AAAAregh 5 things I love about flying*

hmm just going to edit an in-progress post when came across this stuck in drafts....

.....
I am trying to be this smiley friendly easy digestible person that everyone tells me I should be. (I remember being told there was no place for cynicism in a team I was interviewing to join!!!)
So lets start on 5 things I love about flying*....
1) celebrity sightings... I met Nicky Butt in an airport lounge, and sat next to the manager of the Spanish National Equestrian team on a plane once.
2) Impromptu Sleeping.. Maybe as a result of my nocturnal sleep problems, I have a wonderful ability to sleep whenever I need to. So, much to my co-traveler's annoyance, I am able to drop off before the safety briefing, perk up just in time for the trolley service, and then drift off before the descent into whereever.
3) Knowing what's going on.. I quite enjoy being one of the few people who seem to actually know what the steps are to getting yourself on the plane, whilst everyone else is bimbling around (but see later for the flip). Knowing where your gate is, is a good start, knowing when you should be there helps too.
4) Now I am starting to struggle... Having necessary down time, this could be accused of being a duplicate of 2) but, its all the time that the airline require you to spend at the airport whilst they sort their sh*t out. Its great for catching up on reading or eating an overpriced and undercooked meal (to be fair, the airport restaurants seem to be improving)
5) The carpets? the.... no I'm not sure I can stretch to thing of a 5th thing, turning out the lights for taking off and landing in the hours of darkness, thats good, really cold red wine? sometimes that is surprisingly good (surprisingly because your expectations are so, so low). Online checkin, loved this when I first encountered it, now its, taken for granted. Pretty airstewardesses(es) rarer and rarer to find, but KLM have a good crop, and a couple of years ago there was a GREAT BMI lady who could have just stepped out of Vogue (alright FHM). Did I mention her here before? a quick recap on my posts indicates not, she was called something brilliant like Tina Pretty, or something. She was FINE. Wonder where she is now?
RIGHT just Primal Tweet Therapied my way back to sanity.

SO there's plenty about flying that I love, but there are one or two things that are not quite as good as they could be, mind if I indulge...
1) Check In Queues, not content with raping your wallet the airlines have decided it would be great to start the airport experience off by cutting the number of staff down to zero (ok a half) and making everyone who needs to do those inconveniently expensive things like check a bag or make an enquiry. There is a chance to avoid these by only having handluggage and opting for online check-in (which some of the budget airlines will only charge you a few pounds extra for), but remember to put all you minuscule toiletries in a freezer bag and allow some idiot at the airport probe through (I'm not onto security queue yet).
So if you want the old fashioned service, BE PREPARED TO WAIT and thats because of
2) IDIOT Passengers, who don't know what the f**k they are doing, seem to have been born aged 30-60 something in the airport, with no experience of the world or common sense at all.. witness the woman who walked onto my plane** to row 20 and then said "where is row 1?", well is it likely to be in the middle of the plane, I mean is it? really? if you were allocating row number to a plane would you have row 1 in the middle, would you? would you? WOULD YOU? And to all the people who just seem to wander around the departure lounge, seemingly lost, maybe they are trapped forever, it wouldn't surprise me, they don't appear to be able to match up their boarding cards or the departures boards to the layout of the terminal.
3) Airlines cutting corners.. I understand the need to turn a profit, I do.

* I'm not talking about ryanair, who are unmitigated shysters
** it wasn't my plane it was the plane I was travelling on, probably belonged to a bank. Scanned better to write "my plane"

Insoluable straplines

So on my way to the office this morning, hello by the way long time no see. On my way to the office this morning I passed Bright Horizons, its a nursery, presumably for the offspring of the industrious folk working at the commercial park I am currently plying my trade in.
Anyway Bright Horizons strapline (as if they need one) is "Family Solutions", presumably on the basis that these days if you're not a solution you are part of the problem. Get over yourselves, you are babysitters who charge the earth for making sure people's kids stay alive for 8 hours.
Being of a scientific bent I interpret it slightly differently, literally (more on that and Jamie Redknapp when I have time) poor mum dad and 2.4 happy offspring dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, now there's a family solution for you.
Further along the way is JetBird (who I know find charge €5000 to fly you from dublin to amsterdam) their slogan is "Creating Time", now again I'm not sure how you create or destroy one of the fundamental dimensions of the universe, might as well throw in Reducing Distance for good measure. Now if they were to go one step further and Create Time Solutions I think that would be a potent brew.

Resolve, Randomness and a Jackass

Such resolve!!! Well it didn't amount to much. I've thought about plenty of stuff but its not quite made it all the way onto the blog and I never got the subdom hosting thing sorted so we are still here in blogspot land.

I've become a bit addicted to Wikipedia recently, I've been looking up pretty much any stuff that comes into my head, here's some stuff I learnt from Wikipedia (apologies if you knew them already or if you just don't find them interesting):-
Music
Music genius BT had his daughter abducted by his former partner Ashley Duffy. ABC news report

Little boots took her name from that of the Roman Emperor Caligula, whose name comes from "little soldier's boot"

Many fans are disappointed with Divided by Night (The Crystal Method 2009), according to the iTunes reviews; many of them think that The Crystal Method is "going mainstream" by having many pop singers as guest vocalists – saying that it's not a real album by the band because many of the songs do not incorporate The Crystal Method's signature breakbeat sound.

Sport

Ashley Cole is an idiot (not from Wiki) and is a distant cousin of Mariah Carey (from Wiki)

AC Milan was founded in 1899 by English lace-maker Herbert Kilpin, Alfred Edwards, and four other Englishmen

The sport of skeleton can be traced back to 1882, when British soldiers in Switzerland constructed a toboggan track between the cities of Davos and Klosters.

Aged twelve, Chemmy Alcott broke her neck in a skiing accident, recovering with two of her vertebrae fused together.

Local Info

George Osborne is heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor, County Tipperary, Ireland.[2] This makes him a part of what is known in Ireland as the Ascendancy, the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy. (he lives in Rainow thats why its local)

Peter Kenyon attended my school, King's Macc, and the motto is nil nisi malis terrori - 'No terror, except to the bad'. Never knew that

Other

the popularity of Bordeaux wines increased dramatically following the marriage of Henry Plantagenet and Aliénor d’Aquitaine. The marriage made the province of Aquitaine English territory, and thenceforth the majority of Bordeaux was exported

During the seige of the Vatican embassy in Panama U.S. forces played loud music in front of the embassy in an attempt to draw out Noriega. Apparently it was Guns And Roses Welcome to the Jungle

I think I'm supposed to cite Wikipedia, but I couldn't work out their crazy nonsense. Anyway its all stuff from wikipedia


and if you thought this post was low on idiocy then watch Kanye West, surely if Obama calls you a jackass you really know you're plumbing the depths. Here he decides that he should win the MTV eurpoean music award for best video because his video cost $1M to make and has pam anderson in it. Simian's video was certainly my faviourite.


Next time out I predict the future of future prediction, but for now a quick prediction... expect intermittant postings here as the next generation of our family makes her way into the world.

Didn't gather much momentum did I?

New year's resolution, I 'll post something at least once a week.