To the woman in 5D

To the woman who was sitting in 5D on last night's much-delayed flight from Chicago O'Hare to Springfield IL:

I remember when no cell phone / electronic device use was allowed at all while on the airplane, whether in the air or on the tarmac.

Now, it seems as if the airlines bend over backwards to accommodate customers who insist on being connected at all times, who can't survive without their own music, who can't stand the thought of having quiet time to themselves, etc.

BUT there are specific times when use of such devices are utterly prohibited. Not just to show you who's boss, but for our own safety. Sure, the legendary 1995 incident of a laptop suspected of interfering with a 747's auto-pilot couldn't be replicated, but still... all electronic devices emit radio waves that potentially can interfere with the navigation equipment on board a plane... I'd rather be safe than sorry on this one: wouldn't you?

So when it's time to switch off your electronic devices before takeoff, it's not about the airlines inconveniencing you, it's about the SAFETY of everyone on board!

... and yet there you were, continuing to SMS/email on your BlackBerry even after the plane door had closed, and it was obvious you KNEW you were not supposed to be using the phone because you hid it under your arm as the stewardess made her rounds checking for safety compliance! And when your concerned neighbor finally pointed out that you should have the phone off you mumbled something and put the phone away WITHOUT TURNING IT OFF! How do I know this? Because IT STARTED RINGING... AND YOU ANSWERED THE BLOODY THING AS WE WERE TAXIING FOR TAKEOFF!! WHAT. THE. EFF!! I wouldn't be surprised if the phone was on the whole entire flight.

I was torn between confronting you directly and siccing the stewardess on you. In the end I took the let-it-all-boil-inside path, trusting that the odds were in our favor and that your selfish assininity wouldn't lead to 'complications'. Thankfully we all arrived in one piece, incident-free.

However, I humbly ask that in the future you inform me, somehow, whenever you know of when you'll be making other plane trips somewhere, anywhere... because as far as possible I'll plan my own trips around yours so that I have to share neither plane nor sky with you, ever again.

Like I said before, I'd rather be safe than sorry.

... not that you'd relate to that in any way ...

Yours sincerely,

*lynne naranek*

Images from MS Office clip art

Plane vs bus/train/other options

On Wednesday I indicated that there was more to the cost of air travel than just the ticket. This was prompted in part by a blog post I read recently: in Why I cancelled a subscription to Lonely Planet Magazine blogger Natalie was disappointed that said magazine seemed to overwhelmingly support air travel to the point that alternative modes of travel were rarely, if ever, addressed, and therefore wasn't helping in reducing the negative environmental impact of travel.


I like her principled stand, especially considering the UK has connections to the mainland other than by air. I've yet to take the chunnel, opened in 1994, but thanks to is existence, one could go from London to Paris in as little as 2h 15m. The Man in Seat Sixty-One even offers ferry/train suggestions for folks in the UK who want to make their way to Europe but without having to go via London or by air. I also have a vague recollection of perhaps having crossed the channel by ferry, way back when.

Of course, if your destination is further away, then you need to make a decision about how much time you want to spend traveling there and back, versus time you'd be able to spend in the destination itself. This is one of the reasons it's highly unlikely for Kosh to be able to take a trip back to Malaysia with me anytime in the next 5 years or so: he can get one week off at a time, so when you factor in the 4 days total for to/fro travel, that's a measly 3 days he'd get to spend getting used to the humidity and time change, only to have to get right back into that plane. Ugh!

Where am i going with this?

If you recall, my plans this time around include Singapore. An island just south of the tip of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore is easily gotten to by train or bus as well as by air from Kuala Lumpur. I won't be a rush to get from KL to Singapore, so long I get there withina reasonable amount of time is fine with me... and yet the non-air options flitted only briefly across my attention:

Bus? I look back to my bus journeys, from the time I lived on the east coast and needed a cheap trip back to KL, with amazement mixed with horror that I actually did numerous trips without accidents. Such buses are notorious for being poorly maintained and driven in an unsafe manner. Sure, I've heard of the premium air-conditioned coaches that do the KL-S'pore journey safely, but I'm still leery of putting my life in the hands of a Malaysian bus driver.

Train? I've done the KL-S'pore by train once, back in the early 90's. Perhaps it's because we'd gotten the cheapest seats, but oh boy it was a terribly uncomfortable journey made bearable only by the company of my other two pals. On one of the directions, I recall we just hung out in the restaurant car, everyone ordering a drink in succession once the other was done with theirs so that we were legitimately at that table, in order to have some level of comfort. I vaguely remember having a much more comfortable trip by train up to Penang, so it's not like that one trip has colored my perception of Malaysian train travel. I don't recall how one passes through customs & immigration when going by train, though, and didn't feel like finding out just yet.

... as such, I succumbed to the lure of the plane. I'm kicking myself a little, but what's done is done. Perhaps next time I'll remember to include Singapore in my travel options: now that I think about it, I have the impression that a round trip flight via S'pore plus a return train journey to KL might be cheaper than my usual itinerary via KUL. We'll see what the online ticketing sites have to say, whenever it is that I start planning my next Malaysia trip!

What about you? Do you consciously try to reduce/minimise the impact of your travels on the environment? ... And what of the blog post that sparked this off: do you think Natalie was right to cancel her subscription in order to express her dissatisfaction, or do you think she should have stayed a subscriber but then actively lobbied LP for a change in their practices?

Drop me a comment, I'd love to hear from you.

Image credits: plane by goa_s; bus and train by hisks.

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No Switzerland for me this year :(

... and it's totally my bad: remember about 2 months ago I said I was reeling in shock at what I was going to have to pay for my planned trip to Malaysia & Switzerland (with a tentative addition of Italy)? Well, I kinda sat on it until last week, and to my horror discovered that while the price for the US->Malaysia and Malaysia->Switzerland flights had risen as feared, the cost for the Switzerland->US leg had shot up to over double -- almost triple! -- what I'd seen two months ago.

As a result, I made the decision to forgo the Swiss leg this time around. This means I won't be seeing my niece until perhaps a year from now. What a bummer. From the pix and vids my bro & sil have made available (see right!), she is growing up FAST: when I first/last saw her about a year ago, she wasn't even crawling yet, and her gums were threatening to start teething. Now she's blabbering in five languages, skips up the stairs, and has her molars coming in. What will she be up to in a year's time??! :(

This also means that I'll be in Malaysia for a little under 3 weeks, in time to catch Rachel perform at the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (if my mother managed to get me tickets!) on April 27th, and to attend a huge St Mary's school reunion that's being held on May 2nd. There will be time for some meet-ups with former work colleagues, schoolmates, drinking buddies, etc, but they need to book me! :D I'll then hop over the causeway to visit for a few days with my fellow St Marian who recently moved to Singapore, before making the long journey back to Springfield in mid-May.

The cost: about USD 2K*.... ~so~ much more reasonable than the 4-6K I was looking at 2 months ago... just ignore the missing European plans, waaaaaaaaah! :( On the bright side: I have TK-217 and PLX2010 to play with / plan for (I'll explain soon!) ... But there's also another cost to consider in relation to all these plane trips... I'll discuss this in my next post: stay tuned!

*NOTE* I'm waiting for the catch, but have yet to find it... one reason it's so cheap (and yes, I cringe at the fact that 2K is "cheap") is that priceline.com found me a one-way that costs less than USD 1100 (the other sites I tried started at over USD 2K!). It was valid for just that one particular day of travel - searches for surrounding dates returned USD 2K prices too. It's a Wednesday departure, dunno if that factors in somehow. But I won't complain! (Until I find out I get no luggage allocation or something, who knows?!)

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