#Rick is just churning these books out for the money at this point

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I can't believe Rick Riordan really gave Percy Jackson, darling of fangirls everywhere, a shirtless scene only to describe him as scrawny, weak, unimpressive, and 'not ripped'.

The guy really knows what his audience wants!

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No. 7 - A jetBlue FaMintly ReBluenion - The Quest for the Bluest Plane

And now, for something completely different.

We're done with jetBlue. I said that and I meant it. But we're not done with this train of thought. This post might not be what you expect. This is a very long post (and I do mean very long), a journey through the history of the US low-cost airline, the cognitive dissonance of the everyman millionaire, the thinly-veiled cynicism of the start-up airline, human kindness squeezed through cracks of a soulless machine which can never stop churning, and above all one man's quest to make the bluest planes he can, and my quest to tell you all if they look bad or not.

Let's begin here: have you ever wondered how new airlines are started? Well, when a wealthy individual or group of individuals love making money very much, they get together and incorporate a publicly traded company, lease a few airplanes, buy some airport slots...

I'll get to the point. Readers, there's somebody I'd like you to meet.

"Never speak to me or my daughter ever again." image: Rick Maiman

This is David G. Neeleman. He's jetBlue's dad. And jetBlue...has siblings.

David Neeleman is a Brazilian-American-Cypriot businessman I would best describe as a serial airline founder. Normally the description 'serial entrepreneur', to me at least, implies flakiness and perpetual failure to get anything properly off the ground, but that's not the case for Neeleman. He's very successful. He's probably some sort of pioneer. I've seen him compared to Howard Hughes. There's really only one stain on his record, one failure to speak of, and it's been over ten years. He has a net worth of 400 million dollars.

image: bloomberg

He's an...interesting person. Very interesting. He was born in Brazil and raised in Utah by a wealthy Mormon family. There are many very funny images of him available through Google. He has ten children, an ADHD diagnosis, no university degree, a whole lot of money, and a weird, weird, weird personal philosophy.

This interview is hard to sum up, but there's clearly a lot going on here. This is a guy who wants so desperately to be down to earth and kind and generous, who thinks he is down to earth and kind and generous, but who just can't take the extra step to realize the implications of the truly obscene wealth involved in venture capital and the inherent contradiction of that with his own ostensible charity and drive towards a fair and comfortable experience for passengers. In a way he seems like he's just too wealthy to really understand what being wealthy means. (It's also an older interview, and I imagine any scrap of genuine convictions he held through cognitive dissonance are now long-gone, given the CoViD thing.) He's also clearly got a chip on his shoulder about being fired from jetBlue. To be fair, having seen what they've done with their livery...I get it.

What else...he's also been CEO of airline booking program Open Skies, was involved with bizjet charter airline Superior Air Charter (then known as JetSuite), is founder and chairman of security company Vizgul for some reason, and is a minority owner of TAP Air Portugal. His nephew Zach Wilson is quarterback for the New York Jets. Oh, and he funded a study to underestimate the prevalence of CoViD. Classy, David. Real classy.

This isn't about David Neeleman. Not really. Not yet, at least. At some point it becomes about him, about his journey, but even then it isn't. When you have 400 million dollars you cease to become a meaningful subject as a person and become a meaningful subject as a distilled effigy of the things which the money came from. I dislike the Tony-Starkification of real people and I refuse to approach him in a way that supports that view of him. His life only matters to me in the context of the airlines he makes, and in what the way he changed over time represents. There's at least one biography out there for anyone particularly interested in the lives of Mormon multimillionaires who take issue with making people die less because they want the line to go up more. He is worth 400 million dollars, which is roughly a million dollars times what I make in one paycheck, delivered every two weeks. He's a creature in a suit who owns an absurd amount of wristwatches, each of which could pay for some sort of surgery for someone out there. There's a bunch of those in the world and this one happens to have made something which eclipses him, and that something is what's been occupying me since Wednesday.

If you're a book-reader - and I recommend being one - I think you're probably better off reading Barbara S. Peterson's "Blue Streak: Inside jetBlue, the Upstart That Rocked an Industry", which talks specifically about jetBlue and the way it pioneered what we now consider normal for aviation in the US. Reading it brought back memories for me of seeing adverts for jetBlue's planes on television, guaranteed to have a TV screen on every seat, and having my little mind which was still scarred by hours upon hours of complete boredom flying all the way from Tokyo to the American Northeast completely blown. Air travel really is unrecognizable from what it was when I was a child, although 20 years feels a lot shorter than it really is when you've lived it. There was no one factor that changed aviation so much in my lifetime, but there were a lot that contributed. ETOPS, 9/11, the recession, geopolitics, gas prices, the internet, legacy airline mega-mergers, privatization...and the jetBlue way of doing things.

It's easy to forget from our current vantage point but low-cost air travel wasn't always like this. Southwest did a lot to pioneer the modern low-cost model but jetBlue is probably the second-biggest player in the airline industry's shift to a culture which tries less to be glamorous and tries more to be fun and approachable (they by no means invented the Fun Airline, but PSA had been gone for 20 years at that point and the market had a gaping hole). They were a huge player in the rise of in-flight entertainment as standard even on low-cost flights. They helped keep aviation going after 9/11, when it was one of the few airlines to actually make money. And jetBlue's story isn't Neeleman's story, even though he founded it. I literally just listed four other major involvements of his, and he hasn't been involved in the business side of jetBlue since 2008. His story involves the founding of four - count em! - other airlines. Let's take a look through them and see if we can spot any patterns.

Morris Air (1992-1994)

sources and further reading: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Never heard of Morris Air? Can't blame you. jetBlue's oldest sibling existed for two years in the 90s. Two years. That's pretty miserable. ValuJet was around for twice that. That said, you're actually probably more familiar with them under a different name: Southwest.

No, Morris Air did not become Southwest. Southwest existed at the time, and it was in fact Southwest which gave birth to Morris Air.

Morris Air was named for its founder, June Morris, who operated one of Utah's largest travel agencies. In 1984 she partnered with a then 25-year-old David Neeleman to launch Morris Air Service. The two had realized something that was about to shake the airline industry: plane tickets were really expensive, and you could charge even less than major budget carriers like Southwest by just buying all the seats on a charter flight and selling them on to customers at an attractively low price. If you did this, even regular working-class people trying to book a trip to Hawai'i or Disneyland could actually afford a plane ticket. This worked successfully, enough that Morris sold off her travel agency, until they incurred a large fine from the DoT for pushing too far and fraudulently passing themselves off as a scheduled airline (which mattered because commercial charters are operated under Part 135 regulations while scheduled services are governed by the much more restrictive Part 121). In response, girlboss queen June Morris and her investie David Neeleman went and started up Morris Air as an actual, genuine, fully certified part 121 carrier, making June Morris the only female jet airline CEO in the US. They operated a fleet of 21 737-300s around the west coast on both scheduled and charter flights, pioneering such cost-cutting measures as e-tickets (wrongly attributed to Southwest, they were actually first used by Morris). This fleet included N75356/N764MA/N697SW, the airframe involved in the TACA 110 incident, which was successfully landed on a levee after losing power in both engines.

image: Richard Silagi

Now, I don't know about you, but these planes don't scream 'vacation' to me. In fact, they don't scream anything. They barely whisper. They breathe lightly on my ear. There are a couple planes in their fleet with weird features, like multicolor painted noses or cheatlines, but these seem to be one-offs and I wouldn't even be surprised if they were just leftovers from previous paintjobs (the one with the cheatline does look suspiciously like the one used on Sierra Pacific planes, one of the operators Morris chartered from). So they don't count. What counts is this.

Maybe if Morris Air didn't want to be instantly forgotten they shouldn't have made their planes completely generic. I'm not sure they cared, though. They wanted to make money and they made money.

A D- for Morris Air.

In 1992, less than two years after gaining its air operator's certificate, Morris Air merged with Southwest and the brand was retired. Despite having posed a legitimate threat to the titan that was Southwest at the peak of its relevance, it's since largely been forgotten. June Morris and David Neeleman both worked in Southwest's upper management for some time, but it was only five months before Neeleman left Southwest for other ventures. Soon, something more familiar would spring up, fed by the dying rays of Morris Air's gargantuan profits.

WestJet (est. 1994, began operation 1996)

Not exactly a deep cut, is it? WestJet is actually the second largest carrier in Canada and the ninth-largest in North America. They carry over 25 million passengers a year. I've never been one of them, but David Neeleman probably has, because he was one of the group of absurdly wealthy individuals who founded this incredibly successful airline in 1994.

WestJet operates a primary fleet of over 100 Boeing 737s of various models and seven Boeing 787s; in the past they also operated the 757 and 767. They operate both scheduled passenger and charter flights, as well as having a cargo division, a fully-owned regional subsidiary, and a Delta Connection/United Express-style brand name under which Pacific Coastal Airlines operates.

These all use more or less the same livery, which has only slightly changed since the beginning of operations in 1996. Pictured above is the original livery. I like the colors, I like the angularity on the tail, but I despise the style of livery with just the isolated tail colored in. This said, they introduced a new, updated livery in 2018.

I am a very predictable person. Given a livery mostly seen on 737MAXes and Dreamliners, I will always pick the Dreamliner to use as a visual example. This is not a slight to the MAX. They are nice looking planes, but the Dreamliner's planform is just on another level. Look at that wing sweep. Immaculate.

I like this color scheme a lot. I just happen to really like sea-green-adjacent colors, this is not the first time I've mentioned this. The font is nice, big, legible. I like the all-caps, I like the descender on the J. I think removing the logo mark on the wordmark and making it solid color was fine as a choice, makes the whole plane feel more balanced between the turquoise and the dark blue. The 'l'esprit du Canada' feels utterly pointless and is blocked by the wing and too small to be clearly read anyway. Tail design not limited to the tail, but mostly white fuselage regardless. Boring, but there's nothing here I can really call...bad? It's what they don't do that feels like the issue here, not what they do. Like, some sort of design on the nose and directly above or below, maybe? I didn't even realize there's any paint on the engines until I was editing my first draft and from most angles you just can't see it. Come on.

Grade: D+

Before I move on, there is something I have to mention. And that is WestJet's sub-brands. WestJet Encore is a fully-owned subsidiary which operates a respectable fleet of Bombardier Dash 8 Q400s, and WestJet Link is a brand name under which Pacific Coastal Airlines operates a couple Saab 340s. And that is...fine, normal, even, but...

Is this a joke to you?!

Change your name to WestProp. Now.

...

Hey. Wait a minute.

David! The large blue plane is coming! It has no engine power because it ran out of fuel and is about to hit you on the racetrack during family day! Oh no, he has airpods in! He can't hear us! image: Cean W Orrett

This guy. David Neeleman. Yeah, him. We were talking about him. I mean, it's been a minute since he came up because as far as I can tell after founding WestJet he did nothing of note related to it again, but...what's he been doing? Wait...wait a minute. This is becoming a habit, David. All your airlines are...well...they share a certain trait, in a very specific area.

David knows what I'm talking about. After all, his next move, in 1998, was to found NewAir, which would shortly become jetBlue.

I have not stopped to count how many words I have written about jetBlue this week. It is a lot. I already delivered a verdict. We are moving on.

Because David didn't stop here. Why would he? It's 2008 and he just got fired from his own company because a winter storm went Southwest-holiday-scheduling levels of horrendous for the airline he raised from infancy. He's got time to kill and money to burn and he wants the line to go up, damn it! Well, maybe he can be in the right place at the right time again. Make a second jetBlue, win back what he's lost. After all, he's got something else up his sleeve - dual citizenship.

Just your regular average Mormon, lurking in forests with a model plane. Nothing sinister about that. image: conde nast traveler

I did mention earlier he was born in Brazil, right? That's always been part of his life. When he was in charge, jetBlue was actually the launch customer for the Embraer E190, an incredibly popular mid-sized regional jet made by Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.

Is it just me, or do the men in this picture somehow look like cardboard cutouts holding a real airplane? There is something very strange about this image. I would go so far as to call it unsettling. image: The Gainesville Sun

So, figuring he'd bled the US dry, I suppose, he moseyed on down to his birthplace with his millions of dollars and presumably a couple little blank model planes waiting to be painted and shown off at a press conference. If you've seen a pattern emerging, prepare to see it continue.

Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (est. 2008)

Mmm. Helvetica Neue Heavy. Not impressed.

Okay, sure. Technically there was a 'naming contest' and this name 'was the most popular'. But I think at this point I would believe that David Neeleman botted his own vote years before I would believe that Blue Airlines of Brazil just happened to be the winning name.

