| Rant : Top 10 Things To Think About When Flying Quite often, the only way to get from one point to another within a reasonable amount of time is to take an airplane. Sure, I could probably get from Munich to Singapore by train, or even by sea (most parts of it at least, once one gets out of land-locked Munich), but I�m only on a three-week-or-so holiday, and given the warped way in which modern society values things, the fastest form of mass transport (of the sort that gets you from country to country anyway) is probably the cheapest. Anyway, flying can be fun. You can learn a lot about yourself from twelve hours on a plane. Like how quickly your face gets oily although you�re just sitting there. Or how parts of your body you never knew could cramp up suddenly do after hours of trying to sleep in an awkward position (42-inch pitch and 20-degree seat recline notwithstanding). There are also lots of things you begin to notice that make absolutely no sense at all. In true River Dawg fashion, this rant focuses on all that and more. And so, I present my first ever Top 10 list. Top 10 things to think about when flying long-distance 1. Most of you that are cool enough would have seen �Fight Club�. That movie poked fun at the safety demonstration on planes, so I shall not repeat that. The uncool among you will just have to rent the video. Anyhow, you only ever need to sit on one flight in your entire life to know how to pull the oxygen mask towards you and breathe normally. I mean, if some oxygen-mask-looking thing comes dropping from above my seat, I honestly wouldn�t know what I would do with it. I mean, strap it to my ass? Wear it like a party hat? And what on earth does 'breathe normally' mean? Does anyone breathe abnormally on a regular basis to actually need instructions on how to breathe? You know when the flight attendants point out the nearest emergency exits and their arms flail around in ten different directions? One of these days I�m just going to actually start looking around, and then make a big show about being totally shocked and surprised that a door had suddenly popped out of nowhere to appear in front or behind my seat. 2. And so, the most important thing to know, they invariably never teach. And that is how to actually operate the stupid emergency door. I mean, it�s one thing to know where your nearest emergency exits are, but you really got to know how to open the darn door if the unthinkable happens. Next time you�re on a flight, pay attention. The pilot always asks the flight attendants to set the door to automatic before take-off. That�s all well and good. But if this automatic mechanism fails, you really got to know how to switch it back to manual in order to open the door. Therefore, please do pay attention to how the flight attendant accomplishes this task. But don�t stare, or people will think you�re crazy. 3. We really all have small stomachs. If you�ve ever delighted in economy class food and the mightily small portions of slop they serve up, then you�re probably well alone. I wouldn�t eat the stuff if given a choice, but I�m often fainting from hunger by the time they finally decide to come round with dinner at 10.30 pm. And then I spend the next few hours being depressed in the knowledge that the miniscule portion of food I�d gobbled up was miraculously enough to fill me, which implies that the normal portion I pack away when I'm not sitting on a plane is probably enough to feed a Third World country for a day. 4. Who chooses all the music for inflight entertainment? None of these people ever have taste. I mean, I�m okay with Top 40 pop, so it�s not about my own personal bias (yeah, right). But most of the time, you�d have never heard of some of the so-called pop hits on the pop channel, and every other channel is out of order except for the classical music and opera channels. And the English-speaking option for the movie channel is kaput as well. I�m really entertained. 5. I�m one of those geeks that is supremely entertained by the flight path information screen. However, I do marvel at why certain statistics are actually deemed relevant enough to inform the entire plane. Firstly, the whole head wind and tail wind thing. Most people would not really go �hey, the tail wind�s pretty fast, so we�re moving faster�. People just don�t care. Although what I would give to hear someone utter a precious line like �Gee, that head�s blowing quite fast!� The most puzzling of them all is why they actually tell us what the outside temperature and altitude is. I mean, such information is only relevant to people when they depart or arrive at their destination, which is when the airpath screens are invariably turned off anyway. Seriously, why would I want to know the cruising altitude, especially when the pilot already announces it? Or to know that the temperature outside is �58 degrees Celsius. I�m not about to step out there for a walk in any case. (continued on the next page ...) |