Just realized that if I were asleep the past 24h I wouldn't have missed anything. Actually that's not quite correct, take out about 2h from that. Still, there's all the potential for this winning streak to continue all through today and maybe tomorrow.

not recommended for resting: Ryanair

They employ what I like to call the head rest from hell. You know the one I mean, where the seat is usually reasonably comfortable, you lean back to get comfortable, but your head won't go all the way back, it gets stuck on this annoying piece of head rest which sticks way out from the chair itself. WTF?? If you've seen it, you know it only too well. They have them in cars too quite often. What happens is that you lean back in the chair, your back is stretched out vertically, but you can't rest your neck because the f. head rest sticks way out from the chair. Have you tried going to sleep in that position? Do you know what happens when you wake up. In fact, you can't get any sleep at all, it's so uncomfortable. But if you do succeed (like my 20 minutes on a 2h flight), when you wake up, your neck hurts because you can't rest it. I've slept in the car like that as well, for a few hours. Waking up is not pleasant.

I ask you then, is there a good reason we need the head rest from hell? Or do they make us uncomfortable for no reason at all? I see a political party being formed over this.

It just occured to me that I've never traveled as much in a year as I have in 2005.

January 4 - coming back from Christmas in Poland

February - a week in Salerno, Italy

March 12 - a weekend in Oslo to get my IELTS papers (for those of you who have been on the edge of your seats since March, Jens Stoltenberg is prime minister again following the election a few weeks ago)

July - a week and a half's vacation in Poland

August 17 - three-day grid conference in Oslo

October 17 - three-day grid conference in Linköping, Sweden

November 1 - long weekend in Milano to see Milan-Juventus

December 16 - heading to Poland for Christmas

That's a lot of travelling :eek: Right now I just feel like staying home for six months :D

Flying out last Sunday, as I was sitting on the plane, with about 10cm of space between my knees and the seat infront of me, I got to thinking about how the level of comfort has taken a turn from the early beginnings of air travel. It used to be expensive, priviliged transportation, for the hot shots who could afford it. Since the cost of the flight already was so high, they could throw in some "complimentary" food and drinks, which would only raise the price by a few percent. Sitting in a noisy aircraft with dips in pressure and occasional turbulence was never classified as comfortable. But the airlines went out of their way to improve the things they could do something about. The big chairs which fall back are now even found on ferries, adopted apparently because they are so comfortable. And for a good period of time, people did travel on those planes, the priviliged ones at least.

But then came the people's revolution. We are getting better at running our airlines, operational costs are down, meanwhile the demand for travel is booming. Why not sell this to more people? And so the prices dropped, budget airlines joined the race and now there are more airlines than political scandals in a year. So it has become cheap, but at what cost? Airlines still have drinks, but they're trying to retail them now. Air travel has gone for being reasonably comfortable to sitting on a bus. Seats used to be wider, there was more leg space, more space in the overhead etc. As a kid, we had this excercise in gym class where you would crouch down and touch your toes, then jump up so that your knees touch your chest. I was quite good at that and I imagine it will come in handy when I'm travelling with Ryanair next week and I expect to rest my knees on my chest.

Have you ever noticed that whenever men hit women in movies, they always swing the backhand? *watching a James Bond movie* Why is that? Is that some kind of sexist demonstration of power? That "I'm restraining myself and yet I can still kick your ass"? Is that the equivalent for the head butt between guys? "I could refubnish your face with my hands but I'll show you how much damage I can do just with my skull"?

Idiotic macho games.