Okay, all else aside, I would really love to gently hold a plane like this. There's a certain caressing nature to the way he's holding this plane's snout which I crave to someday replicate with a similarly sized model aircraft. image: Paulo Whitaker

Much like jetBlue, Azul began operating Embraer 190 and Embraer 195 aircraft before expanding its fleet to include Airbus models, a handful of ATR 72 tubroprops, and two Boeing 747s for cargo. They started with just five aircraft but grew rapidly, absorbing a bunch of other airlines and securing large investments from the likes of United and Hainan Airlines. Today they operate a fleet of over 150 planes to 161 destinations and are the third largest airline in Brazil. They have a set of crossover liveries with freaking Disney. (I might review those sometime.) They also have a crossover livery with John Deere for some reason. You know, the tractor company. In 2020 TripAdvisor named them the world's best airline.

In addition to the name of the company, they also name their airplanes. I do not speak Portuguese, but thankfully a close friend, @ametri-e, does. I asked him if the names were silly puns like jetBlue's are, and I got this response:

some of these are puns but not particularly funny, some of them just have the word blue in them, and one was funny

So there you have it!

Unlike Morris, which no longer exists; WestJet, which he seems to have minimally contributed to past its founding; and jetBlue, which tossed him unceremoniously on the tarmac with his bags, he remains the chairman of Azul at time of writing.

I find myself briefly wondering if this is all an attempt to recapture his lost glory. Is jetBlue, larger even than the impressive heights Azul has reached, the one that got away? Is he now forced to go forward modeling his work in the image of that which he was robbed of, that which he can never go back to?

I don't know and I don't care. I care about if the livery looks good or not.

Well, I wasn't just going to leave the John Deere plane out. It's a bit underwhelming, though, isn't it?.

So Azul is pretty different from jetBlue at first glance. Mainly, it uses a much darker blue and has a logo to go with the wordmark - a cute little pixel Brazil that looks a bit like a heart to me because of the specific way it's drawn. Everything is scaled nicely so it looks pleasing on the turboprop and I think the dark underside and the way it curves around the ventral fairing actually looks really good with the ATR's airframe, which has a very pronounced ventral fairing relative to similarly-sized props. But, okay, let's look at a jet.

This...is not terrible. I really like the highlights on the trailing edges of the winglets and the end of the rudder, and bordering the deep blue belly. Not crazy about the Helvetica Neue still. Why doesn't the 'u' being cyan carry over to the actual livery? Also, Detached Tail Syndrome. In fact, although it has features beyond this which make a further discussion worth having, the basic layout is what I call the 'Deltalike' because that's the airline I associate with it despite them certainly not being the first to use it - detached tail, painted engines, painted underside that's large enough to see from the sides. It avoids a lot of pitfalls of the other popular archetype, that of the very tail-heavy (which WestJet fell into), but has its own loathesome features. All said, though, I do think Azul is one of the better takes on the Deltalike.

In the first picture the highlights look green, but in reality they're one line of green and one of yellow, for the Brazilian flag. I think they look really nice with this particular blue color, but I am exhausted of this man naming his airlines blue and then having the planes be majority white. They have such a nice shade of blue here, couldn't they make that the primary color of the body?

That aside, the way that the line curves up towards the middle of the plane combined with the tailing-edge highlights creates a sort of aerodynamic feeling. You even see them in other colors sometimes, like the pink ones on the E190s and blue ones on the E195.

It also comes in pink! Were this not a one-off I would ask them to change their name to Rosa Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras, but it is a promotion.

It seems like reconnecting with his origin has given David Neeleman the creative push he needed to beat jetBlue in at least one way - livery. All said, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras clocks in at a final grade of...

C+

Aww, not quite a B for Brazil. Better luck next time! Though I'll admit I considered putting it there for a bit. This is a very high C+. Still, no cigar. Next time try putting less white on the plane. If you're all about blue, why are all your planes still so white? Come on, David. You are spreading blue paint on every airline you've ever touched but never letting it get past the tailfin. Who are you kidding? You know you're holding yourself back. There's a desire deep in you. You know it's there. I know you want to. It's just a matter of when. You are going to give in to your most animal urges. This isn't enough for you.

You need a bluer plane.

You can feel the thirst for a plane blue enough that you might as well own a piece of the sky straining against the bonds you've tried so hard to impose on it all these years. When will you finally unleash it?

Breeze Airways (commenced operations 2021)

image: inc. usa

Here we are, David. Time has almost caught up to us. It's just you, me narrating, and a very, very blue plane indeed. We have finally reached jetBlue's youngest baby sibling.

"Together, we created Breeze as a new airline merging technology with kindness," David Neeleman said. ​"If you can just be nice, the people will be nice to you in return and your job will be more fun.”

This is an interesting pitch. When Cape Air, with its fleet of tiny airplanes and its founder who started the airline with himself as pilot just to fly one route that he found himself needing to travel regularly, makes their motto Make Our Customers Happy And Have A Good Time Doing It (Mocha Hagodti), it feels...well, it feels like the person who said that didn't understand yet what a company was. Cape Air is its own story with its own contradictions and the vicious cognitive dissonance of capital on stark display but you can sense the desire in its inception to provide a service before running a company. It is the opposite of cynical - it is naïve. It is hopeful and human and starry-eyed.

When a man on his fifth airline makes a pitch like that it's like trying to cloud-watch looking at the ceiling.

That's not the only pitch for Breeze. I mean, even if you've started four successful airlines already and it seems like everything you touch goes on to revolutionize some part of the industry I think that would be a hard sell to investors in 2021. There's a bit more going on here. I'm going to start with the bit that's boring and makes me roll my eyes.

Ever since JetBlue, Neeleman has, like the kid peering into the circus tent, longed to get back into the U.S. airline industry. 

Bill Saporito writes for Inc. USA. I let out one tepid physical laugh. Yeah, David. You've got something great going in Brazil right now, but you want more. You want jetBlue and you can't have it. So instead...you give us an app.

The Breeze app is designed to eliminate chokepoints between passengers and planes. That means fewer people on the ground and lower cost.

Is this revolutionary? Is this destined to end in a Southwest-tier scheduling catastrophe? I'm not sure. I think David Neeleman's history suggests he could make this work, and I think the history of apps being used for things that didn't have apps before suggests that this could horribly blow up in his face. It seems to have gone fine so far, as I haven't heard anything else about it. To be fair, I wasn't exactly invested in the idea, so I haven't been looking. There's always time for some situation to happen nobody had foreseen and it all to go belly-up. Saying you never cancel flights works fine until a blizzard hits and then you have to start all over again, but he didn't build jetBlue by being afraid to take risks.

More interesting is the service they offer. Breeze has a bit of an identity crisis. Breeze wants to be an ultra low cost carrier with a first class cabin. That sounds contradictory because it is. The ULCC model as used by airlines like Ryanair and Spirit fundamentally relies on charging a low fare upfront with the expectation that customers will not receive a crumb extra without paying for it. Everything from seat reservations to snacks to anything else you can think of, you can pay extra for or you can do without. Breeze also follows other trends common with ULCCs, like a lack of seatback screens (the very thing jetBlue pioneered!) and flying point-to-point to smaller airports located outside of major metropolitan areas rather than routing through hubs. Yet Breeze insists it wants to have a first class cabin!

It does have a first class cabin, apparently. The classes are called Nice, Nicer, and Nicest. I wish airlines wouldn't do this. Air travel is the floorboards of stand-up comedy. Everyone already hates flying except weirdoes like me who spend enough time looking at pictures of airplanes to write reviews of their paint jobs, and even I get pretty tired of it if I go too long sitting there without the plane doing some sort of plane thing. You can be honest. You can call the classes Bearable, Unpleasant, and Painful. We all understand. It's okay. I would rather buy a ticket for Miserable But Cheap class than Nice. It probably won't actually be that bad, since Breeze doesn't do long-haul, which makes the presence of first-class even more bizarre. If you want first-class short-haul and have that sort of money just charter a private jet! And David Neeleman has been involved with at least two private jet charter companies too, so...what is he doing?

In 2011, almost exactly 10 years before Breeze began operation, Neeleman was interviewed for Business Jet Traveler. I linked the interview above. It's a powerful display of the cognitive dissonance of a man who considers himself a regular everyday Mormon dad, who donates his salary to his employees, who insists on calling his employees crewmembers, even as the line goes up, and up, and up. I've heard anecdotes about him sitting in the backs of his own planes at jetBlue, observing what he could change to make the experience better for the cabin crew and passengers, noticing a lot of those things could even save money, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.

As the head of a company he is by necessity exploiting those under him, as a businessman he is providing a service not from altruism but because he knows that people need it enough they'll give him money, and the more comfortable the experience for both the less likely he'll lose their labor and their money. Conscious or not, altruism is a means to an end, but it is still startling surrounded by airlines which don't even go that far. 'Nice' as a name for economy class is a pretty good summary of the man David Neeleman was, and the one he still tries to present himself as. But there's a specific question, and a specific answer, which I feel the need to place here.

The airlines have been cutting back on frills and first class, which is driving more people to business aviation. Do they need to find ways to treat their high-end customers better? Well, JetBlue doesn't have first class. We treated everyone the same. Maybe it's funny I'm in the JetSuite market because it's so weird to me that on a plane with 150 seats, you give 12 people a great ride and you stick it to 138-squish them all back there because of 12 people. There's something about that that just feels wrong.

Does it still feel wrong, David? Did something change about you between the first million and the 400th? When did this transformation happen? Was it the Ship of Theseus effect? Or...was this what you inevitably were working towards all along? Was it a fool's errand to pretend that there is a difference between what you do and what you are? Aviation is not immune to the society which it is built to serve - it is shaped by it. It feels wrong for 12 people to have a nice ride while 138 are squished in the back, but if you think about the life that 5 million Americans live and the life the other 326 million have to live, all squished back there so the lucky few can have a nice ride, doesn't it feel a little less wrong? After all, you've got the reclining bed. You can just pull the curtain closed. You've probably known what you were all along.

The airlines are a tough business. Why start another after JetBlue? Well, I've done this three times. It's what I know. I've always made money at it, always been successful. I figured out a formula that works and Brazil really needed it. And I had this idealistic view of trying to make a difference. I've got 3,000 people in Brazil that work for us and love their jobs and we flew four million people this year and a lot of those people had never flown before.

Air travel is life-changing. It's not just for those of us who stand outside airports and take a picture of every airplane we see. It is a faster, safer, easier way of getting people and things from one place to another. There are people who live in the remotest places in the world, who deal with mountains and oceans and even just being so far away from anywhere else. They can travel now, and they can do more than that. They can visit their family. They can get places even if they're somewhere railroads don't run to. Cargo planes bring these remote communities necessities. They take their children to university and its sick to lifesaving treatment. It's a lifeline and a fundamental part of infrastructure. Once we invented it we stopped being able to go back.

It isn't an inherently cynical thing to start an airline - not more cynical than starting any other company, anyway. At least, it shouldn't be. But I think it's an inherently cynical thing to start five. To have your position at Azul, which is both massively successful and your own brainchild, which you think is doing good...and to say to yourself "I need more. I need America. I need what I was robbed of when I lost jetBlue."

Very few people have ever started one airline successfully. David Neeleman started four and sat at the helm of Brazil's third-largest airline and decided it wasn't enough for him. He's always made low-cost airlines. To a not-insignificant degree he made the low-cost airline what it is today. But he needs a first-class cabin.

The Inc. piece on Breeze continues to discuss the airline's planned operations. In 2011 Neeleman's employees were crewmembers.

Breeze is also introducing a program in which it will hire college interns from Utah Valley University and mold them into customer-service machines. In exchange for salary, free tuition, and housing, the students will undergo training and then work 15 or so days a month while taking their college courses online. "The big thing is we are going to provide a great service with kind people on a beautiful airplane with a fun atmosphere," says DePastino.

In 2021 they are customer-service machines. They will spend not just their days but their nights in Breeze's living spaces at one of the most vulnerable times in a person's life, learning how to be cogs in a machine right when they're transitioning from being students to entering the turbulent world of trying to find a job. And all of us want a job that makes us feel like we're still us, doing something that makes the world better and that helps us touch the tip of Maslow's pyramid. Almost none of us get it. Most of us slog through something utterly pointless that is entirely separate from our own self-identity to just keep our heads above water. Breeze turns this into a machine and it starts its cogs young.

Would I take this deal if it was offered to me? I'm a university student with barely enough money to keep myself afloat in a very expensive city while paying for university and for medicine and for anything else that may suddenly come up. I love aviation. I have customer service experience. I work in customer service right now and will probably continue to for a long time. I would hypothetically be an ideal candidate for this sort of program. Would I take this offer knowing that nobody, myself included, says to themself as a child that they want to be an airline customer service representative when they grow up? College is supposed to be the place you lay the groundwork for trying to start a career. Nobody wants their career to be 'customer service representative'. Nobody wants their obituary to say 'beloved son, husband, middle management at an airline's call center'. Sure, lots of people end up there, and plenty of them are happy and fulfilled and they have nothing to be ashamed of, but nobody's 18, going into college, and thinks that's what they want to live and breathe for years. They want to intern in the accounting departments, to shadow engineers, to see the sleek jets and peer in on the lifestyles of the people who built this. They want to be David Neeleman. But that's not an option for most of us.

