theducks.dreamwidth

Cathay Pacific Flight CX170 7 hrs, 40 min flying time with NON STOP stops. 330
.. wait 9 hours ..
Cathay Pacific Flight CX838 12 hrs, 45 min flying time with NON STOP stops. 343


sigh..

Regarding this: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/03/04/crimesider/entry6266524.shtml (tl;dr: anti-gay republican congressman gets arrested DWI after leaving a gay bar with another man)

I expressed some schadenfreude over this. It's a kneejerk reaction, and it has been called the most unpleasant of the emotions. I feel I should explain.

Part the first: There's nothing wrong with being gay, and what goes on in relationships in terms of non-monogamy isn't a problem if all parties agree to it. If they don't, that's another story, but it is a problem primarily within the bounds of the relationships in question. The extent of what he has done in that evening that is actually a publicly shamefully wrong act is drink driving.

Part the second: However, he is a member of the republican party, and his voting record includes some very strong anti-gay rights activities. I do not agree with those, and I think that makes him a bad person. Though I admit I was not familiar with them until his arrest (let's just assume all members of the republican party suck on this count though)

Part the third: While I believe in forgiveness, I have a bloodlust for people who do the wrong thing on an on-going basis. In this instance the wrong thing was voting anti-gay, repressing the rights of gay people, and being a member of the republican party. But that said, someone's sexuality is by and large their own business, unless they try to make other people's sexuality an issue (ie through legislating against them), then it's game on.

Part the fourth: I'm sure it can't be easy to be gay or of alternative sexuality (suicide rates amoung gay teens for example are terrible), and I can understand why people would want to hide it (but they shouldn't). They deserve compassion and understanding. And if you live your whole life without the companionship you want because of it, that's sad. However, there's a level some people seem to go to in their denial: hate.

As an intermission, here's a brief run down of some of the recent sex scandals of the family values party.

Part the fifth: if you have a politically valuable secret, stay out of politics. He had freewill. He could choose not to run for government, he could choose to resign and become a lobbyist or businessman, he could choose to vote for gay rights, he could choose to come out either with a big announcement like Ellen Degeneres or a quiet realisation by popular media like Lindsay Lohan.

He had lots of choices to make this not an issue but for his drink driving, but he chose not to, all the while trampling the rights of people just like him, but the starts aligned to make it a perfect news story. That makes his downfall a shameful joy to watch. Such is the nature of "news". Too often it is slanted to encourage higher ratings through rousing emotions, not inform of important events. And as I acknowledged, I was suckered in by it.

--

While I'm at it with my ranting, don't get me started on The West Australia's beatup series of articles on the Poor Young Mum being refused a liver transplant in WA because she's A) had one already and B) has a wrecked liver because she was a heroin addict up until .. 8 weeks ago. Sure, there's a measure of second guessing to be done on that decision but you either say it's ok to give a third liver to someone who has already required a liver transplant because of drug use, then had that transplant fail, or you say it isn't. There need to be guidelines, and they shouldn't be subjective.

Wherein we see Kangaroos, Eagles, Kestrels and other pieces of Australian wildlife.

Did you know Kangaroos can hover? Look at the photo!

Quick Summary: Back in Perth. Even though it's been 8 months, lots of stuff still seems familiar. Just, we don't have jobs to go back to here, we have jobs to go back to in Canada. Checking the "Visitor" box on the incoming passenger card instead of the "Australian Resident Returning" one felt grown up.

AC33 - YVR - SYD
Reasonably new B773 (C-FRAM)

Watched: Law Abiding Citizen, Frost/Nixon and Zombieland. All good.
Tried watching "Where the wild things are", but the kid pissed me off too much. I mean, I know his problems are part of the whole story, but it just wasn't something I wanted to deal with at that time.

Fair bit of mild turbulence.. like, 45-60 minutes of the plane shaking. We were in the tail section, and it wobbled side to side for that time.

Slept well, but with a slightly delayed departure from Vancouver, plus a weather diversion near Hawaii, we got to Sydney with very little time to spare... we didn't stop moving from the time we left the first flight, and the time we got to the second one (except waiting for bags - 5 mins and transfer bus - 10 mins). No questions from Customs - just stampy town and we were away. Unfortunately our bags didn't make it, so Qantas are delivering them tonight.

QF577 - SYD - PER
Nice new A330 (VH-EBH - reusing one of the 743 regos)

Watched: A Final Night With George W. Bush (by Will Farrall :) and some Simpsons.

When we moved in here (Sept 1st 2009), one of the two showers didn't work, only a trickle of water came out. We told the agent, and the building manager, and they both said they'd get it fixed. Despite months of asking, it still wasn't fixed.. the agent says it's the owner's problem and he's told the owner. The owner says it's the warranty company's problem (since it's a new building), and he's told the warranty company. The warranty company blames the City of Richmond. The City of Richmond says "tough shit".

