Blog » 2006 » April

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SAA used to use the Delta terminal (terminal 3) at JFK. This terminal is a benighted hellhole. Or worse. It’s at the end of a long trek through dingy roads; is old, rundown, confusing and small.

SAA now uses (notwithstanding claims to the contrary on SAA’s rather-far-from-perfect website) terminal 4. This is a bright, airy, happy terminal. It is also poorly signposted, so it’s worth noting that SAA checkin is in aisle 3, to the right when entering from the JFK skytrain. The SAA checkin area is much enlarged. When I was there it was obvious that the move had just happened, as about half the staff were busy training the other half. Luckily, this meant there was no queue at all, as every desk was staffed.

Thereafter is a reasonable mall with a number of restaurants and shops and seats. The best part, however, is the free wireless access, as discovered the last time I was there (and hopefully still working). Sit next to the frequent flyer airline lounges (which run alongside the shops), and partake of the generosity of (or, uh, shamelessly leach off) an airline of your choice.

Unfortunately, this mall is before security. Security was quick for me, but there is little in the way of shops after it, so you’ll have to make a hard choice of when to go through. Then be ready for the multiple levels of security while you board!

A few tips for the flight itself: SAA provides the usual freebies (toothbrush and toothpaste, socks, eye shade, earphones, etc.), but my pack did NOT include earplugs. Bring your own if you need them. And the provided earphones are not iPod compatible. That said, you may not need too much iPod action, as the touchscreen TV’s have a reasonably good selection of movies and TV shows. There is no limit on drinks, so I normally stock up with a few Appletisers the first time the drinks come round — though you can of course get more at any stage. The food (three meals) was great for my flight. And a last tip: remember to bring a pen on board, to complete the customs forms.

Oh, and lastly: if you’re flying from Los Angeles, JetBlue has an excellently-timed direct flight from Burbank leaving at 7am — so you can skip the red-eye followed by a day at JFK. It’s cheap too.

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Then I leave on Tuesday for South Africa for three weeks, where I’ll be seeing lots of friends and family, and attending Paul’s wedding! I’m looking forward to it greatly. For the second half of the stay I’ll be joined by Ellen, so we’ll be doing some of the tourist stuff — not least of which will be seeing Little Baby Cheetahs.

I’ll also be working hard on physics, though, as just two weeks after getting back is my oral candidacy exam, a hour talk on the background, progress and future of the research I’m doing, followed by general questions on string theory and high energy physics. I still have lots of background reading to work through, since it’s very easy to get caught up in research details without appreciating the full background of the work. It’s the last exam before the process leading to the final thesis, though, so that’s exciting.

Then a few days after candidacy, I’m off to China, where I’ll be teaching a course on scientific English at the National Institute of Biological sciences, in Beijing; followed by attending the annual Strings conference; and then spending a week actually seeing some of the sights. I’ve spent only 12 hours in eastern Asia, so it should be a very interesting trip.

Then I might decide to sleep.

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