![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolfsbrideWell, I actually got back yesterday, as some of you will know, however, I was over at my mom's so I'm just now home catching up on everything. Everything being shovelling through my Telus inbox deleting the spam mail and paying bills. I was only gone a week; I'd hate to imagine what it would have been like if I'd been gone longer. Also, Telus used to have this nifty thing where it recognized spam mail and marked it as such and then you could click on the delete spam button and it would delete all the spam mail at once. Now they make you check off each email before you can delete. That's a step backwards Telus. As for my bills, I wish they'd gone on holiday too.
All right! Enough foolishness! On to the....
1. Oh my gosh! The prices! It was $1456 for the two of us to fly 3350 kilometres. Silly me, I thought it'd be a lot cheaper flying locally. I guess I can't complain about the cost of flying internationally any more.
2. These days it seems the price of the ticket buys you the convenience of not having to take a week or months to get to where you're going and very little else. They no longer feed you on flights. I remember when I first came to Canada... *pauses to calculate*... over 29 years ago, they not only fed you, you got real plates and real cutlery. Now you have to buy your drinks and sandwiches and meals. And headsets. And blankets and pillows.
2a. The times sure are a changing in more ways than paying lots of money and getting nothing. It used to be they had at least one steward or stewardess that spoke French to cover the bilingual requirement. Now the French is a tape recording. Also, the stewards or stewardesses used to have their spiel memorized. Now they have a little book they read the stuff out of. I also noticed that they no longer have the button that you used to press if you wanted to summon a flight attendant. Heaven forbid you should bother them off schedule, I guess.
3. Next we come to my favourite, roominess. To paraphrase the Kinks, I'm not the world's most svelte person but neither am I horribly obese and I barely fit in my seat. As I wedged myself in and extended the seat belt as far as it would go, I wondered what really large people do when travelling. My question was partially answered when the man behind me, who was about 1.5 times my size, asked for a seat belt extender. I found myself wondering if truly obese people have to pay for two seats or if they just give up on travelling all together.
Surprisingly though, I was able to stretch my legs out in front of me. I have been in planes where the seating is so close together there's no room to do anything but sit rigidly upright in your seat. That was the other thing I wondered. I'm average height and it's cramped for me. Is first class any roomier? Is that where all the tall and wide people sit? I'll never know.
4. When I was younger and flying, I liked to sit by the window so that I could see all the details of the flight. I liked watching the ground fall away and things getting tinier and tinier until everything looked like a little toy set. I especially liked to sit over the wing so I could watch the flaps and the engines. Now that I'm older, I still love those things, but I seem to have become a bit morbid. On this flight I found myself wondering if there's been any studies done to see if there was any part of the plane that was safer to sit in the event of a crash. Maybe it's because there have been a couple major crashes in the news recently. I suppose it all depends on the circumstances of the crash. I sort of decided that I'd read up on air plane crashes when I got back. Which brings me to point number...
5. The safety card and demonstration... I remember when I first flew, I took the whole thing very seriously. The last time I travelled back in 2004, I don't recall feeling anything one way or the other. This time around, I don't know if it's because air plane crashes have been in the news so much in recent years, but the whole thing just seemed to tickle my funny bone. From the how to buckle your seat belt to the deployment of the oxygen masks - the security card being the culmination.
As I looked at it I couldn't help thinking... everything depicted on the card seemed so surreal. From the lady fastening her seat beat, in a seat with at least six inches of space on either side I might add, to the man calmly unloading the life raft from some mysterious space above the seats. It seemed like it was situated where the over head bins were but that can't be right. Anyway, the man is then seen anchoring the life raft to the wing of the plane, with what I don't know, and then he's last seen cutting the tow line with a nifty gadget.