So what would I do? Live this concession to the inevitability of automation which overtakes much more than the flight deck? I might, because at least it's a guarantee of shelter and stability that I don't have trying to stumble my way through an utterly shambolic job market caught between the price of school and the need to earn that money and the costs inherent to autoimmune disease and the number of hours there are in a week. I want to write, or even just to do something that involves words, because even a data entry job might let me pretend I'm still the person I thought I would grow up to be, and even that seems off the table. But it's one thing to know your dreams are never going to be realistic and another to say it out loud and yet another to commit to it in a place that even refers to you outright as a machine as if they don't understand the weight of that word when you provide someone's lodging and pay and everything else they rely on. This is a few steps short of being a company town populated exclusively by the young and vulnerable who think they're going to be entrepreneurs one day.

"When I started JetBlue, it was a customer service company that just happened to fly airplanes," Neeleman says. "Breeze is a technology company that just happens to fly airplanes."

He was talking about the app when he said this, but I think it comes through in a broader sense. jetBlue was a customer service company. Humans interfaced with humans. The idea was in nature lively, giving names to inanimate flying machines. It was a corporation, it made money, it did not actually care about people and it could not because it was not itself human, but it did not wear this fact proudly. It was a regrettable necessity of running an airline, and the CEO donated his salary to the employees. jetBlue under Neeleman and beyond clung to the human element, and to kindness and to making low-cost flight fun and comfortable even though there was nobody on the plane with a first-class ticket. You might be part of a fundamentally unethical system known for cutting corners and lying and sweetheart deals and never suffering consequences when something as simple as a jackscrew nobody lubricated kills 88 people, but you're going to at least try to dampen that impact. It might kill you just as dead but it can hurt less, maybe so much you never realize jetBlue occupies the same slice of the world as Pan Am and as ValuJet.

Breeze Airways lodges young individuals and molds them into machines. It is an ultra-low-cost carrier with a first class cabin. It presents a scenario where people are optimally herded by an app, served by employees who go home at night to the same place they work, and all of it can be reduced down to numbers so easily. It takes the human and it makes it technology. It makes it profit. The human element is gone. It doesn't matter how much it hurts you because if you aren't a person there's nothing to kill. It says the quiet parts out loud and makes you get on the phone and tell your family you're happy here with a gun to your head. It is a machine built of anonymized mannequins who, irrelevant to their role in it, happen to be alive, and it calmly tells you that this is a good thing, and that is a threat. The lowest category of experience you can have is 'nice'. Breeze Airways does not name their planes.

When I was a child I thought airlines were people and airplanes. I've flown many times in my life. There aren't many other ways to get from Japan to the East Coast these days. The world is huge but we can see it all so easily, assuming taking us there can make someone money. I remember being eight and having the pilot standing by the door to greet passengers, having him hand me a little pair of plastic pilot wings I still have now. I remember the stormy night I flew alone for the first time and the stewardess who let me sit next to her for a little bit and answered all my questions about the noises the plane was making. I remember the first time I flew on a propeller plane and the pilot who explained to me what all the gauges meant, and who insisted there was nothing to be afraid of and pointed out all the landmarks we flew past, who clearly knew this route by heart.

That's not what aviation always is. That's not what it usually is. People don't usually start airlines because they wish they could fly everyone around in their little single-engine plane on a commuter route from Boston to Provincetown, from Hyannis to Nantucket, provide that service to the people who don't have a plane and a license of their own, but they just can't do it all themselves. People who start airlines aren't usually intrepid pilots searching for new heights to push themselves to or flight instructors looking to fly people around in a single rented DC-3. They're businessmen. They want money. Juan Trippe was a businessman. Howard Hughes was a businessman.

The corporation is where passion goes to die if it existed to begin with. They build machines to suck the life out of pilots, exhaust them, put them in planes that are falling apart and let them take the blame when they fail to do things they failed to teach them. These people aren't your friends and they don't care about aviation, and if they do it's in the way an American child plays soldiers at the same time a school in Syria is being bombed. They're usually not even pilots. They're people with a lot of money who want even more money. jetBlue isn't unique in that sense and neither is Breeze. One just says it a lot louder.

Sometimes an airline is a technology company that happens to fly airplanes. That's true. Every single positive experience you have is with people, not airlines. I've never once spoken to jetBlue, just a matrix of pilots and flight attendants and customer service representatives who make up its many limbs. Maybe it should come as a relief, a sort of coming clean, that Breeze is tearing back the curtain and reminding you that the time a stewardess calmed you down during turbulence isn't really any different from the time a drugstore cashier let you off even though you were a few cents short of your total and said they'd take care of it. It's not CVS doing that. It's always people.

So many businessmen say they're here to do good, to make the world a better place, to reconcile kindness with venture capital. Any of them could build a tower that reaches all the way to the edge of the solar system and let us all know how many beautiful things there are that we can reach if they can find a profitable way to get us out there, and yet it's still the people who see your transit card is out of money and scan you in using theirs that make me remember that we are capable of kindness despite our surroundings. It is up to all of us whether we wish to be kind or not and it's not something anyone else can build for us.

Companies can't build a kinder, softer, funner, more human place. They can make money. They can provide a service. A service you need, at a cost you can afford, predicated on the fundamental question: whether they think you can make them money. Desperation, need, giving people a non-choice, that's how you make money and kill criticism. That isn't kindness. That's finding a gap in the market. Always has been.

I read that at JetBlue, you also didn't have your own parking spot and you donated your entire salary to a crewmember crisis fund, saying, "It seemed hoggish of me to have all this stuff when others didn't because every time I would get something someone else would have less." Yet then I read about your $14 million mansion in Connecticut. It's my wife's mansion. I never would have built that, ever. I think she's repentant. It was a project for her and it kind of got out of hand. But we all felt funny moving in. That's why we want to sell it.

I'd wondered how you reconciled the mansion with your philosophy. I don't.

image: Bill Bernstein

Okay, Marx or Megatron or whoever you think you are, that's enough of that depressing schlock. You are a tumblr.com airline livery review blog. We're here to answer if the plane looks good or not.

It's not like Neeleman's only goals are money and vapid personal satisfaction. We've been with him from the start. It was just an unacknowledged bit of the tail. He probably didn't notice it at first, but we did, with the gift of hindsight. It germinated. It took root. It grew. It became identity. It became his white whale. Are the planes blue, though?

Well, everyone, meet N206BZ. She's an Airbus A220-300. She's just a year and a half old and was delivered brand-new to Breeze Airways. She doesn't have a name, just a registration, but that's sure one blue plane if I've ever seen one!

The color scheme is visually pleasing. It's all over but it keeps visual interest with the darker tail and rear fuselage, the darker engines, the big white check-mark that serves as an instantly recognizable emblem for the airline. The repetition of it on the winglets is a nice touch.

I hate the wordmark, honestly. The text feels like it's located too low, the lightest blue blends in with the main fuselage until it borders on illegible. As far as I can tell, the typeface is custom. I hate it. It's ugly. The text is bad and it weighs down the rest of the plane.

A lot of how a livery looks depends on the lighting. So let's look at another example. I'd like to introduce you to N140BZ. She's an Embraer E195-200 and she's coming up on 15 but she hasn't slowed down any. She flew for Air Europa for a long time, but from 2016 on she was in limbo, all sorts of holding groups leasing her to each other but nobody putting her into service. Now she's with Breeze. They'll retire their E190s somewhat soon, but for the moment they like to have them. It allows them to operate shorter routes and free up time for charters on other days, just to maximize productivity. She doesn't have a name either. I'd say she still looks pretty blue. A lot of the concept art has a very metallic and reflective feel which I'm glad isn't as present in the actual planes, because it looked a bit sci-fi movie and not in a campy way. It was very blue chalk marker.

I like these colors just as much in this sort of washed-out environment as I do in direct sunlight gleaming at full intensity. Maybe more, even, since the text of the wordmark is so much more legible now and you can even see that the checkmark itself is blue. There's almost nothing on this plane that isn't blue. The only thing not blue about this airplane is that she doesn't have a name to revel in it.

The Breeze livery gets a B-.

It is a competently executed version of the thing it wants to be. There's visual interest. There are choices made. It's more than a logo slapped on a tail and sent off to sit on the tarmac with hundreds of other primarily white airplanes. I like it, I think this is the best Neeleman livery. It's also the bluest.

I find myself thinking the checkmark is an apt logo. Azul wore the shape of Brazil - a country full of people. Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras S/A is a company. It cannot have a soul. But its founder says it does. He wants to make something better for people. Breeze Airways is a checkmark. It satisfies a need. It is 'nice' but there is no pretense that it is people.

The pilots will be kind all the same, and the stewardesses. People will agree to swap seats so families aren't separated. People will compliment strangers' outfits and help the person in line in front of them who's fifty cents short for a bottle of water. We will hold the door for elderly men with canes and exhausted women with strollers. We will take every little chance we can to be kind. We do this because we are people, and not because of where we work, and it's definitely not the people with 400 million dollars to put down on a shiny new airline making that happen. Everything is scheduled through an app, minimizing contact with humans even as the ones we do talk to are 'molded into customer-service machines' over the course of years. N140BZ wears her blue colors well, and not having a name doesn't make her any uglier. So what is it that's changed?

David Neeleman can't make jetBlue a second time. But he doesn't know that. To a man with so much, maybe it makes sense how he could fail to realize that. When you're high enough in the air a thriving uptown and an area of condemned slums look more or less the same, just little blocks of color all the way down there. He doesn't even realize he's given up the ghost. This is only a tragedy if your definition of a happy ending was us believing someone is better than they are instead of being left no room to continue failing to recognize what money is and what money does. The corporation wears two masks - the mask that it wears when it is a corporation wearing a mask, and the mask it wears when it is so close to human that you mistake it for your friend. The businessman wears these masks too. To be sad they've taken them off is to invest more in the virtue of these men than they ever do in the life or death of the 138 people squeezed in the back.

There it is. Two decades, five attempts, the bluest plane. If you've kept reading all the way to the end let me know in the replies what your favorite Neeleman-proximate livery is. I'll see you all tomorrow for our regularly scheduled Runway Runway livery review, and I hope you all have a wonderful night.

[raging-violets]

Stargirl: At All Hours // Rick Tyler

By: Rhuben

Words: 2,829

Note: Kind of a character study for Rick Tyler. This all came together after noticing that Rick walked everywhere.

Also found on: AO3 and FFN

Summary: Rick Tyler has the weight of the world on his shoulders. A weight he never asked for. Managing his grief and anger over his parents' sudden death, his schoolwork, fixing his car to have some sort of reliable transportation, and the nightly calls to pick up his unruly uncle from the bar always had him on the move.

--

Rick settled back in his chair, one arm draped over the back, and peered up at Principal Bowin unperturbed. His stomach growled. Principal Bowin’s eyebrows lifted. Letting out a humorless laugh, he parted his lips and said, “It’s a stupid box of candy. Barely anyone in this school likes it, let alone buys it.” He used his index finger to jab at the desktop. “It’s on that cart, day after day, and no one touches it.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just take it. Nothing in this life is free, Mr. Harris.”

“Whatever.”

Principal Bowin pursed her lips. She crossed her arms over her chest. A moment later she clasped her hands together in front of her. A tight smile came to her face. She wasn’t going to press the issue any further. It never made a difference. “Maybe you could use this time to think about your actions today.” She then turned on her heels and strode out of the detention room.

Sighing through his nose, Ricky slumped down in his seat. Tilting his head back towards the ceiling, he placed his hands over his face before he pushed his fingers into his hair. A stupid box of Nutty Buddys. That’s what this was all about. He was hungry, didn’t want a stupid room-temperature pre-made “for the kids who can’t afford a lot” sandwich that’s been sitting out all morning. So, he took a box of candy. Big deal. He’d think about his actions all right. He’d think about how he had little money after buying his lunch in the first place, and no one would think twice about a box of candy just sitting out in the open.

It’d last him until the morning, at least. At most, until the next time his uncle Matt could pull himself together long enough to get to the grocery store. Even then, however much he’d manage to get was dependent on how much he spent at the bar each night. It wasn’t the healthiest option, he knew, but it tasted good. The chocolate, the peanut butter, all wrapped around that layer of wafer. Absolutely mouth-watering.

And, it was a nice change from another bowl of ramen. They were even running out of that.

