they went for comedy instead of super serious drama all the way, but alas. My brain was screaming “that’s not how it works” constantly for two hours. Wouldn’t recommend.