A friend of mine is a sports reporter for a Very Important Newspaper — and she’s in China to cover the Olympics, that lucky duck.

Anyway, getting there is not half the fun. Not on a 13 hour flight.

Here’s what happened: she boarded a Continental jet in Newark, got as comfy as she could, and while waiting for the flight to take off for Beijing, she — fell asleep. She woke up something like 2-and-a-half, 3 hours later, and thought, “This is just great! Why, I’ve already knocked out a good chunk of this boring flight!”

Not so fast, pal. Just at that moment, the pilot’s voice came booming over the speakers, asking everyone to please sit down because he was pretty sure they’d be taking off soon. Oh, my.

Anyway, when they fiiiiiiinally landed, she breezed through all the lines, and upon emerging from customs, her first sight of this exotic, mysterious land was — a Starbucks.

Well, that’s one Starbucks they didn’t close, anyway.