Pulling his gaze from the ceiling, Rick leaned forward in his seat and folded his arms on his desk. He stretched his lower back as he settled his chin on his arms. He flickered his eyes towards the trickle of students coming to serve their own detention, before setting them back onto the chalkboard at the front of the room. Bring your schoolwork. He snorted. As if anyone could focus on their schoolwork when just about everything else was so much more important. Like getting something to eat. His stomach growled again, and he pressed his fist into his stomach.

His days always started about five in the morning. Climbing out of bed, first thing he’d do was pack his bookbag of all the textbooks and the homework he half-finished the night before that lay strewn about his bed. Maybe a pen would be stuck to his cheek. A page ripped out of his notebook from where his leg was strewn across it. A textbook laid across his chest, heavy. It was better, he came to understand, to come to school with some of his homework done than to not bring it at all. It lessened the disappointed stares, and the “I know you can do better” head shakes he would get in response to his mumbled explanation of doing his best. When he bothered to give an explanation at all, anyway.

Quietly stepping into the living room to make sure his uncle was still sleeping, let alone still breathing, Rick would pick up the half-eaten plates of food, crunch over the chips that lay strewn across the carpet, and jostle the cans of Red Bull that sat atop the coffee table – at some point in the night, it had been shoved out of its usual position. Once the mess was cleared away, he’d set out a new, clean glass of water and some aspirin before shaking his uncle awake.

“Wha-whatsgoinon?” Matt asked, managing to lift an eyelid with what Rick could only guess was with great effort.

“Get up,” Rick would reply shortly, swinging his arm out of the way to avoid the slap or punch Matt would aim his way. He had learned to anticipate some aspect of retaliation over the years after showing up at school with a black eye and a cut cheek on a handful of occasions. Most times, Matt usually managed to succeed in a swing and a miss, knocking himself to the floor. Rick had also learned to keep his distance between himself and the nauseous smell of unbrushed teeth and stale alcohol breath…and whatever Matt might have possibly thrown up in the middle of the night. “Get in the shower.”

“Don’ tell me what to do,” Matt grumbled, tucking his arms underneath his chest to push himself up into a seated position. “Get out of my way.”

“Aspirin,” Rick said, indicating the white pills on the table, “Water. Knock yourself out.” Then, he would turn and leave his uncle to his own devices. After taking a quick shower, while there was still warm water, he’d throw on a pair of jeans with faded oil stains (though, he wasn’t sure he even owned anything that wasn’t oil stained by now), grab his shoes that seemed to soak up every inch of water whenever it rained, and throw on a long-sleeved shirt that was starting to stretch out at the collar. He’d step outside to continue his, seemingly, never-ending work on his car.

The very same car his dad had given him a model of the night he died. The model that sat in the center of his dresser. That was clutched tightly in his hand during his funeral. Often he wondered how far he’d be in restoring the old car by now if he had his father there to help him.

It had taken him ages to save up the money to buy the parts he needed. Whenever his uncle remembered to give him allowance for the chores he did around the house, he was able to slowly accrue the parts bit by bit. Luckily, with Blue Valley’s junkyard he was able to get the parts at a decent price – as long as the right sizes and pieces could be found. Even with the fancier cars driving around town, it could be hit or miss at times. With his own interest in fixing cars, he at least didn’t have to worry about the cost of labor – and the occasional library book helped him whenever he got stuck enough (always returned on time to avoid any overdue fines).

He could work for an hour or two before his uncle really managed to get himself up for the day.

Once it was clear his uncle Matt was awake and ready for the day, in the shower or changing in his room, Rick would slip back inside in search for something to eat for breakfast. If there was anything at all. Sometimes there were cold leftovers he could scrounge together. A potato or half-eaten two-day old pizza or something. Sometimes they even had enough milk for a bowl or two of cereal. Toast wasn’t out of the question; the bread was pretty good at settling his stomach from how long it had been since he had last eaten anything.

When Matt was ready to leave for the day, Rick would already be back working on his car. Trying to stay out of the way as much as possible. The car never talked back, at least not with words. Whatever sound it decided to make when he attempted to start it was a pretty good indication of what the next step was in his attempt to bringing it to life. Or lack of sound as the case may be. But all parts had a place, working together to give it motion.

So much unlike the two of them.

Rick was never even offered a ride into town to get to school. And he learned not to ask for it lest he wanted to get the same scathing look he had received every day since the funeral. It was Rick’s fault Matt wasn’t a billionaire. Rick’s fault they weren’t living within their means. Rick’s fault that Matt had to leave whatever it was he was doing to talk to the principal, again, about his anger. The reason why life was hard. The reason why he drank. The reason why he had to go into town every single day in an attempt to find a job lest their $50,000 run out.

If he’s even looking for a job, Rick would think with a roll of his eyes as he watched dust kick up from the rotating tires of Matt’s truck. He’d watch him disappear down the long dirt driveway, a small part of him hoping that it wouldn’t ever return. But, with the house finally his, he’d clean up the living room, remove as much dirt and grime from his face, hands, and clothes as he could, (and when he couldn’t he’d don his dark jacket), and leave to start his long walk to school with his backpack hanging loosely off his shoulder.

Maybe he’d make it to school on time. Maybe he’d show up a few, ten, or fifteen minutes late. Maybe he’d never show up. Maybe one day he could walk right past that tree. But for now, he’d always stop to pay his respects. To mark off another day on this earth without his parents. Another day where his anger churned and roiled so deep inside him, he wasn’t sure if he would ever learn what it was like to just be normal. To not feel like punching out the lights of the first person that looked at him sideways. Or even worse, that pitied him and still did nothing to help. No one ever asked how he was feeling. If he was alright.

He wasn’t. He never would be.

School wasn’t anything he ever really tried hard at. He tried hard not to fall asleep at his desk, sure. He tried hard to stop his stomach from growling so loudly. If he got to school early enough to buy what was left of a breakfast, usually a piece of fruit, it helped a little. There just wasn’t anything of interest he was studying – math was never hard for him, not with how smart his dad was. Blue Valley was a small town, one that most people never really left. And most people didn’t expect him to get into college, anyway. So, why even bother?

Lunch time wasn’t any better. Between forcibly being sequestered at the “Singles” table, listening to Beth Chapel blather on and on and on about whatever to her parents (and she could talk about anything), and Yolanda Montez who would just sigh every few minutes while mindlessly spearing at her salads, it was enough to drive anyone crazy. Still, day after day, he took his usual seat and sat in silence. (He trained himself not to look at the good food Beth seemed to bring in every day –perfectly portioned for herself, not enough to share; not that he’d ask – but through it.) Even if they didn’t talk to each other, there was some comfort in not having to sit by himself anymore. Not that he’d say that out loud. Ever.

Then after school, if he managed not to get a detention that day, he’d start the long trek home, stopping by the local general store for a soda. An energy drink. Anything with enough sugar or caffeine to wake him up long enough to attempt to work on his homework as soon as he got home. However much he could get through with their crappy Wi-Fi. When it got too much, he’d take a break and work on the car again. Dinner was spent by himself. And the people on the TV greeted him with a new episode of whatever hit TV show was airing at the time. Whichever shows he could get on the basic package of cable they could afford. Still, Rick would just flip through the channels, letting his mind wander.

Waiting.

Then he would get the call. “Hey, man, you need to come pick-up your dad. He’s not doing well.” Not doing well. Got into a fight. Threatened to have the police called on him. It didn’t matter. That meant he had to make another trek back into town. Another trip where no one would stop long enough to see if he wanted a ride. Once in Blue Valley he’d have to fight to pull Matt away from the bar, forcing the keys out of his hand, and drive him back home where he would only make it as far as the couch before he passed out. Or the call wouldn’t come, and he’d get back to his homework, trying to stay up, making sure his uncle returned safely only to be jolted awake by the front door crashing open and Matt’s grumbling as he managed to stumble his way inside.

Wash.

Rinse.

Repeat.

But today, there was a small change in his day. Enough to pull him out of autopilot and take notice. Not enough for him to care. Just notice. Today, there was a new girl at school: Courtney. He didn’t know who she was, but the whole school seemed to know she was new. After all, they had all grown up in Blue Valley together. They knew who a familiar face was and who wasn’t.

She wasn’t familiar. She was …too blonde? Too cheerful? Definitely the cheerleader type. And she wanted to join them. At their lunch table. And she was another one that wanted to talk.

He wasn’t about talking. He wasn’t about explaining to anyone knew why he was at the table, why he was considered one of them, the “losers” as Beth had called them. He wasn’t about getting that “I’m so sorry” look of pity again. So, he left. And he grabbed a box of candy on the way out. He was just freaking starving.

Think about my actions? Rick thought with a smirk. Yeah right. Why didn’t everyone else just stop and think for a minute as to why he could possibly do something like this? Then again, everyone thought he was a delinquent, so why not play into that? Be the guy they all thought he was. He knew he had a good reason for all of it. Even if no one else agreed with him. Or even wanted to hear it.

It was one thing in his life that he could control. He didn’t necessarily like detention. But it was quiet. It was an hour after school where he only had himself to worry about. An hour away from any and all responsibilities. An hour where he wasn’t Rick Harris. Not really.

He was just Rick.

Finally.

[numba99]

Fatal Attraction Part 3

Part 1 Part 2

Summary: When a mysterious man shows up at your job, you find yourself inexplicably drawn to him - and him to you. But behind the beautiful face is the dark lifestyle of a man who has made his wealth through becoming the most powerful drug dealer in the city. Word count: 2.7k

Song (I already forgot to do this for part 2 so you’r getting the one I meant for that part too) - ... Ready For It? // Taylor Swift & Finally//Beautiful Stranger // Halsey

Warning: mentions of death

Two weeks. Two weeks shouldn’t feel that long but it felt like an eternity. That was how long it had been since you had seen Mika, or even heard from him. You didn’t know what went wrong. When your date got interrupted, you thought you’d get an explanation a few hours later, or at least the next day. You were beginning to wonder if what you witnessed was a lot more serious than it seemed. 

A small, overly anxious part of you was afraid that maybe Mika got hurt by the Dimitri guy and that’s what you hadn’t heard from him. You tried to push that thought out of your head, but with each day that went by, it seemed more possible. You didn’t think Mika would be the type to just ghost you, especially after you figured out he was really a coke dealer. You could rat him out if you were mad for all he knew. Not that you would ever do that. 

You were pretty desperate for any contact at this point. A simple “im okay,” text would have at least put you at ease. But nothing. Maybe Mika wasn't the guy you thought, you didn’t know him that well, really. Or maybe something really bad happened...

You shook your head at yourself in the cracked mirror in the strip club changing room. You couldn’t let that thought get to you right now. You had a job to do, a shitty job, but a job nonetheless. Rent wasn’t going to pay itself, and you certainly weren’t going to get any tips if you looked all mopey.

So, you stepped out and did your thing. No amount of pep talk, however, could prevent the heaviness in your chest when you looked at where Mika usually sat and found and empty chair. It had be empty for awhile now, but you still weren’t able to shake that little glimmer of hope that you’d look out a find him there, just like old times.

You weren’t quite sure how long you were up there for. It all felt like a daze recently. It could have been 5 songs, maybe 10? You didn’t really know. What you did know was Rick was now excitedly motioning for you, which meant only one thing. Private room booking. The absolute last thing you wanted to do right now.

“There’s my little money maker,” Rick said with his classical sleazy smile.

“Where am I going?” you replied, biting back a gag. You had men look at you nearly naked every night, but something about how Rick looked at you made your stomach churn. He was someone who enjoyed his job way too much.

“Room 2, enjoy,” he replied. You rolled your eyes and walked away quickly; you didn't wanna give him a chance to slap your ass as you left. You seriously hoped this guy would be a big tipped, because it was going to take everything in you to give him a decent show.

When you stepped into the little room, your stomach fell to the floor. “Mika,” you gasped. You couldn’t believe your eyes at first, but it was really him sitting in front of you.

“Hi y/n,” Mika said. Anger bubbled inside you, you marched toward him and gave him a hard shove. He was sitting, so it didn’t really do much, but it was cathartic.

“Hi? You disappear for two weeks and all you can fucking give me is a hi?” you growled. You had to whisper-yell because the walls were thin, but you think he got the point.

“You have every right to be mad at me,” Mika replied calmly. It irritated you more.

“You’re fucking right I do! Do you have any idea what was going through my mind, or do you only care about me when you want a little show?” you snapped, gesturing to the tiny lingerie you wore.

That bothered him. “No y/n, not at all,” he replied sternly, “It’s complicated... but I want to explain.”

“You better,” you huffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“But not here, it’s not secure enough,” he told you.

“I don’t get off for another hour,” you replied.

“I can get you off now,” Mike replied, reaching for his wallet.

“No, I don’t need you throwing around your money anymore,” you stated, “If you really care, you’ll wait for me. If not it was nice knowing you.” With that, you spun around and left. It left you feeling sort of on a high. It felt good to tell him off, and even though you were annoyed you were glad that he was okay. Now it was just a matter of if he was going to wait.

