A Christmas story...in spring!

Over Christmas, I'd been taking a much needed break from work and literally chilling out at home for 10 days (the weather was below freezing!).

For all the freedom and independence the media has in the UK, it's surprising that only two major providers of TV entertainment are present in the market - Sky and Virgin. Sky requires a dish antenna and my apartment has banned the use of dish antennas on its premises sighting aesthetic reasons. That left me with the grand choice of 1 when it comes to powering my TV.

While I am tempted to whinge about how much Virgin is ripping me off, I will control myself, for this post is about something else. I am not much of a sports fan, so that eliminates the content of around 120 of the 140 channels that Virgin provides. The only other worthwhile channels are Comedy Central, Dave (only because they have endless re-runs of Top Gear) and Discovery.

Now that we have that out of the way, said break was spent predominantly zoned out in front of the telly and the set-top box stuck firmly stuck on Comedy Central. I was watching an interesting episode of Everybody Loves Raymond and his cuckoo family. For ELR aficionados, this was the one where Frank sends an anecdote to Readers' Digest and gets published. He then walks around with a note pad trying to identify other quips he can send in, now that he is "published"!

Watching it reminded me of myself. In the early days of this blog, I wore the same shoes as Frank B. Frank walked around with a tiny notepad while the notepad in my tiny mobile phone was where I'd jot down amusing things that happened every day in my life. At one point, there were more ideas than the inclination and will to write!

As I 'matured' in the blog trade, I began to make a mental note of things that were blog-worthy. Once again, I noticed that I was flooded with ideas. This made me a very happy man, for ideas are exactly what the doctor ordered for a writer, but I found myself sorely lacking when it came to actually translating those ideas into a post that made more sense than, say, this one. 

The end of that episode featured Frank hanging up his boots as a 'published writer'. I wonder if I'm headed to the same fate...am I going to hang up my boots because I can't translate ideas to posts? I don't think so, as long as I can come up posts on how I can't come up with posts :). 

What do you say readers?

Condemned....to learn religion!

Ah, good old Gulf News, never fails to provide a juicy titbit or two.

This one is about a Saudi bloke who decided to marry 6 women and got busted. It gets murkier. This nutter worked for the Vice Police.

Apart from the obvious wise cracks around Vice Police itself not being vice free and the practice what you preach comeback, this is worrying on multiple grounds.

Saudi Arabia, as a self appointed protector of the Faith, has a force known as the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The charter for this force is simple - make everyone who sets foot on Saudi soil adhere to the strict rules imposed by it as protector of the Faith. This force has absolute powers and is able to arrest anyone, anywhere and for reasons as flimsy as a lady showing 2 centimeters of skin from the soles of her feet when she fell down flat on her face.

The poor sods who get arrested for these 'offences' are humiliated, punished, whipped and in general made miserable.

Back to our bloke. His story is that he's married six women when he's only(!) allowed to take on 4! The story is worrying from several angles because:

1. the bloke works for the Vice Squad and he does this!
2. he claims he had no idea that 4 was the maximum - this coming from a person who is in charge of implementing said rule is even more worrying
3. then comes the punishment he was given:

• 120 lashes
• travel ban for 5 years
• memorise the last 2 sections of the Qu'uran.

How can a punishment be a punishment if it involves memorising Holy Scriptures? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of if 'Protectors of the Faith' consider it a punishment to learn what their religion says?

Reminds me of my good friend, Mr. 23rd Pulikesi. Among the many gems he doled out as punishment, was one where a court dabari (crier) was punished with repeating Pulikesi's praise for a week. While getting fed with kollu (horse feed). Once a day...

Strike 1, 2, 3...you're out...of this aircraft!

Flights don't scare me. I'm no dare devil either. I can be scared quite easily, however, in all of my flying experience (totalling a grand 6 years), I haven't been scared of air planes. Awestruck, yes, petrified, no. From the time I looked up in awe at the huge Boeing 747-400 cargo liner that used to land on my sister's house in Bangalore (her house then used to sit next to the airport compound wall facing the runway), I'd always wanted to fly in the 747 simply because it was then the largest commerical passenger aeroplane in the world.

Until my first flight in 2005, all I had to go on were reports from near and dear on how the interiors of a plane looked. Most of the reports pointed in the direction of a similarity between KPN Travels buses and a flight's interior. Turns out that description was not entirely inaccurate, the only difference being the seats in KPN buses are more comfortable, recline more and have a lot more leg room.

To date, I have yet to fly in a 747-400, but lost interest in flying in it after Airbus announced the A380, all desires to fly shifted loyalties to Airbus. I followed all programs on Discovery channel on the making of the Airbus A380 and knew its vital statistics by heart. Again awestruck, not scared of its ability to stay in the air.

