Things are looking up fellow travelers. The hotel wi-fi is up and I bought a SIM card for my phone which I will test drive shortly. Here is my post, written in the wee hours this morning: My trip halfway across the world went pretty smoothly, but I'll share some details nonetheless. I can see this will be a too-long post as it is, so I'll start after I transferred airlines at JKF airport in New York, itself, a rather hair-raising experience. We pick up when I boarded my Alitalia flight . . . The seat assignment on my boarding pass bore no resemblance to the seat I had carefully reserved by phone the other day. It was a window rather than the aisle I preferred, but that was OK. For me, it's a toss-up as to which is better on a long distance flight. On the aisle, you can get up whenever you want, but you are plagued by people brushing past you all the time, and you've got to stand whenever the middle and window seat people want to get out. I settled...