On August 25 at 11am, Ellen and I left
Changi Airport for the US - work at Duke and a surprise birthday party. At
5:50 pm August 25 we landed at Newark. This is what flying across the
international dateline does to time. Here is the flight path, not a
great circle
but a
jet stream route.
and the return flight on September 6. Here, we left Newark
at 11pm Wednesday and arrived at Changi at 05:04 am Friday morning.
What the international dateline giveth when flying from Singapore to
the US the international dateline taketh when flying from the US to
Singapore. But what a trip. We have fantastic tail winds with a maximum
ground speed of 748 mph and arrived 40 minutes early.
Also we flew a great circle route (I guess the jetstream path and the
great circle decided to coincide) and passed within 2.5 degrees of the
north pole as shown here
Click for the GPS tracks (XML format)
and a bit of homework. See if you
can plot the tracks (actually several SQ flights) on a map.
What a surprise birthday party. All the family appeared (well almost) -
our 4 kids (Jack, Mike, Rachel and Josh), our 2 Nepali kids (Kisan and Amar)
and 12 grandkids -- really GRAND kids. To treat myself, I bought the new
Nikon 18-200 VR lens for my D70 and when I returned to Singapore (Sept 8)
I was able to test it on the unbuilding project across the street.
Here is the HDB worksite across the street. Lots of cleanup done where
the first building used to live.
and about 3 - 4 floors removed from the next building.
and a close-up of Jackie's grapple, hand held camera with vibration reduction
turned on.