The next hour went by quickly, to your delight. You hated that you were excited to see Mika. You should be pissed and never want to see him again. While you were still mad at him, you were eager for his explanation. You were hoping all the nagging questions that plagued your brain these last two weeks would finally be answered.

When the hour was up, you found Mika’s car waiting outside. You were happy he waited for you, but you didn’t allow yourself a smile. There was still a lot to be discussed.

“Where are we going?” you asked as you slid into the backseat. You stayed as far from him as the backseat allowed. You didn’t trust yourself around him, not even when annoyed.

“Your place, if that’s okay. We wouldn’t be expected to go there,” Mika replied.

“Expected? By who?” you questioned.

“It will make sense when I explained, just trust me,” Mika urged.

“Alright, fine,” you replied, but this better be good. You gave the driver the address and you started on your way. It was then you realized Chris was not in the front seat. “No sidekick tonight?”

“I thought this conversation would be better for just the two of us.” Mika replied, with a tone in his voice you couldn’t quite place. You suddenly felt a knot form in your stomach. It was that same sort of feeling when a parent said they needed to talk to you.

The car came to a stop before you could have a full blown panic attack about it.  Mika followed you silently into your building. The elevator climbed to your floor painfully slowly. Had it always been this slow? You swore it was just trying to torture you now.

“My place is, er, small,” you said as you slipped the key in the lock. Small was an understatement. It was basically a glorified closet with a kitchen and a bathroom. It wasn't much at all, but it was yours and yours alone, which was a difficult feat in Manhattan. You were proud of it, and its many, many flaws.

“I don’t mind,” Mika replied as you shut the door behind the two of you. You led him to the couch, feeling your palms get a sweaty as you waited for him to begin.

“So?” you prompted.

“I don't even know where to begin,” Mika sighed.

“Well how about you begin with whatever happened at that bar you took me too. With that guy, um, Dimitri?” Mika tensed at his name.

“I’m still really sorry I put you in that situation,” Mika sighed.

“It’s fine Mika, just tell me what’s the matter,” you replied, gently touching his thigh for reassurance.

“Alright well like I told you, I basically oversee all the coke that comes into the city,” he began, “It’s been like that for a while now. Dimitri used to work for me, we were close, actually. I considered him a friend, but he betrayed me. He left me to run with the Russians.” 

“The Russians?” you questioned.

“They’re my rival I guess you could say,” Mika answered, “They’re the seconded biggest group of coke dealers in the city, though they really don’t have anything on the flow I have coming in. Dimitri has been trying to one up me ever since he left.” 

“Why’d he leave?” 

Mika shrugged, “Could have been anything. He wanted more money, more power I’m guessing. He always wanted to call the shots but at the end of the day everyone answered to me, just like the answered to my father. He started this all and I inherited it from him when he-” Mika stopped mid-sentence, like the words got stuck in his throat.

“What happened to him?” you probed gently, you scooted closer to him, sensing he wasn’t about to tell you a feel good story.

“He was killed, not by Dimitri’s hand, but he was the one who put the hit out. He thought with my father gone he would easily be able to take the empire from me. Clearly he he had no idea who he was dealing with,” Mika said bitterly.

“Mika I’m so sorry,” you replied, wrapping and arm around him. He was trying to be strong, but it hurt him, you could see that.

“It’s alright. I killed the man who pulled the trigger and have been making Dimitri’s life a living hell ever since,” Mika replied. He paused, giving you a cautious look. “I’m sorry, I hope I’m not scaring you.”

“I’m not afraid of you Mika,” you replied firmly. At least that answered your question from your last date. 

“You should be,” Mika replied, “You should be afraid to be anywhere near me.” 

“Why?” 

“Why?” Mika incredulously, “Did you not hear what I just told you?”

“I heard you but I don’t see how that should make me afraid to be with you. You kept me safe,” you reminded him.

“We got lucky,” Mika replied, “If Dimitri had seen you, if he knew that I cared about you, you’d never be safe again. He’d do anything to hurt me y/n, including killing everyone I care about if he can. Hell, he’d start going after the people you care about. Your friends, your parents.” 

His last words stung, not that he could know why. “He’d too late,” you mumbled.

“What do you mean?” Mika asked.

Your anxiety spiked, just as it always did when you had to tell the story. It never got easier. “My parents were killed,” you told him, “Just a few years ago. They were walking home late at night and two guys tried to rob them. They put up a fight and they both got shot.”

“I’m sorry y/n I didn’t know,” Mika said softly.

“It’s fine, you had no way of knowing,” you replied.

“Did they catch who did it?” Mika asked.

“Yes, but only one of them got jail time. The one that gave up the other’s name got a plea bargain. He says the other one pulled the trigger, but really I have no way of knowing. For all I know, the guy who killed both my parents is still walking the streets today,” you explained, a chill going down your spine as you finished. 

“What's his name?” Mika asked, his face etched with anger.

You could never forget it, “Thomas Holmes. As long as he’s around, I don’t feel safe, not really. So I’m sorry Mika, if you don't want me around you’re gonna have to think of something more creative.”

“I hate that you have to feel like that, that someone did that to you,” Mika replied, frowning. 

“That’s life, I guess,” you tried to make it come out like a joke, but it wasn’t very convincing. Everything about what happened to you sucked. 

“Do you have any other family?” Mika asked. You just now realized his hand was holding yours.

“No, my parents were only children and my grandparents passed when I was younger,” you told him, “I was in college when it happened. I had some friends from that and I tried to keep going, but it was too much. It kinda sucks when you walk in the room and suck the whole life out of it because no one knows what to say to the girl with two dead parents. So I dropped out and that's how I ended up stripping.”

“I’m sorry,” Mika repeated, squeezing your hand.

“We aren't so different I guess,” you said.

“No you’re nothing like me,” Mika shook his head, “Nothing good will come of being with me.”

“That’s not your decision to make, Mika,” you replied sternly, “Like I said, if you really want me gone then just say it, but I’m not backing down because you’re scared for me. I think I’ve proven by now I have a good head on my shoulders.”

“Your life’s not gonna be the same.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, “At this point I’m sorta used to life altering events.”

“There will be somethings we have to go over,” Mika said.

“Blah, blah, blah, we can go over your rules later,” you teased, but then added more seriously, “I just wanna be yours, Mika. I don’t care what I have to do.”

Mika leaned in close to you, his forehead pressing against yours. You breathed in his familiar scent, immediately making heart race. “You’re mine, y/n,” Mika murmured, “And I’m yours.” His hand found your cheek and the next thing you knew, his lips were pressed to yours.

You hated cliches, but there was no other way to describe how it felt to kiss him but fireworks. It was weird, Mika was still somewhat of a stranger to you, but you never felt so secure with someone. It was like you’ve known him your whole life. 

“You’re crazy, you know that right?” Mika said breathlessly. It was the first time you saw him smile all night.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” you raise a brow.

“Bad for you, good for me I guess,” he teased.

“Very good for you,” you replied, pulling him in for a kiss another kiss. You tangled your hands through his hair, sliding on to his lap. You nipped at his lower lip before slipping your tongue in his mouth. You could kiss him for hours, you thought, you never felt anything so intoxicating. And if just this was good...

“Not tonight,” Mika pulled away as you reached for his pants.

“Why not?” you pouted.

“We should take things slow, I want it to be special,” Mika told you, pushing a lock of hair out of your eyes.

“What my ripped up secondhand couch isn’t special enough for you?” you feigned offense.

Mika laughed, “I love your couch. I just wanna do this right.”

You nodded, “Alright, I can be patient. But will you stay the night?” The thought of him leaving now, even if it was just for the night made your heart hurt.

“Sure baby, I’ll stay,” he replied, his hand on the back of your neck as he placed a gentle kiss on your forehead. “Let me just call the driver and let him know hes free to go. I’ll meet you in the bedroom?”

“Sure, if you get lost, just call my name I’ll come get you,” you joked as you hopped up. Mika smiled, pulling you for another kiss before letting you go. You scurried into your room, changing into the cutest pair of pjs you had. You got into bed, laughing to yourself at the thought of Mika having to squeeze into you little twin size bed with you.

A few minutes later Mika came in. “We’re all good,” he told you.

“I’d offer you something to sleep in, but I don’t think anything I have would fit,” you said.

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” Mika replied. With that he began to strip. Sure, he only went down to his boxers and the tank under his shirt, but it was more than enough to make your lower stomach churn. You’re taking it slow, you’re taking it slow, you’re taking it slow.

“Sorry the bed’s so small,” you said you lifted the covers for him to get in. It was a tight fit and you were practically on top of him, not that you minded.

“It’s alright it’s... cozy,” he smiled, gently running his fingers along your face. He was quiet for a few minutes before adding, “Would it weird you out if I said I thought about being like this with you a lot?”

You shook your head, “Not at all.” The thought gave you butterflies.

Mika smiled, giving you one last kiss, “Goodnight, y/n.”

“Goodnight, Mika,” you replied, settling into his chest. You didn't know how to explain it, but in that moment you knew without a shadow of a doubt that you and Mika were destined to be with each other. 

[topfygad]

Travel Rewards Program Linking, New Citi Rule, Best Stopover Deals, Disney Hacks, AA Sweet Spots

We deliver you all of the journey rewards program linking partnerships, the brand new Citi 48 month rule, the perfect stopover offers, welcome a brand new web site titled Disney Hacks, all of the AA candy spots, all of the world borders by age, all of the states ranked by weight problems, wonderful aerial images, we expose the identical previous manner of running a blog by pretending to be useful to unsuspecting readers who’re clueless and pump them with affiliate hyperlinks, expose clickbait crap which is much more insulting and it’ll solely cease if YOU cease clicking on it, one other airline goes dynamic pricing mode, the Amex RATs are at it once more, nice trying new First and Enterprise class seats by ANA, ebook JAL flights on-line within the AA web site, a tremendous private finance hyperlink you’ll love as a lot as I did, find out how to renew International Entry, really feel the pleasure of Marriott getting Bonvoyed, my first marathon plans and rather more.

TBB Weblog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Encourage. In That Order!

Help TBB by making use of for CREDIT CARDS, purchasing with our AMAZON AFFILIATE LINK & clicking our REFERRAL LINKS

You want my weblog? Ship a hyperlink to somebody please!

  Buckle up, that is going to be an extended one! I could possibly be doing different issues with my time you guys…why do I preserve doing this? Possibly as a result of I prefer it? Or possibly as a result of I’m an fool. After I retire from this gig, I’m going to be like Mile Nerd and put up as soon as a month, not like Ingy or Rene (see BLOG BUZZ part)

In case you missed this week’s visitor weblog put up, right here it’s once more: Is Alaska Airlines Mileage Plus Program the Best? Sweet Spots, Award Space, Stopovers!

Nice reddit reference: Travel Rewards Programs Partnerships/Linking.

Isn’t it peculiar how journey bloggers who promote bank cards discover each purpose to inform their readers how modifications that occur usually are not so unhealthy…when they are surely! Lastly, we get some information correctly analyzed by somebody who doesn’t promote bank cards and, due to this fact, can weblog freely for YOUR profit: The New Citi 48 Month Rule Now Covers All Citi AAdvantage Cards INCLUDING Business Cards and No, It Isn’t Good!!

The brand new Citi coverage that modifications the AA playing cards bonus availability from 24 months to 48 months makes issues for many mile-and-points fanatics worse, not higher like some of us appear to imagine. Once more, most doesn’t imply everybody, and there are people who find themselves going to learn, which is completely fantastic. In case you are likely to examine baggage and infrequently fly American, your free bag profit alone can pay your annual charge many occasions over. No purpose to shut down the cardboard after the primary yr. That is clearly a churn-combating measure, and simply to make clear: I’m not faulting Citi for preventing churners, simply making an attempt to set the file straight. I feel the brand new coverage will unfold to ThankYou playing cards too.

I discovered it extremely pleasing to see Marriott within the information this week, having to face a monster fine for not protecting our data after which getting sued for pricing practices and scummy resort fees. Lets simply say I’m not getting an invite to any occasion from them anytime quickly lol.

Good reference put up on all of the best stopover deals worldwide. I might ask a lame blogger questions like “what’s your favourite?”. However I’m simply going to return out and say what I actually really feel you guys…that my favourite is something from a bank card you bought with my links

If you’re because of renew your International Entry membership, Journey With Grant has a very detailed post about it.

It seems that Shawn, of Miles to Reminiscences, has a brand new enterprise out: Disney Hacks. If in case you have been studying my weblog for some time, you’ll know that I’m NOT a Disney fan! Hey, we’re all completely different!

With none warning in any way, ANA launched nice trying First and Enterprise class seats: East Meets West: ANA Launches New Luxury Cabins in Collaboration with Famed Japanese Architect and British Designers.