All that changed a few days ago. With me extricating bricks from intimate places not once, but thrice in one flight.

On the rare occasion the office sends me on a business trip requiring the use of a commercial airliner, I jumped with joy when my ticket from London to Dubai listed the aircraft as A380-800. Finally. I thought it would be a cruise, what with its superior leg room in cattle class and all. Note the operative word cattle class. Apparently, in my company, one needs to be arthritic and old (read: Senior Manager and above) to fly business class. The recession, I tell you.

I checked in at the airport and there it stood, huge and majestic, although one might argue that from angles, the plane looked like it could lose a few kilos. The area above the cockpit also made the plane look very old - it was completely bald. 

The plane had made a hash of first impressions by coming into the airport over 25 minutes late. Airline staff helpfully attributed it to congestion in Heathrow and we all know what a busy airport Heathrow is, so impressions were promptly restored.

Once the interiors were cleaned up from its previous flight, we all shuffled in and I made myself cozy in the seat, not at all spilling out of the seat and also appreciating the decent bump in leg room. The plane eventually made it to taxi stage around 30 minutes behind schedule.

As with all planes, the captain introduced himself on the PA and helpfully told us the flight plan, speed, altitude and flying time. I have multiple issues with this information doled out by chauffeurs of the air.
 

• flight plan: I know where I'm coming from and I am aware of where I am going. How you propose to take me there is entirely upto you, I trust your judgement. When I get into a bus from Coimbatore to Chennai, some drivers/conductors helpfully tell you it will stop at Salem, Dindivanam and Chengulpet bypass. That is helpful; I don't think any driver of a bus in any country will tell you the bus plans to be on NH47 for 200kms before turning onto NH45 for 300kms. If a pilot tells me the flight I'm on is from A to C with a stop at B, I will be mildly interested. What we usually get is that the flight is from A to C and flies past B.

• speed and altitude: the airshow monitor constantly displays this information, thank you. I suppose, it's a good thing S Athai doesn't know any pilots. If she did and she flew with them, she would ask them to slow down to 30kmph (chapter 3 last paragraph!) if the pilot discloses the speed as "we'll be cruising at 875kmph."

• flying time: When a ticket is bought, the normal practice is for time departure time and arrival time to be displayed. Please let me know if we're going to be late, I'd appreciate that, thank you.

There are people to say this friendly banter is to develop a rapport between the passengers and the pilot. I refer these people to the relationship between bus driver and passengers.

Anyway, the pilot gave us information on flight plan never-the-less. The flight was to fly over UK, Europe, cross over into Asia over Turkey, Baghdad, some sea and then onto UAE airspace. 

Baghdad? No one mentioned that to me earlier! It might have actually been more helpful if there was an armed escort of the non-hijacker variety on board! I decided to keep a look out for incoming surface to air missiles, just in case. Brick extrication #1.

Around an hour into the flight, at some point over Brussels, helpful pilot uncle came on the PA again and said, "it appears passengers in the upper deck of the aircraft, please accept our apologies over the noisy flight you've been having, it's because one of the seals in a door on the upper deck is a 'bit' faulty. We are in touch with our base in Dubai on actions to take over this. In the meanwhile, please accept our apologies for the noise. Instantly, images of me being sucked into the atmosphere by rapid depressurization of the cabin since the door gave way flooded my mind. I remember being optimistic by thinking that at least, I wouldn't have to look out for missiles if we fell out of the sky before Baghdad came. Please Mr. Pilot, if the danger is not imminent, i.e., we're going to die in 10 seconds, please tell us something else. I strongly recommend a placebo. Something as mundane as, "will the passenger who has eaten one too many beans in the upper deck please step into the toilet, the noise is deafening" would have helped immensely. Brick extrication #2.

Somewhere between Turkey and Iraqi airspace, we ran into turbulence. To an already paranoid mind, this didn't do any wonders. The ride comfort on the flight suffered and both the interior and ride reminded me of KPN Travels more and more. To make matters, eagle eyed as I am, I noticed that the altitude had dropped from 33,000 feet to 27,000 and speed had decreased from 875kmph to 800kmph. Brick extrication #3. This is when pilot uncle truly made himself useful and said we're flying lower and slower in order to smoothen out the ride. Relief flooded back in, only to be replaced by more dread, for we were now over Iraq and flying lower! Brick extrication #3b. Thanks to G Bush and his cronies, it appears Iraq is fresh out of surface to air missiles and we made it to Dubai over 1 hour late and I had to scramble in the 15 minutes left to make my connecting flight, which thankfully, was as boring as any other flight I have taken.

Suddenly, my appetite for flying in the largest aircraft in the business has been satiated. I wonder why...