I'm not trying to trivialize the horror of a crash but I wondered, do people really behave like that in a crisis situation? For some reason I felt like the people should be a little less stoic - a little screaming, a few panels of people clawing their way over their cabin mates, pushing others aside to get out of the exit. I tried to imagine how I would behave if I was ever in that situation, and I just don't know. I'd like to think I'd be honourable and help my fellow passengers but the reality is I'd probably be frozen with fear.
A couple of other things that struck me as odd/funny. Apparently before you open the emergency exit, you're supposed to assess your surroundings. There's a picture of an outside shot of the plane in water. When the water level is below the door, you can open it. When it's not, there's a big red x, implying that you don't. But they don't follow up and tell you what to do with that. Are you supposed to just stay on the plane while it sinks? I don't know. Then there's the picture of another man. In one panel there's no smoke in the cabin so he's calmly strolling along following the floor lights to the exit. In the other, the cabin is full of smoke, but instead of crawling like a sane person, he's doing some sort of dance manoeuvre that only people with really good knees should attempt. It reminded me of the Russian dancing. Finally, there's the man who must have world secrets stashed in his briefcase. There are two panels, one showing him trying to take his briefcase down the rescue slide and another of him trying to sneak it onto a life raft. In both cases he's thwarted by a big red x. I have a feeling if you're in the middle of a crash, your brief case is the last thing you're worried about.
One last thing about the safety. They always tell you your life jacket is stowed under your seat. Yeah, I so have enough room to reach under my seat. Also, apparently your seat cushion becomes a flotation device. I had no idea. Presumably for those of us who can't reach under our seats.
Go here if you want some amusement.
EDIT: I also noticed that while they still have the vomit bag, they don't actually tell you to use it.
Now that I've bored you with the ramblings of my brain... onto the holiday itself.
It was definitely an eye opener to travel with and be with my mother twenty fours hours a day for a week. It made me realize how either emotionally or mentally broken she really is. It was like travelling with an adult sized five year old. If I didn't know better, I'd say she'd never travelled a day in her life. She seemed incapable of looking for the directional signs. Questions ranged from where do we check in even though there was a huge check in here sign clearly marked to where do we find our gate even though again, there were huge signs pointing the way. Also, I'm beginning to think her faulty memory is being caused by something other than the onset of Altimers. In the space of a minute she asked me what our gate was five times and when were going to board multiple times as well. She seemed almost paranoid that the flight was going to leave without us. She kept wanting to board when it wasn't even our turn yet. And she nearly fell apart when the stewardess put her purse in the over head compartment. On the flight back she made sure she'd hidden it under the seat, her own seat mind you, not the one in front of her like you're supposed to, before anyone could take it away and as soon as the all clear came on she got it out and hung on to it. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do about this because when ever I ask her about going to the doctor to go over her memory problems she gets very angry.
The wedding itself was a gala affair. My cousin is 39 like me and seemed determined that because she'd waited so long she was going to have as huge a hoohah as possible. There were candles, and a choir and dancers as a well as the usual flower girl and whatnots. Then at the reception there was a slide show of her and her family and the groom and his family and then presentations by her friends, some of whom sang songs, and her father and the groom's mother who both gave speeches. There was also this stupid thing where if people came up with a poem or a song about the couple that had love in it, she and her new husband would kiss. It ended with them dancing a kind of waltz type thing and then singing a duet together. It was spectacularly over the top and ridiculously long. The day started at 2pm and didn't end until 10pm. When I'd first heard about the wedding, I wondered why anyone would choose July 4th as their wedding day. Having seen what a big fuss she made, I figure she wanted a memorable anniversary date.
Finally, the wedding itself was a production and the pre wedding doubly so. Between her and her family running around for fittings and hair and whatever we barely saw them. And then to top it off, there was the brilliant idea of having pieces of wedding cake for people to take away. So, guess who folded two hundred little boxes, wrapped two hundred pieces of cake, and punched holes in two hundred little tags. My mother and I. And then as if that's not enough, I was the lucky one who sat for four hours wrapping two hundred boxes in ribbon and tying bows. Yeah. That's right. It would have taken three times that amount of time if I hadn't got us going in a make shift assembly line.
