Thank you Ralph Fiennes …

First of all, on behalf of all of us men who have to fly for work (either twice a year or twice a week), thank you Ralph Fiennes for boning your flight attendant on flight QF123 Darwin (DRW) to Mumbai (BOM). After all that’s been written-up in the papers in the past few days I can only imagine that the incident has been noted by all the major airlines’ HR departments and then forwarded to all their cabin staff and also attached would be each airline’s relevant guidelines on the matter.

This is bad because it’s just gotten THAT much harder to pick-up a flight attendant.

I can only imagine now:

Me: *smiles* Thank you very much.
Hot Flight Attendant: Mr. Tanone, that is inappropriate behavior. I will have to ask you to stop smiling at me.
Me: …

Yeeesh.

You’re a freakin’ movie start for crying out loud. Did you have to pick a flight attendant and create an incident like this?! Do you realize just how much harder you’ve made life for all of us regular guys? -sigh- Furthermore, what were you thinking of? A QF flight attendant? I’d have more respect if it had been Virgin Blue. Or any of the other airlines known for their flight attendants.

Ah, whatever. In the end, you’ve made life hard for us. Thank you.

(BTW- I noted that in the articles the “mile-high club” has now become the “five mile high club”. Granted the latter is more accurate, but I’ve always thought it’s the “mile-high club” and not the “five mile high club”.)

My Weekend: Car vs. Computer

You walk into the office on a Monday morning, your spirit is restless, wishing to be elsewhere, your brain is telling you that you’ve got a lot of crap to finish-up, and on top of all that your body’s still asleep. You just barely made it into the office. From the corner of one eye you notice a colleague walking by and she greets you. You smile at her and she says, “How’s your weekend?”

Compare the following two answers:

“Man. I wasted my weekend. My car broke down so I spent just about the entire day on Saturday working on it, fixing it up. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through. I was stuck under my car the whole time while the sun was out and I knew you guys were all out playing tennis. Then I got up Sunday and had to make sure the car’s okay so I finished that up and did some errands. You?”

“Man. I wasted my weekend. My computer crashed big time so I spent just about the entire day on Saturday working on it, fixing it up. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through. I was stuck in my room the whole time while the sun was out and I knew you guys were all out playing tennis. Then I got up Sunday and had to make sure the computer’s okay so I finished that up and did some errands. You?”

For some reason, spending a weekend fixing your broken car makes you look like a hands-on, DIY type of guy. Spending your weekend fixing your computer, however, makes you look like you’ve got no life.

And yet, they are both essential for day to day living, especially if, like me, you make a living working with computers.

Hope your weekend didn’t make you look like a big nerd.

TV sucks

There I was, enjoying a hot bowl of teo-chew porridge with a friend at some eatery at Jalan Kayu in the middle of nowhere in Singapore during my layover on the way home from Jakarta this past Sunday when my attention was diverted to the TV hanging from the ceiling. It was set to a channel that was showing the second Charlie’s Angels movie.

As we continued our conversation I realized my visual attention was now diverted not just between my friend and my food but also to the TV. It was then that I noticed a family sitting one table over, all four (or maybe five) enjoying a bowl of porridge, and all but one of them were staring at the TV.

It was one of the saddest sights I had ever seen. Here was a family dining out and yet there was absolute silence from their table save for slurping noises punctuated by the sound of spoons scraping against bowls every now and then. There was no conversation, no exchange of stories, experiences, jokes (even bad ones). Nothing.

The image is now burned in my head, of a TV hanging from the ceiling, sucking out the life and soul of that one family.

And sometimes I wonder if perhaps I don’t own a TV partly because of this hatred I have of it.

Or is it fear?