Artistic 3D panorama maps of National Parks. Attention-grabbing hyperlink.

Since we’re into maps, here’s a massive map showing all of the world’s borders by age. I discovered the video hyperlink fascinating too!

There’s a lot BS on-line. And many it’s generated by, you realize, intelligence companies trying to hurt us. Sadly, a number of morons click on on this clickbait crap. Right here is who’s behind the Seth Wealthy “story”: The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

MUST CLICK hyperlink if you’re into private finance. Simply Click on it, you gained’t be shocked. However you’ll be educated immensely! “This I Believe, Money Edition“.

A group of 41 amazing aerial photography shots. With drones!

Picture Credit score: OvidDPop

Very miserable in the event you stay in one of many states close to the highest in these lists, unhappy! The States with the Worst Eating and Exercise Habits in America.

We at the moment are coming into BLOG BUZZ, a bit for superior hobbyists and veterans of this quick imploding interest and in addition a bit the place I am going on and on about some stuff that occurs in my life as a result of it helps me really feel higher about myself.

All PR is nice PR. That was evident when the brand new proprietor of RenesPoints got here right here to inform me that. So, within the subsequent replace of the TBB Blogs To Ignore, I wish to make an announcement that the weblog Pointchaser will likely be added. Why chances are you’ll ask. And it’s a legitimate query. I might have simply saved quiet and simply shake my head in oblivion each time a one more MS play by play account was posted there. However nope. So, what was it TBB? It was the choice of Rick/Ingy/founding father of Frugal Journey Man, a loyal reader of my weblog, to return out of retirement (you knew that was coming) and unleash his “craft” in writing at Pointchaser ( who, in the event you missed it, is a giant fan of Rick). So, we’ve some weblog posts which are the identical previous crap concentrating on newbies and being “useful” to them and getting them to click on on the affiliate hyperlinks in every weblog put up (which in fact it’s disclosed someplace on the positioning nobody will search for and even suspect). And that is of us how running a blog is completed. Running a blog as in “conversions is all that issues”. Welcome again Rick. What iz da matter, working low on cash huh? In case you solely had not bought so early, unhappy!

Beechy had no clue they have been affiliate hyperlinks. Rick, smelling $$$, goes in for the kill/conversion within the feedback!

Apparently, that is the way it works on-line. Serving to readers by solely posting straightforward recycled “content material’ stuffed with affiliate hyperlinks the readers by no means suspect that the author has an ulterior motive and would possible by no means be running a blog within the first place if it was not for, cough, conversions. In case you see a DIRECT hyperlink right here that makes me cash, I’d add REFERRAL or AFFILIATE hyperlink subsequent to it simply so, you realize, you realize! Oblique hyperlinks don’t rely…which makes me really feel higher about myself. Will I ever recover from this hangup? Nicely, after virtually 7 years running a blog away…I’d not guess on it, unhappy!

Talking of mailing it in to make some cash from the Uber hyperlink, right here goes the founding father of RenesPoints once more, smh:

It’s 90*+ Outdoors – Would you Order Ice Cream by way of Uber Eats from Chilly Stone Creamery?

Hey, I get it. Truly, I don’t. In case you ever see me posting clickbait crap like this don’t make me ever neglect it okay?

Andy once more with all the American AAdvantage Sweet Spots That Are Still With Us. Seemingly not for lengthy…Fast, earlier than they go the dynamic route too any day now!

Talking of going dynamic, one more airline went that manner too. I’ve been warning you it is a secular pattern for some time! El Al Goes Dynamic, Removes The Ability To Search For Standard Award Tickets; Here’s What It Means For Matmid And Qantas Members.

Good that we are able to now book JAL awards online at the American Airlines website.

Causes #889 and #890 to inform Amex to go screw themselves (oops, there goes one other invite, unhappy!): The RAT team is at it again, I swear these guys most likely get bonuses by what number of factors they claw again! After which, please sit down, they killed all of the Precedence Move restaurant entry from their cardholders…I imply, that’s simply one other unhappy blow! Did I say I can’t wait to cancel my Platinum Enterprise card. Oh sure, I did.

I signed up for the Detroit Marathon in October. I’m assembly with a working coach tomorrow, time to take this significantly so I can end. If I might solely get again to my earlier kind earlier than I left for Greece…The warmth doesn’t assist in any respect for that!

The notorious Ann Arbor Artwork Honest DO is subsequent weekend once more. Good to see so many regulars once more. I could have one other announcement about that quickly.

Ben at One Mile at a Time for just a few days was outposting all the complete time writers at The Factors Man, wow! Does he sleep? Is he a robotic? Can I’ve a few of his conversions too? Superb work ethic!

And I go away you with this…Ought to have posted this on July 4th lol

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Opinions expressed listed here are writer’s alone, not these of any financial institution, bank card issuer, lodge, airline, or different entity. This content material has not been reviewed, authorized or in any other case endorsed by any of the entities included throughout the put up.

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[ulyssessklein]

Fingerstylist Jordan Brodie Talks about In Good Company, His Love of the Guitar and Influences

By: Rick Landers

Images: Courtesy of J.Brodie

Jordan Brodie

Of late, Guitar International has been enjoying guitarists known for “fingerstyle” playing who work inside and outside the CAGE to find all kinds of choice sounds that can be melodic, dissonant, romantic and oftentimes otherworldly.

We happened upon Australian, Jordan Brodie, a few months ago who travels the path of some who led the path for him, including Tommy Emmanuel, Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny, Bruce Mathiske, Michael Fix, and Julian Lage.

Brodie’s 2018 release, In Good Company (MGM), offers up a fine bit of guitar mastery and showmanship, technical precision and nuance and has us anticipating his next release, even before In Good Company has made the rounds of his touring performances beyond his native shores. His debut album, First Take, made clear the young man’s guitar virtuosity and his performances proved a fine way to “wow” a growing huddle of fans.

He’d come a long way since his early fumbling with his Yamaha nylon-stringed guitar to today, with his outstanding clarity and accuracy in find the right notes, bending them intuitively and virtually telling a story through his masterful playing.

In Good Company took three years to pull together, while he was a student at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. So, there was a bit of juggling between the books, guitar practice and songwriting.

And speaking of otherworldly, on the track, “Travels”, you’ll likely hear an instrument you’ve never heard before called a Handpan. Written during this travels in China, Brodie incorporated the instrument’s sonics broadening and deepening the songs ethereal appeal, almost keeping us on metallic rim or edge of balance and edginess.

Last year, Jordan toured Australia, Canada, Ireland and Germany and we’re looking forward to a future tour here in the States.

******

Rick Landers:  Listening to your music, I enjoyed not only the technical skills you use to weave around a song, but the emotional nuances, the phrasing and your movement from a point of a note to a light touch, almost like a soft brush of a sound. What road did you take on the guitar that led you to your style?

Jordan Brodie:  Thank you for the kind words! I started playing guitar like most seven year olds did – wanting to become a rock star! I have AC/DC to thank for that.  I was extremely lucky to have a great teacher, Andy Redhead, who introduced me to fingerstyle guitar, and more importantly, Tommy Emmanuel and Chet Atkins from a young age.

 I fell in love with the challenge and freedom of playing the bass, rhythm and melody simultaneously. I imitated them for years. But, studying jazz guitar at University was where my style really developed.

Jordan Brodie

I discovered Julian Lage. I was obsessed with him – the fact that he was an extraordinary jazz guitarist, but could play the most beautiful, delicate and simplistic melodies on acoustic guitar was eye opening.

His solo acoustic guitar album, World’s Fair, was a big turning point.  It was a much-needed fresh perspective to acoustic guitar! A few other artists are Ralph Towner and Pat Metheny.

Another massive feature of my style is my thumb-pick. Over time the tip of my thumb-pick wore down to almost no tip. And that’s how I kept it.

It allowed me to use the thumb-pick to create solid bass lines, while keeping my fingers free for melodies or chords. However, I also hold the thumb-pick like a plectrum to play faster single note lines, or for certain rhythmic strumming.  This is highlighted in the song “Luna”.

Rick:  Your track, “Luna” brought to mind Davey Graham’s “Angie” and I wondered if you studied his style and technique?

Jordan Brodie:  I actually haven’t heard of Davey Graham! I have some homework to do!

“Luna” was inspired by Julian Lage, in particular his tune “233 Butler from his album, Gladwell.

I think the main lick of “Luna” was drawn from Lage’s guitar etudes on YouTube. As I mentioned before, I was obsessed!  

Rick:  I’ve found each of my guitars has its own personality, feel and something like an old L-1 bites a bit more than, say a ‘40s J-45. What are you playing and what draws you to them? And, do you prefer a particular grouping of tone woods?

Jordan Brodie:  Absolutely! I play a Taylor 514ce. It’s been my main guitar for years. When I perform it handles numerous tuning changes without a hiccup.  Standard tuning to BGDGAD and back, no problem.

But, what I really love about this guitar is how the open tunings, like DADGAD or BGDGAD sound through an AER Amp into a PA. It is a huge, full sound! I haven’t played anything that compares yet.  So I suppose the Cedar/Mahogany combination is what I like at the moment.

Rick: You obviously excel in our world of guitar, but what other things do you do that you find inspiring enough to approach in a disciplined way?

Jordan Brodie:  I enjoy teaching and sharing my ideas and knowledge with my students! Apart from music, I’m a big Liverpool soccer fan. But, really, it’s music 24/7.

Rick:  Where are you at in Australia and what’s the music scene there like for instrumentalists, like yourself?

Jordan Brodie:  I live in Cairns, Queensland. For a regional city, there is a lot of music, and talented musicians around, but my plan has always been to tour rather than gig in one place! It’s a great place to base yourself though.

Rick:  Did you grow up in a family environment where music surrounded you or did you have to discover it?  Did you find you were obsessed with the guitar like a love affair of sorts?

Jordan Brodie:  Yes I did! I was surrounded by Australian rock and Americana music like AC/DC, Credence Clearwater Revival, Chris Isaak  and Johnny Cash etcetera. It’s definitely a love affair! It has never been anything else but the guitar for me. I’m 23 and my friends and family still buy me random guitar related gifts and accessories – I have too much, please stop feeding my addiction! I have other interests too!

Rick: I would tend to think that playing in smaller intimate venues with rich acoustics, that that environment would be a more inspiring place to play than, say a huge auditorium where that intimacy can get lost. What’s been your experience?  

Jordan Brodie:  I agree! Lately, I have been doing a lot of house concerts and my favourite aspect is the intimacy and that the audience can shout questions! I love it.

Rick:  Man, I just listened to “Song for You”, a beautifully melodic piece and your phrasing is touching. I can only imagine this song is for someone special. Would you elaborate on how this song came to be and if it has a deeper meaning that a song that just arrived out of the blue?  A sweet ending, as well…

Jordan Brodie:  Thank you! This piece is written in BGDGAD a tuning I stumbled across and fell in love with. I wrote “Song For You” and “Until We Meet Again” around the same time  – both in the same tuning. Nothing can beat a strong melody, I take a lot of influence from Celtic melodies.

At the time of writing, my father was diagnosed with cancer, so these two pieces were an emotional reaction of having to live with the news and the reality of it. I dedicated my latest album to him. He was my biggest fan.

Rick: I always like to ask performers if they been on the street busking, especially if they’ve become well known, maybe just to see if they could survive on the street. What kinds of experiences do you have like that?

Jordan Brodie:  I have only ever busked as a kid down at my local shopping centre. It was great practice and not bad money for a kid. However, my dream was and still is to perform to people that sit still and quietly listen to me!

Rick:  Please, tell us about your latest release and what projects you’ve got churning around at the moment that we can all look forward to.

Jordan Brodie:  My new album, In Good Company, came out this year! It is a collection of songs that I wrote over three years while studying at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.

It’s a special album to me. They are the last pieces my Dad heard before he passed away, so it’s a tribute to him.  

I spent the first part of the year touring Australia, Canada and Ireland. But, for now I get to spend the rest of the year writing, practicing and taking all of the culture and sounds in Europe.

Rick: Jordan, I love the mix of music you sent, each with its own stylish personality. I look forward to talking to you again on when your next release comes into play.

Jordan: I appreciate the kinds words. Thanks for taking the time to interview me Rick! I’m always up for a chat. Until next time!

[victorparker1-blog]

Investing Lessons Learned

There is an investing adage: “You either learn a lesson or make a profit; never both”. I have found this to be true for a better part of my investing years, but as I gain more experience, I am trying to reflect and learn lessons from all my trades – from both winners and losers.

