0812012130 One day while riding a Vespa in Hong Kong.

Today while riding my Vespa scooter along one of Hong Kong’s most treacherous industrial arterial roads, I noticed a truck in front of me with an interesting load. It looked expensive. It looked like one of those huge missiles that the former Soviet Union liked to bring out by the hundreds and parade through Red Square in Moscow on their version of National Day – except this one was shorter, as if they were only transporting the dangerous business end. It was wrapped in its own custom made green thermal blanket and then secured with a snug fitting cargo net. When I pulled up closer I could see that it was an engine for a Boeing 747 that probably belonged to Qantas. There was a documentary for the A380 Airbus that said that each of the Rolls Royce engines cost more than their equivalent weight in gold. I wondered what the insurance was for this thing, it was just hoiked on the back of a truck and was now the responsibility of a Chinese truck driver who was being paid the very minimum that they could and still have him diligently arrive for work with a smile each morning. There were no guards, no escort, nothing.

Aeroplanes are a frightfully expensive commodity in our modern society. They take an enormous amount of land to land and they take up just as much to take off. The area of the Hong Kong airport is bigger than the CBD of Hong Kong or it could cover the Kowloon Peninsula. The land on which the old Tia Tak airport in Hong Kong used to occupy has not been fully developed even after ten years of record population growth. I can see a day in the not too far future when air travel will be a dreadful inconvenience. The security measures that we must endure now are already bordering on absurd but soon we will look back at a time when it was so easy to board a plane.

One day all travelers will have to arrive five hours before the departure time in order to undergo the rigorous security procedures. Travelers will have to change into disposable airline-issued flight overalls. One size fits all. The luxury of wearing the clothes of your own choice will be done away with because some idiot will try to sneak onto a plane wearing a jumper made from nitrocellulose. All passengers will have to wait in a quarantine until they have a bowel movement because some criminal will try to swallow something dangerous in order to use it later – despite the obvious social faux pas and embarrassing risk of disease. All baggage will go on separate aeroplanes – having baggage and people on the same plane will be too risky – the cargo planes will be radio controlled pilotless airliners. The risk of your baggage not being at the same airport, or even the same county, will increase in proportion to the distance that you travel. There will be no meals, not even drinks, and no movies during a flight. There will be no need. Passengers will be sedated via an intravenous drip so that everyone will be unconscious. The airlines will save a bundle on all that service that passengers insist on while hurtling along at some inhuman speed at a height where nothing that lives chooses to go. After a few hours of enforced unconsciousness, passengers will arrive fresh and rested as if they have just had their appendix removed – now there’s an idea – seeing as they will be anesthetised for a few hours, why not take the opportunity to have that rhinoplasty done.

This is the sort of thing that goes through my mind while riding my Vespa instead of paying attention to the traffic.

School.

I had a typical wonderful day at the Chinese Catholic Girls School at which I work. First up, three lessons with delightful first year students where the lesson plan called for the teaching and testing of just two words – sunny and raining. Then my favourite subject – lunch – one of the wonderful students bought me some che faan. I know that there is a saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch but I had one today. Then, as if I had planned it to happen this way, students spontaneously arrived to practice their performance song to be ready for Christmas. They have an amazing music program at Our Lady’s Primary School and it is to this music program that I attribute the students ability to be able to sing Away in a Manger after hearing the melody once. Rhythm, rhyme and meter all assimilated in one pass. It was as if they had read the notice board and decided to learn the Christmas song 3 months in advance. Then something occurred that I always wanted to happen – one of the teachers was not expecting me for the “Speaking English” class in the afternoon and after a brief exchange of “I can do the lesson if you like” and “Oh no it’s OK I have a plan” and “I can help with if you like” and other such niceties I went and had a extra bonus little-lunch break.

On the way home I was reminded again of trucks with expensive loads when I saw that a truck had lost its load of Christmas decorations and there were hundreds of silver and gold baubles lining the road.

References:
Tent 900 engine is 14190 lbs. 14 190 lb, lbs = 227 040 ounces = about USD$170M
http://www.rolls-royce.com/civil_aerospace/downloads/airlines/trent_900.pdf
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/a380/
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/a380/