In the next month, Singapore Airlines is going open up a NY City to Singapore route....non-stop. Hours involved? The experts say roughly 19 hours of airtime.
I sat and pondered upon this. You arrive at the airport....spend roughly three hours doing the bag-drag, ticket-counter, security check-out, and then sip through two beers while waiting for your boarding. Then you take off and spend nineteen hours in the air. Then you land....go through immigration, another bag-drag, ride the taxi over to the Singapore hotel, and sit down. Total hours? You can figure 26 hours minimum.
So how do you waste nineteen hours in the air? The longest flight I've ever taken in my life was Dubai to Sydney, with around 16.5 hours in the air. I wasted four hours at the very beginning watching two movies and munching through a fairly decent dinner. Then I sat at the bar (yes, they had an actual bar in the cabin) and sipped through two cocktails and a wine. Then I slept for six hours. I woke up....added up the hours, and realized that I still five more hours to go. So I went back, reviewed my 200 movies on the menu and found something to watch.
The problem with nineteen hours on your hand....is that you can only sleep about one-third of that. Boredom? You tend to get maxed out. Toss in the fact that sixty-percent of the passengers are in some cramped-up seating arrangement and begging for relief after ten hours.
Drinking your way through the nineteen hours? I can see a dozen-odd folks on each flight who will finish off six to eight wines, maybe a similar number of cocktails, and try to just blitz themselves to sleep. Course, you might wake up five hours in the flight, with some flight emergency going on, and suddenly realize you are too drunk to really care.
Will they even haven enough people to fly each day into Singapore? That's another question I'd be interested about.
Maybe this is a trend, but I'm kinda wondering how many people get all peppy and excited about nineteen hours in the air.....just one-way.
Friday, 14 September 2018
Bloomberg in 2020?
So the rumor has started out....Micheal Bloomberg (billionaire) might run on the Democratic ticket in 2020, against President Trump.
I would offer these six observations:
1. He'll have to develop a platform, and whether he likes it or not....it has to be combination of platform promises that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had in 2016. So folks might be expecting something new and different, but I just don't see how you'd get around the various factions of the Democratic Party without using the same 2016 'magic'.
2. From a primary review, and considering that at least a dozen Democratic candidates will be running....he's got problems in at least thirty states. If you used the core of southern states (Alabama, Georgia, La, Ark, Tenn and Kentucky).....I don't see him winning. In states like California? He might face stiff competition. In Iowa? I'm not sure if you'd find that much interest.
3. He would have to go and promise a continual business trend as in the effort of Donald Trump. The minute you suggest getting tough on business, commerce, and reversing the jobs trend.....you lose respect of the general public.
4. The black VP? Well, here's the thing.....in order to get some black voters to return (it's near 30-percent on blacks voting for Trump now).....you have to go and find this mythical black 'magnet' for independents to feel hyped up about. Corey Booker? Marginally fitting the description. Senator Harris from California? Almost a joke. You can virtually guarantee though....that it'll be a black VP candidate. Would this convince black voters to return to the safe Democratic candidate? No, I have serious doubts over that.
5. All of this primary business leading to no clear winner before the convention? I would suggest that you'd have three or four Democrats standing there with ten to fifteen states each. So the VIP leadership of the Democratic Party arranging things to fall into place? Maybe.
6. The odds that you'd have two other wild-card independent folks running in the 2020 election, against Bloomberg and Trump? Better than a 90-percent chance. I could see someone just putting a massive effort into winning Florida alone, instead of Trump or Bloomberg. You could easily be standing there in December 2020, with no one getting 270 votes, and this being a state-by-state battle in the House, to figure out the next President. This being intentionally designed by the mid-term wins here in 2018? Well....yeah, that's a possibility.
I would offer these six observations:
1. He'll have to develop a platform, and whether he likes it or not....it has to be combination of platform promises that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had in 2016. So folks might be expecting something new and different, but I just don't see how you'd get around the various factions of the Democratic Party without using the same 2016 'magic'.
2. From a primary review, and considering that at least a dozen Democratic candidates will be running....he's got problems in at least thirty states. If you used the core of southern states (Alabama, Georgia, La, Ark, Tenn and Kentucky).....I don't see him winning. In states like California? He might face stiff competition. In Iowa? I'm not sure if you'd find that much interest.
3. He would have to go and promise a continual business trend as in the effort of Donald Trump. The minute you suggest getting tough on business, commerce, and reversing the jobs trend.....you lose respect of the general public.
4. The black VP? Well, here's the thing.....in order to get some black voters to return (it's near 30-percent on blacks voting for Trump now).....you have to go and find this mythical black 'magnet' for independents to feel hyped up about. Corey Booker? Marginally fitting the description. Senator Harris from California? Almost a joke. You can virtually guarantee though....that it'll be a black VP candidate. Would this convince black voters to return to the safe Democratic candidate? No, I have serious doubts over that.
5. All of this primary business leading to no clear winner before the convention? I would suggest that you'd have three or four Democrats standing there with ten to fifteen states each. So the VIP leadership of the Democratic Party arranging things to fall into place? Maybe.
6. The odds that you'd have two other wild-card independent folks running in the 2020 election, against Bloomberg and Trump? Better than a 90-percent chance. I could see someone just putting a massive effort into winning Florida alone, instead of Trump or Bloomberg. You could easily be standing there in December 2020, with no one getting 270 votes, and this being a state-by-state battle in the House, to figure out the next President. This being intentionally designed by the mid-term wins here in 2018? Well....yeah, that's a possibility.
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