Getting your safety message heard

While on my way to a ski resort on a chartered flight from a popular ski holiday operator in the U.K., I was surprised to find that the in-flight safety message has been given a much needed face-lift.

First of all, the message was in the form of a short video clip that was shown on screens in front of the passengers. The exits were still indicated live by the air stewards but the main bulk of the message was pre-recorded. The images and sound were clear so it was possible to see and hear what passengers are required to know.

Secondly, the message was delivered by a little girl dressed in air stewardess uniform. The rest of the cast were all from a similar age group, dressed up as adults doing silly things on aircrafts. The words were the same as that you would hear from an adult but it was far more effective to have this wee girl tell us how to be safe on an aircraft. Quite a few ladies went 'awwww' when they saw the sweet little girl and their attention was immediately captured. Some of the other passengers giggled at every line as there is some comedic value in the situation, I guess. I was well amused and watched on to satisfy pure curiosity.

It was pleasant to see that the tour operator had taken the pains to try to draw attention to safety procedures in an imaginative manner. More often than not people fall asleep or are engrossed in whatever in-flight entertainment they had furnished themselves with and could not care less about the safety message.

Mole People

Londoners depend on the tube for everything. We get to work on the tube, go shopping on the tube, meet up with friends anywhere in the city with the tube, go home on the tube, go everywhere on the tube. It helps you avoid the traffic jam up above, is quicker than taking the bus as most routes are more direct, and is way cheaper than taking a taxi. Being underground and (mostly) indoors also means you are shielded from the elements.

The down-side is that most Londoners do not have any sense of where everything actually is, as demonstrated when people got completely lost after the terrorist attacks which incapacitated the tube service a few years back. People were forced to go over-ground and realised that they didn't know how close/far locations were relative to each other, or which way to go to get home. They didn't know enough landmarks with which to guide them.

London is a beautiful city. Finding the time to go over-ground, at least occasionally, is well worth the trouble.

Size matters

We are getting fatter. We hear this on the news all the time. The government has launched advertising campaigns and schemes to encourage healthy living. This may help in the future but the reality now is that we are dealing with a more corpulent population and one of the areas of life where this is obvious is on public transport.

Don't get me wrong; I don't mean that bigger people have a tendency to take public transport or that taking public transport makes you fat. Seats on public transportation are clearly marked out. When you purchase a ticket you are effectively hiring a seat, a demarcated space. Thus, you are expected to fit into said seat. Why else would you draw a boundary around a space? People are getting bigger, bums are more voluminous and hence the carefully marked out seats are no longer adequately sized to accomodate the average backside. Elbows are another problem; with increased body width there is also a requirement for increased elbow room.

At the other end of the scales, there is much talk about the size-zero phenomenon; complaints that the fashion industry is encouraging unhealthy body image by using images of very thin models to promote their products and making clothing sizes unreasonable. By that logic, if the size of seats on public transport were anything to go by, particularly those on some aeroplanes, operators of these services probably want to encourage a very similar body image. Passengers do complain about this. These services exist as there is a demand for them. If you feel strongly about it, vote with your feet (and credit card)- action speaks louder than words.

New Year, New Blog

People in big cities are too busy to notice the other people around them. Guilty as charged.

I spend on average three hours a day on public transport and very rarely notice what happens around me during this time. On the occasions when I did look up from my book or newspaper and saw a pregnant lady or older person, someone who was physically less able to stand, on their feet rather than sitting I have felt guilty and chastised myself for not checking the passengers that have stepped into the tube carriage at the last stop. I never sit in the priority seats for this reason. People seldom ask for a seat even if they legitimately could because to cause a fuss over themselves was just unthinkable.

I cannot think of an occasion when I have regretted being attentive to what goes on around me. One such occasion provided the name for this blog.

My New Year's resolution was to take more of an interest in what happens on my daily travels and to record this in a blog. Keeping records provides an incentive to keep looking. Of course the blog needed a name and one event, a few years back, while on a flight home with my sister, gave me the name. She had insisted on a window seat by the wings at check-in and been staring out of the window for a while when I asked her what she was looking at. At the time my clever little sister was learning to design and build aeroplanes, and she had been looking at the flaps on the wings. She took the opportunity to give me a crash course on why aeroplanes can fly- revisions for the then upcoming January exams, I guess- and described her vision of a simplified aeroplane fuselage. The image stuck and is all I can think of every time I take a plane.