Remind me never to fly China Airlines Air China!

We are going to go to San Francisco to spend Christmas with my brother Shaun.

Due to work commitments, I wasn't sure if I could go or whether it would just be Fabien and the kids to see my brother, but now that I had the dates, we could all go together, so we had left this booking quite late. This didn't give us a lot of options, and in any case there are only 2 direct flights from BJ to SF on either United or China Airlines Air China. We looked at the flight times and availability, and decided that Air China was both cheaper, and were available on the days I wanted to fly.

To cut a really long story short - Remind me NEVER to fly Air China unless we absolutely have no choice about this.

They have the worst customer service in the world, and the whole experience of (1) buying the tickets and (2) booking our seat is really making me quite nervous about flying for 10 hours on their carrier.

I'll come back and post about it when I am in San Francisco, and I almost regret having to buy carbon offsets spent on this most silly flight on this worthless airline.

At least the idea of spending Christmas with my brother, his girlfriend's family and the whole gang is perking me up !!

I should be more thankful - really !

I am such a blessed person that there are times (human nature being what it is) that I take it for granted.

Alex scared us 2 weeks ago by suddenly getting a 40 degree fever. I was in a meeting on the other side of the city when I recieved the anxious phone call from ayi, so one of our neighbours (who works from home) went to our house to check it out for us. He got there at the same time as Fabien who rushed there from work. The fever subsided after some paracetemol. I think she had been dehydrated from the stomach flu.

She wasn't sneezing or coughing, so we aren't all that worried about H1N1 virus. Sophie's kindergarten class so far has not been affected so we're keeping our fingers crossed that this winter goes smoothly. Luckily Alex recovered quite quickly - at least in time for our weekend at the Great Wall, although she did manage to pass it to Mommy, who developed a throat infection!

Which brings me to the next bit about being thankful for what you have. Why is it you need to get sick before you appreciate being healthy?

I usually take my health for granted, not getting enough rest, skipping meals and generally abusing my body. I also take for granted the fact that the children are almost always perfectly healthy. So only when they get sick (or I do) will I appreciate the fact that the rest of the year, everything is absolutely fine.

Speaking of thankfulness, this year, Sophie and I will not be allowed to visit the orphanage where we normally donate our stuff to. There is a kind of paranoia regarding H1N1 and visitors are basically not welcome. Which is a little sad but of course, we will respect the health restrictions.