All I can say is, my cousin had better stay married for a hundred years after all that hassle.
EDIT: Also, now I want to watch the air plane movies again :)
All right! Enough foolishness! On to the....
1. Oh my gosh! The prices! It was $1456 for the two of us to fly 3350 kilometres. Silly me, I thought it'd be a lot cheaper flying locally. I guess I can't complain about the cost of flying internationally any more.
2. These days it seems the price of the ticket buys you the convenience of not having to take a week or months to get to where you're going and very little else. They no longer feed you on flights. I remember when I first came to Canada... *pauses to calculate*... over 29 years ago, they not only fed you, you got real plates and real cutlery. Now you have to buy your drinks and sandwiches and meals. And headsets. And blankets and pillows.
2a. The times sure are a changing in more ways than paying lots of money and getting nothing. It used to be they had at least one steward or stewardess that spoke French to cover the bilingual requirement. Now the French is a tape recording. Also, the stewards or stewardesses used to have their spiel memorized. Now they have a little book they read the stuff out of. I also noticed that they no longer have the button that you used to press if you wanted to summon a flight attendant. Heaven forbid you should bother them off schedule, I guess.
3. Next we come to my favourite, roominess. To paraphrase the Kinks, I'm not the world's most svelte person but neither am I horribly obese and I barely fit in my seat. As I wedged myself in and extended the seat belt as far as it would go, I wondered what really large people do when travelling. My question was partially answered when the man behind me, who was about 1.5 times my size, asked for a seat belt extender. I found myself wondering if truly obese people have to pay for two seats or if they just give up on travelling all together.
Surprisingly though, I was able to stretch my legs out in front of me. I have been in planes where the seating is so close together there's no room to do anything but sit rigidly upright in your seat. That was the other thing I wondered. I'm average height and it's cramped for me. Is first class any roomier? Is that where all the tall and wide people sit? I'll never know.
4. When I was younger and flying, I liked to sit by the window so that I could see all the details of the flight. I liked watching the ground fall away and things getting tinier and tinier until everything looked like a little toy set. I especially liked to sit over the wing so I could watch the flaps and the engines. Now that I'm older, I still love those things, but I seem to have become a bit morbid. On this flight I found myself wondering if there's been any studies done to see if there was any part of the plane that was safer to sit in the event of a crash. Maybe it's because there have been a couple major crashes in the news recently. I suppose it all depends on the circumstances of the crash. I sort of decided that I'd read up on air plane crashes when I got back. Which brings me to point number...
5. The safety card and demonstration... I remember when I first flew, I took the whole thing very seriously. The last time I travelled back in 2004, I don't recall feeling anything one way or the other. This time around, I don't know if it's because air plane crashes have been in the news so much in recent years, but the whole thing just seemed to tickle my funny bone. From the how to buckle your seat belt to the deployment of the oxygen masks - the security card being the culmination.
As I looked at it I couldn't help thinking... everything depicted on the card seemed so surreal. From the lady fastening her seat beat, in a seat with at least six inches of space on either side I might add, to the man calmly unloading the life raft from some mysterious space above the seats. It seemed like it was situated where the over head bins were but that can't be right. Anyway, the man is then seen anchoring the life raft to the wing of the plane, with what I don't know, and then he's last seen cutting the tow line with a nifty gadget.
I'm not trying to trivialize the horror of a crash but I wondered, do people really behave like that in a crisis situation? For some reason I felt like the people should be a little less stoic - a little screaming, a few panels of people clawing their way over their cabin mates, pushing others aside to get out of the exit. I tried to imagine how I would behave if I was ever in that situation, and I just don't know. I'd like to think I'd be honourable and help my fellow passengers but the reality is I'd probably be frozen with fear.
