Playing Catch-up

Unfortunately, the blog got put to the wayside between exploring Manaus,
working, eating and having time to relax. I have a ton of things to post
though, and two long flights ahead of me where I'm planning to jot some
things down, so stay tuned.
To work backwards though, I am now in Sao Paulo airport waiting for my
flight to New York and then Tokyo. I had originally booked a mid-day
flight from Manaus to connect here, but that flight was cancelled and I
had to take a 7am flight, which left me with about a 9-hour layover.
I managed to kill a couple hours eating lunch and then finding a wall
socket in the airport to plug in my laptop and write some emails to
people, but after that I was edging to get out of the airport. People
watching is fun sometimes, but people in transit usually have
zombie-like expressions on their faces, and that was creeping me out
after a while (not to mention the fear that my own expression was
looking somewhat undead).
So I had a look on the Internet and found out that, even though the
airport is too far from the city center to really go and have a look
around without fear of missing my flight, I did have the option of
checking out a shopping center about 20 minutes away. I asked at
information and found there was a bus, so I headed outside, found the
bus stop and waited. 30 minutes later I was in the shopping center, but
it looked painfully like any other shopping center in the world, and I
had made the mistake of not putting my carry-on bags in a locker at the
airport.
After entertaining the thought of seeing a movie, I thought better of it
being that there will be movies on the flight (although if The Hangover
had been showing in English and not Portuguese, I may have gone for it
anyway), so instead I wandered around until I found... a bowling ally. I
figured "what the hey" and sauntered on in. I got to my lane, put down
my bags, and slipped on my my rental bowling shoes. It was a good way to
kill 90 minutes and I hadn't been bowling for what seems like a long
time. Didn't do too well score-wise, but at least I hit 145 at one point
over the 5 or 6 games I played.
After that, it was back to find the shuttle bus back to the airport and
check in. So that was my day in Sao Paulo; not nearly as excruciating as
I had feared.