It had to be a coffee cup as I hate tea with a passion. I’m sitting here in a First class seat on flight SQ494 to Dubai on the excellent Boeing 777-300. I spend quite a lot of time on one of these seats. I have to pinch myself when I do as the whole experience is fantastic. We check in as crew so jump all the queues at immigration and security, get given our seat allocation hoping that it will be as close to the front as possible (our seat is confirmed in economy but if space is available in the Business or First Class cabins we get them) where we take our seats only after changing into what someone coined our ‘drinking shirts’. First Class on SQ (the short airline code for Singapore Airlines) is incredible. The seats range from very comfortable to wonderful and the food is excellent. Service as you would expect in First on any carrier is fantastic but the attention to detail is just sublime. Lunch started with a glass or 2 of Dom Perignon 2000 and was rounded off with a selection of cheese served with a glass of 20 year old port followed by Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and a glass of Hennessey XO. It really is the only way to travel.
Anyhow, the reason behind the title here is that it seems whenever I get comfortable with a cup of coffee on a flight we always hit turbulence. My cabin crew friends reading this will know the scenario whereby the meal service is started by the seat belt sign getting turned on. It’s a nightmare but part of life at or around 35,000ft I guess. I’m not complaining about it but it’s funny how the 2 are so interminably linked.
The title also has reference to the fact that on a regular basis I get a realisation of how small we are as a human being and how insignificant what we, individually, see as important is. Flying along at 41,000ft (7.8miles up) the other day we passed a cumulo-nimbus cloud (CB or thunderstorm). Sounds like pretty mundane stuff but this thing went up another 5,000 or 6,000ft above us. This thing was huge but by no means the biggest around. I have seen them reaching up to 60,000ft before. Looking down the side of these things as you pass them by is incredibly belittling particularly when you consider not only the fragility of what I sit in while I pass it but also energy it contains. Huge! That’s just not a big enough word to describe it. Really.
The storm comment can describe all sorts of things in our lives too. I often wonder how much of the so-called financial crisis is media generated. As the situation got worse and worse the media was full of stories of doom and gloom which I think made us all feel worse about it all but also didn’t instil confidence in the investors around the world that do power the planet’s economic heart. It made me feel rubbish about the world but then we were going through tough times ourselves too. I voted with my thumb and used it to change the channel or flick the page to the funnies. Reading the paper today, so much of it is filled with news of Swine Flu. Yes, tragically people have lost their lives to this, but people die of influenza every year. Is the reporting of this down to the fact that this is a not only a new strain but that it is taking column inches away from the financial crisis that is currently with us therefore making the rest of us feel better about ourselves. Is this part of the therapy required to take us out of the doldrums, making us all realise how lucky we are to have health and life? I don’t know. Just a thought
No comments:
Post a Comment