Tag Archive for 'australia'

Mile High Club

Published
by
Brendon J. Wilson
on April 22, 2004
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

The other day, somewhere between Silicon Valley and Sin City, I was thinking about the paradox of the failing airline industry. How is it possible that the lynchpin of international business is constantly on the verge of financial collapse? I think the airline industry needs to take drastic action, and leverage some of the unique assets of its industry to pull itself out of its financial nosedive.

For example: movie theaters have long taken advantage of its captive audience. And they’ve only got you for two hours! Imagine what you could do with a captive audience for a trans-Pacific flight to Australia? I’m thinking four hours of in-flight ads, and people who are only too willing to watch them because they’re the only entertainment available. And what about all that free advertising space? I’m envisioning print ads on the overhead luggage compartments, the backs of seats, tray tables (both sides), the floor, and the ceiling.

And I hate advertising - how is it that people in the airline industry haven’t figured this out?

But why stop there? Branson announced plans to add beds and cabins to Virgin airlines flights - I say he didn’t go far enough. Hey, if you’re flying over international waters, why not use the absence of legal jurisdiction to your advantage? Where are the sky call-girls? Where are the in-air monkey knife fights? And hasn’t military aviation refueling technology progressed to the point that a Columbian provisioning plane could supply international flights with all the cocaine they could inhale prior to landing?

Honestly, someone just isn’t trying.

Swimming With Dolphins

Published
by
Brendon J. Wilson
on March 22, 2002
in Personal
. 0 Comments

Friends who see my site usually ask me “Is that picture on your site you as a kid?”, or comment “Gee, you were cute then…what happened?”. Hmph. Yes, the kid is me, and no, nothing happened (except for being bounced off the crossbeams by my father as a child). But like all pictures, there’s a story behind it.

After the naked dash to the ocean...When I was four, my dad got homesick for Australia, where he was born and raised. We decided to return to Australia for an extended visit, “we” being my parents, because let’s face it, I didn’t really have much of a say in the matter. We moved into a notorious region around Sydney called Bondi Junction for six months, and later spent another half year in Fongaray (near Whangarei) in New Zealand. One day we went to visit my grandparents and go for a day at the beach.

As luck would have it the weather was dark, overcast, and the skies were threatening to rain at any moment. Ominous black waves were rolling into the beach, like perfectly cast cylinders of smoked glass. Intermittently, a dark shape shot down an incoming wave, flashing down the tube before the wave collapsed into the shallower water.

“What’s that in the waves?”, I asked.

“Looks like the dolphins are having some fun surfing the waves,” my father replied.

Now, I was only four, and I didn’t know a lot of stuff (a condition I still suffer, some might argue), but if there was one thing I knew about dolphins is that they were friendly. They liked to play. I liked to play too. Well, that settled it then.

I stripped off all my clothes and headed for the waves like a shot before my parents, preoccupied with the clouds and grown-up conversation, knew what I was doing. And I would have made it, if it weren’t for my father sweeping me up in his arms just as I reached the water’s edge, and wrapping me in his sweater.

And, of course, took a picture.