So I’m back. No, not from Sydney. That happened ages ago (yes, my last entry was pre-Sydney). And just in case anyone read that entry right before reading this one : Predictably, I failed in my attempt to drag home a Crown-y clutching, tanned, fit Aussie bloke away from the drinks-after-work-start-at-3pm land that is Australia. Heck, if I was Australian, you’d have to point an AK-47 at my nether regions to make me leave that island. Like, seriously. The blokes are fit & run around the CBD in sharp suits, the Sheilas are tanned & dressed to the nines & EVERYONE wakes up at 5am so they can squeeze in a morning run or swim in the ice-cold community pool before they head to work. That’s as close to a Hollywood or Brazil lifestyle as it gets on this side of the globe.
But today is not about Sydney (Lord knows I can’t shut my yapper about it for like, ever). It’s about me. Being back on the blog (hehe… terror or not, my pun?). And writing.
I don’t know if it’s the lack of practice at writing, or the fact that I’m neither bewildered nor angry nor heartbroken, that’s giving me a severe case of writer’s block (ooh, that could have been a pun, too). There has been many a time I thought of adding an entry to this blog, but then I think : Hmmmm, what to write, ah?
Which leads me to the next topic. I’m a freaking disappointment! I guess I’ve always somewhat fancied myself a writer (& sometimes, in my intensely freaky moments, I have caught myself just plain fancying myself). My dream was to write, write, write. I have even on numerous occasions self-volunteered my free-lance writing services to some friends, on the (mental) pre-text of "building my writing portfolio" to use as a resume for a full-on writing job. But now, I genuinely don’t have anything to write about. Or have anything funny to say in relation to my lack of anything to write about. Tsk tsk. Disappointus maximus.
Anyway, I’m currently reading "Hotel Babylon". For those of you who haven’t read it, it’s basically a simulated journal entry of a guy who gives you a play-by-play of the typical things that happen in a typical day at a luxury London hotel (where he mans the front desk). The hotel & narrator are fictitious objects, but the incidents that are recounted are based on true events. So the book pretty much spills the beans on the trade secrets of how luxury hotels are run, what makes the hotel staff tick ($$ & big tippers. No wonder I’m always insignificant at a hotel), what actually happens behind the scenes & the tricks used by the hotel staff.
I must say some of the tricks & white lies are appalling (e.g. "I’m sorry, sir, but there seems to be a problem with the plumbing in the room we’ve booked you in. So if you don’t mind heading over to the cafe to enjoy the complimentary breakfast & champagne while we attend to the problem. I’m terribly sorry" actually means "The guy who’s currently in the room we booked you in is still busy shagging a prostitute, & even though we know it’s way past check-out time, we’re gonna let him stay on a wee bit longer because we also know that it means we will each be getting $100 tip for being so accommodating to his baser needs. Just so you won’t shout at us, please do have the FOC breakfast that we normally charge our guests $35, but in fact only costs $2 to prepare. And we’ll throw in a free champagne, the cost of which is already worked into your room bill, but will not be reflected separately so you won’t know that you’re actually being charged for it. If, however, you had taken the initiative to tip us just as well as that gentleman has, you would be in that room right now instead of him & his prostitue. But you’re too tight to tip. Therefore, you can just cool your heels in the cafe."). Riveting stuff, don’t you think? Scandal always makes for good reading.
So reading this book during all those flights I’ve been taking makes me think about the secrets the airline people have in running their business. One thing in particular that irks me is the temperature of the cabin. Why do they set it at the level that only polar bears & penguins would appreciate? Last I checked, I don’t see polar bears or penguins taking the plane (which would be cool, really, when you think about it. Because it’d be the only time that they could actually be in the same place to fraternise. Apart from, well, the zoo of course). And in the 24 times I’ve asked for the blanket (I’ve been flying 2x weekly for the past 3 months), I have only EVER been given a blanket on one occasion. ONE! And the air-hostess will always give me the standard answer : I’m sorry, we’ve run out of blankets. But I’ve informed the captain to turn the temperature up, & he has. So you should be ok now. Without fail, the kebaya-clad ladies would give me this line. Smells like a trained one-liner to me.
What are my other pet peeves about flying local flights? The food! MAS airplane food was the only one I genuinely looked forward to eating. But recently, not only has the quality of food gone down, they have also decided to only offer the same food time & again. And only local food is served now. Really bad local food. Not to mention the presentation in "environmentally friendly, biodegradable, recycled sugar cane fibre" boxes. I mean, it’s not enough that you give me plastic cutlery that breaks before I can even get them out of the hygiene-packed plastic (damn you aeroplane-travelling terrorists), you have now taken away my ceramic-then-downgraded-to-plastic plates to serve me food in boxes. Come on! That’s even worse than eating in at KFC! Plus, biodegradable merely means the boxes disintegrate faster than normal material. Which may mean that instead of taking 100 years to break down into organic matter, the boxes will stay in the landfill a "mere" 10 years before disintegrating. Environmentally friendly indeed, especially if you have 1,000 boxes in a flight, 60 flights a day, 7 days a week. You do the math for the landfill.
I actually wrote to the airline comments & feedback section on their website once, regarding some missing miles or something similar. They responded to me via email & phone the next morning. Fantastic! So I thought I’d write to them again, asking about the blanket standard reply, the lack of choice in food, the environmental friendly factor of the boxes…. naively thinking they would care about customer feedback. 2 weeks have passed, with no word from them. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I would have thought this note warrants a more immediate response than my missing miles enquiry, since this enquiry touches on rather big topics. But I guess not. Maybe they’re thinking exactly what I think when dealing with annoying issues at work that I just don’t know what to do with : if I keep ignoring it, maybe it’ll go away. Ah well, at least I tried.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 