My final day started off with an early morning staff meeting at the Taipei office. I didn’t have time to eat breakfast at the hotel, so I dropped my luggage off at the office and went downstairs to get a Taiwanese breakfast sandwich, yum (cheap too!). For lunch, we ordered food in and had a company lunch, where I gave them a short speech of encouragement and motivation.

A quick final packing of Taiwanese pastries into my suitcase and I headed to the airport for my trip home. I got checked in without any problems, picked up some items at duty-free, and went over to the lounge to relax before my flight. My flight ended up boarding a little late and was about 30 minutes delayed in taking off, but we made up the time in the air. Here’s a shot of the tarmac:

The flight wasn’t too bad. I got to sit in the upper deck (like on the flight out) and I think it’s actually a little bit quieter or at least there are fewer people walking about disturbing/distracting me. Rebecca noted that we had tried to get the upper deck in the past, but the airline discourages families with young children from seating up there. That may be another reason why I felt it was quieter.

For the first couple of hours, we had some turbulence, so I wasn’t able to fall asleep, but then later, it calmed down and I was able to rest for about 5 hours. I ended up watching a couple of foreign films, since they had the same movie lineup for all my flights since starting out, and I had watched all the other movies that I was interested in.

These two films were pretty good, one was a Japanese film with a title translated into English as “Star Reformers” which turned out to be quite good. It was about a prefecture official who gets transferred to a supermarket to learn about the ‘citizens’ point of view, and ends up gaining a new perspective on his own life and career. I wonder if this film was particularly timely as I have been getting more and more tied up with my own time at work. The other film was a French film with a title translated as “Orchestra Seats” which was about a young girl who moves to Paris to try and get a start in the glamorous life in the ‘city of lights’. Now that I think about it, this movie is kind of like a modern-day “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

Here’s a shot from the air prior to landing:

After the plane landed, I moved quickly to get in front of everybody in immigration (I didn’t want to get stuck in lines and then get stuck in traffic on the way back). Fortunately, I moved quickly through immigration, only had to wait a few minutes for my luggage to come out, then walked straight through customs. Rebecca was in the arrival area to pick me up and we headed on home. There was a bit of traffic on the freeway back, but it cleared up after the South Bay bend. Rebecca asked me what I wanted to eat for my first meal back, and I said Fatburger, but then I changed my mind (not everybody appreciates hamburgers for dinner ) and we decided to go to Honda-Ya.

Total Accumulated Flight Time: 45 hours