A couple of other things that struck me as odd/funny. Apparently before you open the emergency exit, you're supposed to assess your surroundings. There's a picture of an outside shot of the plane in water. When the water level is below the door, you can open it. When it's not, there's a big red x, implying that you don't. But they don't follow up and tell you what to do with that. Are you supposed to just stay on the plane while it sinks? I don't know. Then there's the picture of another man. In one panel there's no smoke in the cabin so he's calmly strolling along following the floor lights to the exit. In the other, the cabin is full of smoke, but instead of crawling like a sane person, he's doing some sort of dance manoeuvre that only people with really good knees should attempt. It reminded me of the Russian dancing. Finally, there's the man who must have world secrets stashed in his briefcase. There are two panels, one showing him trying to take his briefcase down the rescue slide and another of him trying to sneak it onto a life raft. In both cases he's thwarted by a big red x. I have a feeling if you're in the middle of a crash, your brief case is the last thing you're worried about.
One last thing about the safety. They always tell you your life jacket is stowed under your seat. Yeah, I so have enough room to reach under my seat. Also, apparently your seat cushion becomes a flotation device. I had no idea. Presumably for those of us who can't reach under our seats.
Go here if you want some amusement.
EDIT: I also noticed that while they still have the vomit bag, they don't actually tell you to use it.
Now that I've bored you with the ramblings of my brain... onto the holiday itself.
It was definitely an eye opener to travel with and be with my mother twenty fours hours a day for a week. It made me realize how either emotionally or mentally broken she really is. It was like travelling with an adult sized five year old. If I didn't know better, I'd say she'd never travelled a day in her life. She seemed incapable of looking for the directional signs. Questions ranged from where do we check in even though there was a huge check in here sign clearly marked to where do we find our gate even though again, there were huge signs pointing the way. Also, I'm beginning to think her faulty memory is being caused by something other than the onset of Altimers. In the space of a minute she asked me what our gate was five times and when were going to board multiple times as well. She seemed almost paranoid that the flight was going to leave without us. She kept wanting to board when it wasn't even our turn yet. And she nearly fell apart when the stewardess put her purse in the over head compartment. On the flight back she made sure she'd hidden it under the seat, her own seat mind you, not the one in front of her like you're supposed to, before anyone could take it away and as soon as the all clear came on she got it out and hung on to it. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do about this because when ever I ask her about going to the doctor to go over her memory problems she gets very angry.
The wedding itself was a gala affair. My cousin is 39 like me and seemed determined that because she'd waited so long she was going to have as huge a hoohah as possible. There were candles, and a choir and dancers as a well as the usual flower girl and whatnots. Then at the reception there was a slide show of her and her family and the groom and his family and then presentations by her friends, some of whom sang songs, and her father and the groom's mother who both gave speeches. There was also this stupid thing where if people came up with a poem or a song about the couple that had love in it, she and her new husband would kiss. It ended with them dancing a kind of waltz type thing and then singing a duet together. It was spectacularly over the top and ridiculously long. The day started at 2pm and didn't end until 10pm. When I'd first heard about the wedding, I wondered why anyone would choose July 4th as their wedding day. Having seen what a big fuss she made, I figure she wanted a memorable anniversary date.
Finally, the wedding itself was a production and the pre wedding doubly so. Between her and her family running around for fittings and hair and whatever we barely saw them. And then to top it off, there was the brilliant idea of having pieces of wedding cake for people to take away. So, guess who folded two hundred little boxes, wrapped two hundred pieces of cake, and punched holes in two hundred little tags. My mother and I. And then as if that's not enough, I was the lucky one who sat for four hours wrapping two hundred boxes in ribbon and tying bows. Yeah. That's right. It would have taken three times that amount of time if I hadn't got us going in a make shift assembly line.
All I can say is, my cousin had better stay married for a hundred years after all that hassle.
EDIT: Also, now I want to watch the air plane movies again :)