This bull market in stocks has been ongoing for a decade and most investors have forgotten what it is like to lose money and come to witness heart-stopping moments when you suddenly see your envisioned future disappear. I first started  investing in individual stocks in 2008, just before the Global Financial Crisis and that was a great teacher. I try to remember the lessons I learned back then and continue to learn new ones everyday. Over the last couple of years, I decided to move a big portion of my portfolio into the precious metals and mining sector as I saw more value and the sector was hated by many. My reasoning is fairly simple: when the markets crash (and they will), most investors will seek safe havens, and there is no better safe haven than gold. There are a few other reasons, but that is the big one.

Over the last few quarters, I have been finding so many interesting prospects for investing in the sector, that I have overshot my initial target. The sector now makes 1/2 of my overall investing portfolio. Even with a few sales over the last few months, I have been hovering close to the 50% mark due to good returns. And the bull market in gold/silver mining stocks is just getting started!

While I look over the overall portfolio composition, I am being reminded of a lot of investing lessons from each trade. So, I decided that I will share some of these thoughts (including some random observations) here. Hopefully you will find the thoughts valuable & interesting.

“Buy what’s hated”

This is a different take on one of the most cliched saying “Buy when there is blood on the streets…”. Everyone says it. No one follows through. If a potential investment does not make your stomach churn and make you want to run for the hills, then it hasn’t hit rock-bottom yet. I started buying gold equities in late-2016. Even though I was about 6-9 months late to the party of catching the bottom, I am still ok with this. It is almost impossible to time the market perfectly. But as my friend Jay from FI Fighter likes to say: “You will never capture the bottom 10% or the top 10%….focus on riding the 80%”. Even today, there are plenty of investors who hate gold/silver and laugh at people who like to own “pet rocks”…which just tells me that I can continue to position appropriately before the next crisis.

“Rising tide lifts all boats”

When you get to participate in the early stages of a bull market, there is some leeway in picking the right stocks. Of course, you want to pick the best companies and hold them for a long time to grow your investment. But if you are early in a bull market, you can make a few mistakes. You can pick a few subpar companies and still come out on top. Lesson to learn here is to not mistake the bull market & liquidity flow to hubris in good stock picking abilities; or as Rick Rule puts it: “Don’t confuse bull market with brains”.

Speaking of liquidity flows…

“Earnings don’t move the overall market… focus on the central banks and focus on the movement of liquidity… most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It’s liquidity that moves markets.” – Stanley Druckenmiller

I have found this to be extremely true. Liquidity flow is what determines the returns in stock markets. You can own the best company in the world, but if there’s not enough followers and funds aren’t pouring in, you will end up with a Value Trap. I have experienced this play out both in my favor and against me.

This worked in my favor when it comes to Kirkland Lake Gold (KL), my largest position today. The company has been firing on all cylinders with excellent management team (chaired by none other than Eric Sprott), world-class resources, low cost productions, fantastic financials, and the list goes on. In addition, the company is cross-listed strategically — first on TSX, then cross-listed on NYSE & ASX. You will be hard pressed to find a better company in the sector today, and I believe that the company is still undervalued. Every month, analysts continue to re-evaluate and re-estimate the resources and continue to raise the price target. About a week ago, it was deemed just the Fosterville project in Australia is worth $4B, while the whole company now trades at a $4B market cap. It also helps that KL holds one of the top spots in gold-focused ETFs — a crucial aspect of liquidity flows.

I haven’t been so lucky with some of my other speculative plays such as Cordoba Minerals (CDB.V) and Sarama Resources (SWA.V) — those positions have lost most of my invested capital and are deep in the red. Thankfully, I sized those positions appropriately (more on position sizing below) and the losses were manageable and covered by the gains in my winners.

Holding & letting your winners run: Sometimes, my emotions still try to get the best of me. When you have had a good run up and sitting on massive paper gains, it is tempting to sell and book those profits. Eric Sprott had a great thought on this. To paraphrase, what he recommends is not to look backwards and look at what a stock has achieved so far and sell too early instead of letting your winners run and grow; but rather to stay forward focused; i.e., can the said company do even better and grow going forward? Kyle Bass has a good quote on this: “The past doesn’t necessarily tell you how the future will play out”.

Momentum trades: A quick note on momentum. When there is massive liquidity flow into an asset class or stock, combined with my previous point of “Rising tide lifts all boats”, it is hard to evaluate and make a quick decision on some trades. Sometimes, you just need to “fire and then aim”. Due to momentum, the price gets away from you and you then suffer from Anchoring Bias (you stop and hope that the stock price will come back to that number you first started thinking of investing at, but it never does). This has been a reality for me over the last year especially in the crypto market and the marijuana market, although the momentum has died down recently. But again, this all comes down to liquidity flow — which is where most of the money can be made.

“Bear markets are the author of Bull markets and Bull Markets are the author of Bear Markets” – Rick Rule

This one seems pretty obvious, but most of us tend to forget this. Our biases get a better hold of us and think that the good times cannot end (and likewise, bad times will not end). The deeper and worse bear markets are, the better the following bull markets tend to be and vice versa. This is not only true in the resource and commodity sector, but applies as a general investing principle.

Position Sizing

“Even the best managers in the world have difficulty with sizing positions. Positioning is very correlated to conviction level. Look at risk management in totality. Position level and portfolio level. Have position level stops or targets. Portfolio wide have risk levels of down 2%, down 5% and down 10%. Down 10% is almost mandatory risk reduction across the board to live again another day. Think about enormity of correlations when positions are large.” – Kyle Bass

Position sizing is probably the most important aspect of investing. If your portfolio is not diversified appropriately and/or you do not size your positions to fit your risk tolerance, there will be lots of pain to endure. Position sizing may not be such a problem on missed opportunities or betting too small — for e.g., if you decided to take a gamble on something and in a matter of days, you end up with a multi-bagger on a small/tiny position. You are then only left wishing that you had a bigger investment and hope to size your position appropriately next time. But the flip side is extremely dangerous. If you analyze incorrectly and take too big a position, that can lead to portfolio annihilation. I got a first-hand lesson in this last year when I initiated a position in Novo Resources Inc (NVO.V). It was a promising play on gold exploration in Western Australia, but I didn’t position appropriately. I went with too big too soon instead of buying in smaller tranches just as the stock price peaked and then dropped by almost 50% over the next few weeks/months. The good news is that the stock has recovered quite a bit and I remain invested hoping to come out on top by staying patient.

For the record, following is my ‘Metals & Miners’ portfolio — which makes approx 50% of my total investable portfolio.

  Investing vs Speculation

This is something that I find most people will disagree with me. I have gotten into heated arguments on this topic in the past few months. What is investing and what is speculation? For most investors, it seems that buying stocks in large companies that have been around for a long time is “investing”. If you invest in small companies or new technologies (e.g., junior resource companies or cryptos) thats “speculation”. I vehemently disagree with this notion. There is no black-and-white when it comes to this and what is one person’s “speculation” can be another person’s “investing”. I think there is far more speculation involved in the broad markets these days than say something in junior resource sector.

Journal/Log all trades

I find that journaling/logging (blogging in my case) all trades about what I was thinking at a certain point in time is extremely valuable. The key to learning is to look back and reflect on the trades and how the thinking has evolved. Writing down the ideas and re-evaluating is a critical aspect during an investor’s journey.

These are some of the things I’ve been thinking about lately, and this is just barely scratching the surface. What are your thoughts on these investing lessons? Be sure to leave a comment below.

Full Disclosure: My full list of holdings is available here.

Photo Source

check it out to acquire more information on the subject of precious metals investment

from victorparker https://www.modestmoney.com/investing-lessons-learned/41107/

[topfygad]

Travel Rewards Program Linking, New Citi Rule, Best Stopover Deals, Disney Hacks, AA Sweet Spots

We deliver you all of the journey rewards program linking partnerships, the brand new Citi 48 month rule, the perfect stopover offers, welcome a brand new web site titled Disney Hacks, all of the AA candy spots, all of the world borders by age, all of the states ranked by weight problems, wonderful aerial images, we expose the identical previous manner of running a blog by pretending to be useful to unsuspecting readers who’re clueless and pump them with affiliate hyperlinks, expose clickbait crap which is much more insulting and it’ll solely cease if YOU cease clicking on it, one other airline goes dynamic pricing mode, the Amex RATs are at it once more, nice trying new First and Enterprise class seats by ANA, ebook JAL flights on-line within the AA web site, a tremendous private finance hyperlink you’ll love as a lot as I did, find out how to renew International Entry, really feel the pleasure of Marriott getting Bonvoyed, my first marathon plans and rather more.

TBB Weblog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Encourage. In That Order!

Help TBB by making use of for CREDIT CARDS, purchasing with our AMAZON AFFILIATE LINK & clicking our REFERRAL LINKS

You want my weblog? Ship a hyperlink to somebody please!

  Buckle up, that is going to be an extended one! I could possibly be doing different issues with my time you guys…why do I preserve doing this? Possibly as a result of I prefer it? Or possibly as a result of I’m an fool. After I retire from this gig, I’m going to be like Mile Nerd and put up as soon as a month, not like Ingy or Rene (see BLOG BUZZ part)

In case you missed this week’s visitor weblog put up, right here it’s once more: Is Alaska Airlines Mileage Plus Program the Best? Sweet Spots, Award Space, Stopovers!

Nice reddit reference: Travel Rewards Programs Partnerships/Linking.

Isn’t it peculiar how journey bloggers who promote bank cards discover each purpose to inform their readers how modifications that occur usually are not so unhealthy…when they are surely! Lastly, we get some information correctly analyzed by somebody who doesn’t promote bank cards and, due to this fact, can weblog freely for YOUR profit: The New Citi 48 Month Rule Now Covers All Citi AAdvantage Cards INCLUDING Business Cards and No, It Isn’t Good!!

The brand new Citi coverage that modifications the AA playing cards bonus availability from 24 months to 48 months makes issues for many mile-and-points fanatics worse, not higher like some of us appear to imagine. Once more, most doesn’t imply everybody, and there are people who find themselves going to learn, which is completely fantastic. In case you are likely to examine baggage and infrequently fly American, your free bag profit alone can pay your annual charge many occasions over. No purpose to shut down the cardboard after the primary yr. That is clearly a churn-combating measure, and simply to make clear: I’m not faulting Citi for preventing churners, simply making an attempt to set the file straight. I feel the brand new coverage will unfold to ThankYou playing cards too.

I discovered it extremely pleasing to see Marriott within the information this week, having to face a monster fine for not protecting our data after which getting sued for pricing practices and scummy resort fees. Lets simply say I’m not getting an invite to any occasion from them anytime quickly lol.

Good reference put up on all of the best stopover deals worldwide. I might ask a lame blogger questions like “what’s your favourite?”. However I’m simply going to return out and say what I actually really feel you guys…that my favourite is something from a bank card you bought with my links

If you’re because of renew your International Entry membership, Journey With Grant has a very detailed post about it.

It seems that Shawn, of Miles to Reminiscences, has a brand new enterprise out: Disney Hacks. If in case you have been studying my weblog for some time, you’ll know that I’m NOT a Disney fan! Hey, we’re all completely different!

With none warning in any way, ANA launched nice trying First and Enterprise class seats: East Meets West: ANA Launches New Luxury Cabins in Collaboration with Famed Japanese Architect and British Designers.

Artistic 3D panorama maps of National Parks. Attention-grabbing hyperlink.

Since we’re into maps, here’s a massive map showing all of the world’s borders by age. I discovered the video hyperlink fascinating too!

There’s a lot BS on-line. And many it’s generated by, you realize, intelligence companies trying to hurt us. Sadly, a number of morons click on on this clickbait crap. Right here is who’s behind the Seth Wealthy “story”: The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

MUST CLICK hyperlink if you’re into private finance. Simply Click on it, you gained’t be shocked. However you’ll be educated immensely! “This I Believe, Money Edition“.

A group of 41 amazing aerial photography shots. With drones!

Picture Credit score: OvidDPop

Very miserable in the event you stay in one of many states close to the highest in these lists, unhappy! The States with the Worst Eating and Exercise Habits in America.

We at the moment are coming into BLOG BUZZ, a bit for superior hobbyists and veterans of this quick imploding interest and in addition a bit the place I am going on and on about some stuff that occurs in my life as a result of it helps me really feel higher about myself.

All PR is nice PR. That was evident when the brand new proprietor of RenesPoints got here right here to inform me that. So, within the subsequent replace of the TBB Blogs To Ignore, I wish to make an announcement that the weblog Pointchaser will likely be added. Why chances are you’ll ask. And it’s a legitimate query. I might have simply saved quiet and simply shake my head in oblivion each time a one more MS play by play account was posted there. However nope. So, what was it TBB? It was the choice of Rick/Ingy/founding father of Frugal Journey Man, a loyal reader of my weblog, to return out of retirement (you knew that was coming) and unleash his “craft” in writing at Pointchaser ( who, in the event you missed it, is a giant fan of Rick). So, we’ve some weblog posts which are the identical previous crap concentrating on newbies and being “useful” to them and getting them to click on on the affiliate hyperlinks in every weblog put up (which in fact it’s disclosed someplace on the positioning nobody will search for and even suspect). And that is of us how running a blog is completed. Running a blog as in “conversions is all that issues”. Welcome again Rick. What iz da matter, working low on cash huh? In case you solely had not bought so early, unhappy!

