April 2005 Archives

Watching the A380 take off was just incredible. Though I may be a retired [closet] aeroplane spotter, the beasts are still heart-gripping, and seeing her maiden flight streamed live was enough to make me well up just a little. To answer the reporter's question, they'll have the undercarriage down for pretty much the entire flight bar a high-altitude test of the wheel mechanisms; this appears to be a standard that can be seen in video footage going back to the seventies and beyond... aieee!

Now if I could just pick up some tickets to Singapore for late 2006...

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[EDIT] I missed the landing (mentioned in the comments), alas, but for a cause that many people will approve. Yes indeed, today Kim Cattrall put her hand up my shirt.

Okay, so that part's not true, but she could have had I been more opportunistic.

You're lying on the tarmac. If asked why, you'd answer that it was simply because you could; a willingness to do what you feel inclined to do, as and when you feel it. Nor are you held in check by societal convention -- that poisonous thorn in the side of free expression -- and not, as people are quick to assume, because your perception of it is off, but because you don't put so much weight on things that should be considered trivial.

The same poison is what keeps people from singing out loud on the streets when the songs are just fighting to burst forth; when people do, some will assume that they're nuts and look around for faces to share the joke with, some will change colour, embarrassed because they like it and feel that they shouldn't, and some will smile, both inward and without, and perhaps feel envious at being able to enjoy something they've always wanted to do, but as a spectator.

And so you're lying on the tarmac, less an audience, arms and legs splayed in a personal depiction of Calvary, fingers extended, eyes wide. You lie face down because you get a better sense of feeling, the soft skin of your cheek pressed against the scorched surface of the road, your stomach flattened against warm gravel; you face the West for relief, because although it is yet past noon, the sun is high and the glare of her gaze is unbroken by the drifting threads of cloud. For a while, you vacantly lose yourself in the haze of shimmering air, the odd wetness that hugs the ground wherever a horizon is formed between you and anything in the near distance, and muse that any vehicle happening upon you now would take you for dead.

Except that Arizona is vast, and there are places where you can do odd things on public roads without the likelihood of being observed or judged or driven over for days.

And as you lie there, the only thing you really crave is a garden sprinkler.

Thank you to the Vatican for doing the world no favours. Our last ray of hope can only be that Ratzinger is a closet homosexual/sexual health expert/liberal who has, for his whole life, pretended to be otherwise just so that he could become Pope and then come out of the closet in a multicoloured explosion of genuine humanity.

I'm greatly reassured that my understanding of British political party politics isn't quite in the toilet yet; since online questionnaires are utterly infallible and always spot-on correct, it's fair reason that the following example be shared with anyone voting in the upcoming election. Though traditionally a Labour supporter, I suspected that I might end up a Liberal Democrat, and sure enough, did. I feel kind of dirty.

	Labour 4
Conservative -30
	Liberal Democrat 32
UK Independence Party -17
	Green 20

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For