Date October 10, 2006
Altitude: 40,000 feet
Location: Above Dubbo, New South Wales, on the Melbourne to Sunshine Coast route that I know so well
Subject: 5 reasons to be depressed
- The number of celebrity magazines open around me.
- Reading The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan on the North Korean nuclear test: “The potential consequences are ominous: a new arms race in Asia; new proliferation of nuclear weapons to other rogue and outlaw states in the Middle East; the proliferation of nuclear weapons to terrorists; Australia coming within range of North Korean nuclear weapons; destabilisation with unknowable fallout throughout North Asia; and, of course, the real possibility of war.”
- The vile aroma of packet soup wafting from the food trolley parked next to me. (“Home-style gourmet soup according to the “a la cart” Virgin menu”)
- The child and mother two rows in front watching an action movie on a portable console, volume on high. No one else in the world exists.*
- That I’m starting to sound like a grumpy old woman.
* Should aeroplane/baggage carousel etiquette/commonsense be taught in schools? 1. Keep the volume down; there’s nothing worse than secondhand music wafting from a headset; 2. Unless you’re over 80 or crippled, you should be able to manage to get out of your window, centre or aisle seat without leaning so heavily on the seat in front of you that it shifts inches; 3. At a baggage carousel, stand back. Crowding up to the edge of the carousel – with every one of your extended family who has come to meet you – is dumb. And rude. Stand back, and everyone will be able to see when their bag is coming. And help … not one man, woman or teenager stepped forward to help an older woman struggling to lift her case on the other side of the carousel today.