Anyway, it's now February 2010, and it's not fixed. I have a cousin coming to stay, and I was bored. Maybe you can see where this is going.

Was a good challenge, and only cost me $4.30 for some silicone to glue it back up when I was finished (had to cut the old silicone to get to it). And, I think it looks better than it did before too :P

I think there should be achievements for life skills, like TF2.

As mentioned previously, we went to San Francisco last week. It's pretty awesome how we can take a 2 hour flight and end up in San Francisco. I remember the 24 hours of flying it took last time I went there :P On the downside, due to the ominous sound of baggage restrictions to the US, neither of us took our laptops, so we survived on iPod touchen (that's the word, right?) with brief internets, so no posts while we were down there.

Wednesday
Left work at 1PM, after rushing to provision a new VLAN and VM.. which mostly worked. I just forgot to add the VLAN to the internal switches in the blade chassis. It was my first time. Oh well.

Bus home, shower, shave, final pack, taxi to airport. For logistical reasons, US Customs and Immigration for flights from Canada to the US is done in Canada. So you run the gauntlet of ticketing, bag drop, security checkpoint (at DEFCON orange111 or something), then US Customs. Who were really nice to us. And they say there hasn't been Change..

Hung around at the airport waiting for our flight, then 2 hours later, touch down in San Fran. Caught a shuttle to our hotel, Hilton Union Square. Dropped off bags in room, met up with step sister and her partner, Jeff. Went out in search of dinner at about 9:30, found a few places open, and had Thai.

.. the rest of it in point form:

Thursday
- California Aquarium with Elizabeth

Friday
- Alcatraz with Eliz, Jade and Jeff
- Boat cruise with Eliz, Jade and Jeff

Saturday
- Golden Gate Bridge with Elizabeth
- California Academy of Science with Eliz, Jade, Jeff
- Castro with Eliz, Jade and Jeff

Sunday
- Meet up with Robin, Stacy
- Heinold's Last Chance Saloon at Jack London Square, Oakland - Seems to have change a bit since my great great uncle was there in the 1960s
- Marin County Civic Center + Farmers Market (A Frank Lloyd Wright building, and site of several incidents of domestic terrorism in the 1970s)
- Muir Woods
- Alamo Square and Painted Ladies (these houses, you may remember them from the end of the opening sequence to Full House)

Many moons ago, we booked tickets for Canada, leaving Perth 24 June 2009, returning 17 Feb 2010. We couldn't book them for the exact period of time we wanted.. plans were to stick around for a year, so we thought we'd just change dates.

Well.. erm. We like it here. So we're going to take the tickets home, clean up some loose ends then head back here again in early/mid March, probably on a return ticket that would have us back in Perth during Christmas 2010/ NY 2011.

Plans for our time in Perth include dinner at Utopia (firstly probably on the 18th), then O-Day on the 19th of Feb. We're also heading up to Karratha to visit family on the long weekend of Feb 26-Mar 1. I've never been there before, so that should be fun.

Not entirely sure where we're going to be staying while we're in Perth, since both of our parents are talking about renting out their homes, but eh, that's part of the excitement :)

Was going through some old digital photos (2002 :P) and came across one of a Qantas 767 with a white tail (instead of a red one). Did some reading up on it. They operated a couple of them after Ansett's collapse in 2001.

One in particular was frame 27909/591, built in 1995.

Turns out this plane gets around a bit. Since 1995, it has been operated by:

• Lauda Air


• Vietnam Airlines (with Australian registration..)


• back to Lauda


• untitled with US reg


• Kenya Airways (again with Australian reg)


• Qantas


• back to untitled with US reg


• back to Vietnam Airlines (with Vietnam reg)


• Air China


• Varig


• and now with Ethiopian Airlines

I think I'd be worried about hull thickness with the number of times this has been stripped and repainted :P

Shamelessly stolen from flyingblogspot ( 2008, 2007, 2006 ) 

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Lots of things leading up to moving to Canada.. then once we got there, drove in Canada and the US, Got a Canadian drivers licence, Canadian Social Insurance Number, BC Health Care card, worked in another country.
( Read more... )

lizbyrd's friend kiyoshi_chan doesn't like taking flights longer than 7 hours, so Liz and I spent some time looking at possible routings for Singapore - Vancouver, in <7 hour segments

Singapore-Dubai-London-New York-Vancouver (23000 km)
Singapore-Townsville-Fiji-Hawaii-Vancouver (18000 km)
Singapore-Tokyo-Anchorage-Vancouver (13000 km)
Singapore-Seoul-Anchorage-Vancouver (12800 km)

Also, Singapore Airlines are still butt-munches for cancelling flights to Vancouver.