That don’t impress me much


Today I learned that ANA are grounding all their 787 aircraft, because there’s something wrong with the engines. Then I also learned the fairly amazing statistic that a single engine for a jet airliner retails for $20 million. This isn’t such a good piece of information to hold in your head, because all of a sudden it flattens the achievements of so many other things. Somebody starts talking about having a billion dollar company? That’s just 50 jet engines. Somebody tells you that the yearly spend in the US on liquid smoke is at least $20 million? So what? That’s not even enough to fly a plane. Double it and we might have a chance of getting off the ground.

Of course, it’s not the greatest business model to be selling twenty-million-dollar packages that corrode and fall apart, but then what do I know? It’s not like I’m in the aviation business…

I took a day off work today because it was La Serpiente’s end of term treat: the entire school went to Punggol Safra, a water park up in the north of Singapore, and she spent two hours gibbering and rushing through the water. The water park is a big circular room flooded to about 10 inches deep with water, making it easy to wade through or to ‘swim’ – La Serpiente lying prone and walking on her hands across the floor. There’s some huge fish models suspended from the ceiling, and the centrepiece of it all is a set of stairs and slides with water spraying around all over the place. Occasionally she ascended into this, but mostly she seemed too intimidated by the noise and spray of water to actually go down any of the slides. Destroyer was pretty happy too, and so that was a pleasant morning for the whole family. I ate blueberries and then we all went home. I was exhausted from last night at the track though, and passed out next to La Serpiente on her bed when it came to her afternoon nap.

Likewise, after I put her to bed tonight I fell asleep. That new mattress of hers is just too comfortable. If we’d had it sooner, I’d be so much more rested. Of course, the problem with having a microsleep at 9pm is you’re then in a heightened state of awareness when you should be asleep. Never mind. The days rush on, the days rush by, and soon it will be the weekend. And then soon it will be time that I started training for my next marathon. That won’t wear me out, no, not at all…


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