Well, looks like after a longer hiatus, these profiles just keep on piling up. This will also be my first one on a Shanghai-bound flight from Helsinki, so switching maybe the perspective just a little bit - or not. We'll see.
First of all, a PSA: row 54, middle seats. For reasons unbeknownst to mankind, the Finnair A340s only have two seats in the middle on this row. But the real meat of the deal was the surprise extra space. There is just a little bit more distance to the row in front of you, and it makes all the difference in terms of comfort. The previous encounter I wrote about happened actually on the row behind it, and as I couldn't get any better seats this time around either (i.e. "exit seats" with additional legroom due to door positions,) I tried to experiment with some minor tweaks. Apparently, it paid off.
During this intercontinental flight, I was accompanied by whom I could only describe as a frequent to Asia. Ari, a Finn married to a Taiwanese wife with two daughters, used to visit the continent often as a young deployment engineer for all things electric and machinery such as power stations, ocean ships and infrastructure. He almost went to the Finnish elevator company Kone, at least for his graduation thesis work, but ended up spending a good two dozen and more years at ABB instead. Now he works as sales engineer for the French multinational Alstom, presently on his way to Korea to lay down some groundwork for their electric grid compensator business with a Korean infrastructure client.
Ari is traveling with another colleague, who happened to get an economy plus class seat by virtue of not doing the pre-flight check-in online, and appearing at the airport at the very last second. Any later than that and he would've been upgraded to business probably... anyways, he was happily doing vodka shots on his free upgrade seat, and occasionally walking all the way down the aisle over to the back of the plane where we sat with Ari, just for a little chat with him. I don't even know how you can smuggle vodka onto the plane but apparently you can do anything if you board the plane with your college pants on. However, by next morning, upon arrival, he did look really sleep-deprived and jetlagged.
Anyway, back to my seat buddy: Now he has been based in a smallish town of Nokia near Tampere, Finland (third largest Finnish city) for already over five years, with only 20-50 travel days a year. But Ari used to travel and also live all over Asia during his younger years: Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Korea, and of course Taiwan, with brief visits to Delhi, Phuket, Bangkok, Manila, among others. Also popular destinations were the wealthy obsidian gold mirages of the Middle East, such as Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and of course Dubai.
Ari and his family's Beijing tour, for example, appears to coincide with my exchange studies at Tsinghua university (2008), as they embarked on the two-year expatriate period to Beijing between 2007 and 2009. Their oldest daughter was 17 at the time, and just a few weeks from becoming legally adult when they had to move away. She did not want to go with the rest of the family as her friends and school were still in Finland, and there was nothing Ari or his wife could do. According to him, she was full of defiance and confidence of her own "survival," but of course it ended with teary Skype calls with the mom, then already in China.
Speaking of the mother, her story is also quite interesting. In Taiwan, she actually used to be a diamond cutter before her eyesight went too weak for it. Then she re-educated herself to become a chef, and according to Ari, she is handles the various world flavors quite well, so at home they will eat both Western and Oriental food in turn. Ari did quickly mention also about his younger daughter, now 13 and going to junior high next year. From this you can actually deduce that the two sisters are literally over a decade apart. Big age gap among siblings is something I notice really easily since my little brother is as many as nine years younger than me.
In the end, I don't know if there are any lessons in Ari's story, but at least for me, it really opened my eyes yet again on how few places I've actually been to. Going around the world, learning about new places and cultures must be one of the most enjoyable things one can do with their time here. I did ask some advise from Ari about traveling with small children, as I also recently became a dad. Easiest are of course the holiday resorts where you don't really have to do much. But Ari's family actually alternated between city destinations and resorts every other trip, just for a bit of an added variety. However, you have to be aware that small children are not really able to walk great distances, especially in the heat of the cities.
Back in the arrivals hall and China border control at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Ari and his colleague were able to pick up the free short-term transit visa by producing their connecting flight booking details to Seoul. I don't know how long a visa each of them got, but this was also my first time witnessing someone banking on the "new" policy of allowing people, who only make a quick stop at Shanghai (or any other of the many Chinese destinations) on their way elsewhere, to get up to 72 hours of shore leave without prior visa application.
A little but still very useful detail to remember for the future.
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