11-17 - the voyage home I have been going to bed before ten for most of the past month, and this flight leaves at one am, so I'm exhausted in the airport, and once I'm finally on the plane I go to sleep before we take off. It's a fitful sleep, and in my waking and sleeping and waking weirdness, I can't tell if we're taxiing, taking off or already in the air. I'm ultimately awake and almost lucid for take off, but asleep soon after. I'm awake for the snack, though. Thank goodness! I was afraid I'd have to go to sleep without my usual 2am snack of cabbage and spam with bread and cheese on the side. No need to have worried. Air France is illogical, bu yummy. In the morning, all the shades are down, and everyone on the plane conspires to sleep in. Lights don't go on until about 10am and breakfast. My seat-mate is as nice a person as you could possibly hope for. She's Sister Siong, from Switzerland, by way of Indonesia, then Dutch Guiana, and then the Netherlands. She's genetically Chinese. We talk about the ideographs in the characters of her name, but mostly we talk about Madagascar. I mention that there are too many deaf people in Madagascar. She agrees, and points out there are a large number of children with learning disorders, too. She's read about it, as well as seen it. It's developmental damage due to poor nutrition for the mother AND the child. Better food would reduce the number of deaf in Madagascar. And so her order feeds children, amongst other things. We commiserate about the government in Madagascar. It's the government of the country itself, with help from the French, who make things so difficult there. Her order was raising pigs. But there was a pig bug of some sort and they had to kill all the pigs. Then it turned out there wasn't a bug. It was concocted by the government. They get a kickback on imported pigs, so they killed domestic ones. That'd be the competition, you see. Sorry sisters, you lose. And so does 99.99% of Madagascar.