Beechy had no clue they have been affiliate hyperlinks. Rick, smelling $$$, goes in for the kill/conversion within the feedback!

Apparently, that is the way it works on-line. Serving to readers by solely posting straightforward recycled “content material’ stuffed with affiliate hyperlinks the readers by no means suspect that the author has an ulterior motive and would possible by no means be running a blog within the first place if it was not for, cough, conversions. In case you see a DIRECT hyperlink right here that makes me cash, I’d add REFERRAL or AFFILIATE hyperlink subsequent to it simply so, you realize, you realize! Oblique hyperlinks don’t rely…which makes me really feel higher about myself. Will I ever recover from this hangup? Nicely, after virtually 7 years running a blog away…I’d not guess on it, unhappy!

Talking of mailing it in to make some cash from the Uber hyperlink, right here goes the founding father of RenesPoints once more, smh:

It’s 90*+ Outdoors – Would you Order Ice Cream by way of Uber Eats from Chilly Stone Creamery?

Hey, I get it. Truly, I don’t. In case you ever see me posting clickbait crap like this don’t make me ever neglect it okay?

Andy once more with all the American AAdvantage Sweet Spots That Are Still With Us. Seemingly not for lengthy…Fast, earlier than they go the dynamic route too any day now!

Talking of going dynamic, one more airline went that manner too. I’ve been warning you it is a secular pattern for some time! El Al Goes Dynamic, Removes The Ability To Search For Standard Award Tickets; Here’s What It Means For Matmid And Qantas Members.

Good that we are able to now book JAL awards online at the American Airlines website.

Causes #889 and #890 to inform Amex to go screw themselves (oops, there goes one other invite, unhappy!): The RAT team is at it again, I swear these guys most likely get bonuses by what number of factors they claw again! After which, please sit down, they killed all of the Precedence Move restaurant entry from their cardholders…I imply, that’s simply one other unhappy blow! Did I say I can’t wait to cancel my Platinum Enterprise card. Oh sure, I did.

I signed up for the Detroit Marathon in October. I’m assembly with a working coach tomorrow, time to take this significantly so I can end. If I might solely get again to my earlier kind earlier than I left for Greece…The warmth doesn’t assist in any respect for that!

The notorious Ann Arbor Artwork Honest DO is subsequent weekend once more. Good to see so many regulars once more. I could have one other announcement about that quickly.

Ben at One Mile at a Time for just a few days was outposting all the complete time writers at The Factors Man, wow! Does he sleep? Is he a robotic? Can I’ve a few of his conversions too? Superb work ethic!

And I go away you with this…Ought to have posted this on July 4th lol

TBB travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com

Observe TBB on Twitter @FlyerTalkerinA2.

You may subscribe to TBB beneath, winners solely!

Opinions expressed listed here are writer’s alone, not these of any financial institution, bank card issuer, lodge, airline, or different entity. This content material has not been reviewed, authorized or in any other case endorsed by any of the entities included throughout the put up.

Like this:

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[topfygad]

Travel Rewards Program Linking, New Citi Rule, Best Stopover Deals, Disney Hacks, AA Sweet Spots

We deliver you all of the journey rewards program linking partnerships, the brand new Citi 48 month rule, the perfect stopover offers, welcome a brand new web site titled Disney Hacks, all of the AA candy spots, all of the world borders by age, all of the states ranked by weight problems, wonderful aerial images, we expose the identical previous manner of running a blog by pretending to be useful to unsuspecting readers who’re clueless and pump them with affiliate hyperlinks, expose clickbait crap which is much more insulting and it’ll solely cease if YOU cease clicking on it, one other airline goes dynamic pricing mode, the Amex RATs are at it once more, nice trying new First and Enterprise class seats by ANA, ebook JAL flights on-line within the AA web site, a tremendous private finance hyperlink you’ll love as a lot as I did, find out how to renew International Entry, really feel the pleasure of Marriott getting Bonvoyed, my first marathon plans and rather more.

TBB Weblog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Encourage. In That Order!

Help TBB by making use of for CREDIT CARDS, purchasing with our AMAZON AFFILIATE LINK & clicking our REFERRAL LINKS

You want my weblog? Ship a hyperlink to somebody please!

  Buckle up, that is going to be an extended one! I could possibly be doing different issues with my time you guys…why do I preserve doing this? Possibly as a result of I prefer it? Or possibly as a result of I’m an fool. After I retire from this gig, I’m going to be like Mile Nerd and put up as soon as a month, not like Ingy or Rene (see BLOG BUZZ part)

In case you missed this week’s visitor weblog put up, right here it’s once more: Is Alaska Airlines Mileage Plus Program the Best? Sweet Spots, Award Space, Stopovers!

Nice reddit reference: Travel Rewards Programs Partnerships/Linking.

Isn’t it peculiar how journey bloggers who promote bank cards discover each purpose to inform their readers how modifications that occur usually are not so unhealthy…when they are surely! Lastly, we get some information correctly analyzed by somebody who doesn’t promote bank cards and, due to this fact, can weblog freely for YOUR profit: The New Citi 48 Month Rule Now Covers All Citi AAdvantage Cards INCLUDING Business Cards and No, It Isn’t Good!!

The brand new Citi coverage that modifications the AA playing cards bonus availability from 24 months to 48 months makes issues for many mile-and-points fanatics worse, not higher like some of us appear to imagine. Once more, most doesn’t imply everybody, and there are people who find themselves going to learn, which is completely fantastic. In case you are likely to examine baggage and infrequently fly American, your free bag profit alone can pay your annual charge many occasions over. No purpose to shut down the cardboard after the primary yr. That is clearly a churn-combating measure, and simply to make clear: I’m not faulting Citi for preventing churners, simply making an attempt to set the file straight. I feel the brand new coverage will unfold to ThankYou playing cards too.

I discovered it extremely pleasing to see Marriott within the information this week, having to face a monster fine for not protecting our data after which getting sued for pricing practices and scummy resort fees. Lets simply say I’m not getting an invite to any occasion from them anytime quickly lol.

Good reference put up on all of the best stopover deals worldwide. I might ask a lame blogger questions like “what’s your favourite?”. However I’m simply going to return out and say what I actually really feel you guys…that my favourite is something from a bank card you bought with my links

If you’re because of renew your International Entry membership, Journey With Grant has a very detailed post about it.

It seems that Shawn, of Miles to Reminiscences, has a brand new enterprise out: Disney Hacks. If in case you have been studying my weblog for some time, you’ll know that I’m NOT a Disney fan! Hey, we’re all completely different!

With none warning in any way, ANA launched nice trying First and Enterprise class seats: East Meets West: ANA Launches New Luxury Cabins in Collaboration with Famed Japanese Architect and British Designers.

Artistic 3D panorama maps of National Parks. Attention-grabbing hyperlink.

Since we’re into maps, here’s a massive map showing all of the world’s borders by age. I discovered the video hyperlink fascinating too!

There’s a lot BS on-line. And many it’s generated by, you realize, intelligence companies trying to hurt us. Sadly, a number of morons click on on this clickbait crap. Right here is who’s behind the Seth Wealthy “story”: The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

MUST CLICK hyperlink if you’re into private finance. Simply Click on it, you gained’t be shocked. However you’ll be educated immensely! “This I Believe, Money Edition“.

A group of 41 amazing aerial photography shots. With drones!

Picture Credit score: OvidDPop

Very miserable in the event you stay in one of many states close to the highest in these lists, unhappy! The States with the Worst Eating and Exercise Habits in America.

We at the moment are coming into BLOG BUZZ, a bit for superior hobbyists and veterans of this quick imploding interest and in addition a bit the place I am going on and on about some stuff that occurs in my life as a result of it helps me really feel higher about myself.

All PR is nice PR. That was evident when the brand new proprietor of RenesPoints got here right here to inform me that. So, within the subsequent replace of the TBB Blogs To Ignore, I wish to make an announcement that the weblog Pointchaser will likely be added. Why chances are you’ll ask. And it’s a legitimate query. I might have simply saved quiet and simply shake my head in oblivion each time a one more MS play by play account was posted there. However nope. So, what was it TBB? It was the choice of Rick/Ingy/founding father of Frugal Journey Man, a loyal reader of my weblog, to return out of retirement (you knew that was coming) and unleash his “craft” in writing at Pointchaser ( who, in the event you missed it, is a giant fan of Rick). So, we’ve some weblog posts which are the identical previous crap concentrating on newbies and being “useful” to them and getting them to click on on the affiliate hyperlinks in every weblog put up (which in fact it’s disclosed someplace on the positioning nobody will search for and even suspect). And that is of us how running a blog is completed. Running a blog as in “conversions is all that issues”. Welcome again Rick. What iz da matter, working low on cash huh? In case you solely had not bought so early, unhappy!

Beechy had no clue they have been affiliate hyperlinks. Rick, smelling $$$, goes in for the kill/conversion within the feedback!

Apparently, that is the way it works on-line. Serving to readers by solely posting straightforward recycled “content material’ stuffed with affiliate hyperlinks the readers by no means suspect that the author has an ulterior motive and would possible by no means be running a blog within the first place if it was not for, cough, conversions. In case you see a DIRECT hyperlink right here that makes me cash, I’d add REFERRAL or AFFILIATE hyperlink subsequent to it simply so, you realize, you realize! Oblique hyperlinks don’t rely…which makes me really feel higher about myself. Will I ever recover from this hangup? Nicely, after virtually 7 years running a blog away…I’d not guess on it, unhappy!

Talking of mailing it in to make some cash from the Uber hyperlink, right here goes the founding father of RenesPoints once more, smh:

It’s 90*+ Outdoors – Would you Order Ice Cream by way of Uber Eats from Chilly Stone Creamery?

Hey, I get it. Truly, I don’t. In case you ever see me posting clickbait crap like this don’t make me ever neglect it okay?

Andy once more with all the American AAdvantage Sweet Spots That Are Still With Us. Seemingly not for lengthy…Fast, earlier than they go the dynamic route too any day now!

Talking of going dynamic, one more airline went that manner too. I’ve been warning you it is a secular pattern for some time! El Al Goes Dynamic, Removes The Ability To Search For Standard Award Tickets; Here’s What It Means For Matmid And Qantas Members.

Good that we are able to now book JAL awards online at the American Airlines website.

Causes #889 and #890 to inform Amex to go screw themselves (oops, there goes one other invite, unhappy!): The RAT team is at it again, I swear these guys most likely get bonuses by what number of factors they claw again! After which, please sit down, they killed all of the Precedence Move restaurant entry from their cardholders…I imply, that’s simply one other unhappy blow! Did I say I can’t wait to cancel my Platinum Enterprise card. Oh sure, I did.

I signed up for the Detroit Marathon in October. I’m assembly with a working coach tomorrow, time to take this significantly so I can end. If I might solely get again to my earlier kind earlier than I left for Greece…The warmth doesn’t assist in any respect for that!

The notorious Ann Arbor Artwork Honest DO is subsequent weekend once more. Good to see so many regulars once more. I could have one other announcement about that quickly.

Ben at One Mile at a Time for just a few days was outposting all the complete time writers at The Factors Man, wow! Does he sleep? Is he a robotic? Can I’ve a few of his conversions too? Superb work ethic!

And I go away you with this…Ought to have posted this on July 4th lol

TBB travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com

Observe TBB on Twitter @FlyerTalkerinA2.

You may subscribe to TBB beneath, winners solely!

Opinions expressed listed here are writer’s alone, not these of any financial institution, bank card issuer, lodge, airline, or different entity. This content material has not been reviewed, authorized or in any other case endorsed by any of the entities included throughout the put up.

Like this:

Like Loading…

TAGS: AACitiDealsDisneyHacksLinkingProgramRewardsRulespotsStopoverSweetTravel

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[thekricks0krickass]

BRO HAS BEEN SWORD FIGHTING FOR HOW LONG NOW?

LIKE RICK PLEASE, USE COMMON SENSE, WTF

I can't believe Rick Riordan really gave Percy Jackson, darling of fangirls everywhere, a shirtless scene only to describe him as scrawny, weak, unimpressive, and 'not ripped'.

The guy really knows what his audience wants!

[notseaweedbrain]

Just look up a picture of prime Michael Phelps in Beijing… that’s all you gotta do

I can't believe Rick Riordan really gave Percy Jackson, darling of fangirls everywhere, a shirtless scene only to describe him as scrawny, weak, unimpressive, and 'not ripped'.

The guy really knows what his audience wants!