Saturday, May 19, 2007

Granny on Tour - En Route to Washington DC

En route to Washington DC

The Singapore part of the tour has done its dash and I’m now in Germany. The Lufthansa Lounge in Frankfurt Airport to be precise. This is not the comfy leather of Changi but all modern brushed stainless steel and you have to pay for your WiFi internat access. But in truth I’ve been in Germany for the last fourteen hours. I arrived in Singapore on SQ but, because they don’t fly to Washington direct and I refuse to change planes in New York, I left the Singapore girls and threw my lot in with Lufthansa. I’ve swapped a plane load of Miss World look-alikes for a bunch of blokes in liederhosen and buxom middle aged women with their blond hair plaited across the tops of their heads like handles in case you want to pick them up. The earphones are Sennheiser (they weren’t going to be Sony were they?) and the food is only passable. We haven’t had wurst and cabbage (although they might have in row 60) but the cuisine of Singapore Airlines is but a memory of last week. However counterbalancing all this is the seat.

I have just spent twelve hours in the most comfy airline seat my bum has ever had the pleasure to come across. A marvel of Germanic engineering that must have more motors in it than you could wave a stick at. Although I was somewhere over India before I had got through the instruction manual and understood its contents the effort was well worth it. If the movies or my book had been no good I could have wasted an hour or two just putting this marvellous chaise through its paces. However the object of the exercise was sleep and this Kraut number has yet to be bettered in my air travelling experience.

There is however a downside. I find my self in Frankfurt Airport all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 0550 in the morning and everything is in German. Even the cornflakes are in German. I have no idea how I can fill the next four hours before I can find another wonderful motorised seat to take me to George Dubbya Land. A shower and shave? Fifteen minutes. Twiddle thumbs? Two. Buy a new book as the current one will get me to about Portugal and no further? They’re all German, remember, and I doubt they’ll sell any of Jeremy Clarkson’s offerings here after what he wrote about in car GPS navigation systems in Kraut cars and their propensity only to take you to Poland. Perhaps I could learn German in four hours. Thumb twiddling is still topping the list.

What of Singapore then after I gave it a full week? Capt. A asked earlier in the week if I was missing the Land of the Long White Fuel Tax Hike. And I am. I see David Bain is out of clink and I don’t care. I saw a picture of Sue Bradford being hugged by someone (it didn’t look like Beelzebub) in Parliament after her odious legislation got passed. And then I read of forum members at the Boat Show. New Zealand is OK. Having taken a few days to get into Singapore and all its affluence I now know why I left and equally know it was the right thing to do. Singapore is not quite right. It has values that are very good for an existence but not really very good for a life. The flashy superficial is done supremely well but the core business of leading a worthwhile life are not well done. I harp on about New Zealand’s paucity of values in family and public life but Singapore fares not much better. Family values are way in front of ours but their conduct of public life is a different form of wrong. It is pragmatic which I like, it has not much to do with fairness which also sits well with me but it cuts very odd corners when you least expect it.

I went to a work meeting yesterday morning in a corner of my old field. It was the same as it was when I left except they were using new flash kit we won’t see in NZ for years if ever. Underlying all this, however, they were making the same errors of judgement that had me tearing my hair out twelve years ago and led me to reach the conclusion that the only solution was to leave as I couldn’t change things. I was right. The juniors when I left are now the seniors and are teaching the same flawed attitudes to the new juniors who were still throwing their breakfast around the room when I was getting on my bike. At least they gave me a round of applause as I walked into the meeting – felt a bit embarrassed by that before the warm glow of pleasure set in. No, New Zealand for me and I’ll keep Singapore as a repository of fond memories, the best friends I have and a cheap external hard disks.

Hope George has the calendars sorted in Washington as arriving in a German plane I would not want them to think it was 1942 and send out a welcoming committee of F-16s. Then it’s the Smithsonian, gastroenterology and a Carolina Classic 28.

Off to twiddle me thumbs – think I’ll try counter clockwise for a few minutes.

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