#but also I’d like to sit in a windowless room for five hours and just catalog things please

[longroadstonowhere]

There’s a deep irony, I think, in how I hate bad communication, like nothing stresses me out more than someone doing a bad explanation or being difficult to contact

And so of course I keep seeking out jobs where communication is paramount and therefore I will be running into bad communication all the time

[brucenat]

Happy Brucenat Week

Day 4 Prompt: Black and white

ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW.

I feel like I need to explain where the heck my wild mind went with this prompt. So, originally, I was going to go with an AU set in the early 1900s, but that didn’t fit quite right into a drabble or vignette. Then I juggled a bunch of other ideas until finally harking back to Natasha’s Endgame promo poster in greyscale. Aside from the initial exasperation, that got me thinking about the many, many infuriating, nonsensical things about the movie. I settled on one that’s been bothering me as a big Bruce fan: Professor Hulk.

So here’s my fix it for that atrocity, because that should’ve never happened (not with the way Bruce has been set up in the MCU).

It’s Always You

This would not happen to her again. She’s done losing, done witnessing loved ones suffer, even if that’s at their own hand. Especially if it’s at their own hand. As long as she’s alive and kicking, that’s not going to happen.

Bruce isn’t going to do this. Not again. Not to her. Not to himself.

For someone adept at going off the grid, he’s remarkably easy to find. It takes only a couple hours via plane and car to track down the research center he’s retreated to. According to her findings—and inquiries to Tony—the Californian university is one of the few labs still operating with gamma radiation following The Decimation. Its continued work isn’t the problem; Bruce being here is.

Getting in proves to be a far simpler task than it should. Human security is minimal. Her biggest impediment—aside from what she plans to say—is restricted keycard access. That, she surpasses by passing herself off as a researcher from McGill—another one of the universities still on its feet. She catches a grad student on her way back from a late lunch and finds the young woman more than willing to provide assistance.

Her guide offers a loaner lab coat from the department’s stock of spares and, thankfully, doesn’t inquire about the science Natasha claims to conduct. The questions that come are much easier to answer and, in some odd way, don’t taste like sour deception when she responds. The woman inquires about the relief of finding out about Bruce’s survival, comments on how the world was shaken and will never settle the same, asks—really asks—how Natasha’s handling everything.

“I’m taking things one day at a time,” Natasha tells her as they swipe into a buffer room between the hallway and lab.

“I think that’s the best any of us can do right now. Baby steps forward.” Melancholy dampens the woman’s grin to something bittersweet. She averts her gaze, gestures to the locked lab door and says with a tinge of sheepishness, “I don’t have access to his lab specifically, but I’m sure if you knock he’ll—oh.” She looks at the barrier as though it’s interrupted her. “I suppose I could’ve knocked for you. I’m sorry.”

“No. Thank you.” No matter how strained it might be, she tries to muster a slight smile for this woman and the kindness she’s spared. That’s the very least she can do in recompensing the suffering earth.

Her escort returns the gesture with a little nod and exits from the way they came. Before one door has closed, Natasha’s banging on the other. If this had been another time—something prior to five years ago—she’d think her force excessive. There’s surely a more efficient way in—there usually is when there’s a locked door—however…

Hell, if this had happened even a year ago, she wouldn’t be here in the first place. She wouldn’t have the option. But she does now and, dammit, she’s cursing herself for standing in a borrowed lab coat and not just breaking in to begin with—

A lock clicks and the metal barricade yields. In its vacancy, she finds Bruce.

Sleeplessness stains the undersides of his eyes in a faint purple, the color of an almost-faded bruise. Despite not losing any weight, his cheeks sink inward, as though the world slowly siphons his energy for its strength. He must see the same reflecting from her to him. They’re both a wreck, but they’re both here. It came so close to not being that way.

“How long were you planning on hiding here?” It’s intended as a tease but feels heavier on her tongue, like metal.

“Um…” He casts a worried look over his shoulder, toward the machines that loom like dragons guarding their keep. He emerges from the windowless lair into the narrow room with her and shuts the beasts away. “I’d invite you in, but I don’t want to expose you to anything.”

That’s not incredibly concerning. Not at all.

Staving off an accusational tone, she asks, “Is it gamma?”

The twist of his lips and avoidance of his eyes is the loudest confirmation she could get.

“Why are you doing this?” She wants to hold him, feel his face between her hands and stay still until she memorizes his pulse and the way he sees her, how he doesn’t just look at her but for her. She could also smack him for what he’s doing, but that’s a marginally weaker impulse.

“Half the world was wiped out. Billions of people.”

“I know.” All too well, she knows.

“And you’re doing something about it.” He counters. “Rocket’s doing something about it. Rhodey, Carol, Okoye, Wakanda—they’re all doing something. I’m a bystander. I’m useless.”

“Bullshit.” The curses comes out of her like wildfire, and she lets it simmer and burn freely. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for the safety of everyone else. That won’t bring anyone back. That’s not how this works.”

“I know,” he says. “But what kind of person am I if I don’t try to at least make things better? Someone has to clean up after Thanos—”

“Not like this.” Her gaze bores into him. He needs to hear what she isn’t saying—the things she isn’t sure how to say or translate from feeling to articulation.

“I don’t know how else to do it.” Surrender veils the edges of his face, deepens the shadows in his brown eyes.

She does everything but physically reach for him. “You’ll figure it out. There are labs—there’s a shortage of doctors. There’s the facility…” Her head flickers back to the last time they were there together—three weeks ago. It feels like two years, the same span of time she went without him after he left her the first time, except this absence has felt worse. She now knows what it’s like to sleep through the night after hell has scorched the earth, to drift into a transient nothing and awaken to him beside her and have that—not guilt, not suffocation, not persistent terror, but him—as the first thing in the day. With him, she’s experienced what a new day feels like after the world as they know it ends.

He stares into the space separating them. She snaps back to the present, where he’s in front of her yet just out of reach.

“You can still help people.” She resists the canyon of disbelief dividing them.

He directs his response to the tile floor, “This might be the best way I have.”

“It’s not.” He must be afraid to look at her, to see the truth in what she knows is a fact. “You’re capable of so much, and that’s not because of the other guy.” The backs of her hands itch for the feel of him. She clenches them, releases, continues, “I didn’t come here because of him. I came here for you, Bruce. You’re the one people need—not Hulk.”

“There could be a way to have both.” He says this as though it’s a solution and not the pain it inflicts upon him, the pain that crinkles his expression when he stares up at her.

“Or you could die trying, and we’d lose you. Maybe Hulk comes out and doesn’t go away. Then I lose you and I can’t—” The emotion slipped off her tongue, caught in the racing current that’s built within her. Regret doesn’t follow, but hot guilt does. This isn’t the time to be selfish. She recenters. “The world can’t handle another loss like that. Not now.”

She cuts herself off there. Now that she’s slipped a little, her whole grip shakes. What’s unsaid sits in her throat, a lodged hunk of something unchewed.

“I’m sorry.” He tells her this, that he’s gone, she’s lost him. The clutch of choking shoots up her throat, encloses on her.

And then he pulls her in. He hugs her. He’s hugging her and not letting go, not turning away. He wraps her into him, cocoons her, and there’s not an ounce of shame anywhere. This is the steadiest she’s felt in weeks and that should be wrong, but it doesn’t feel that way at all. So she wraps her arms around him too.

He murmurs again, “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyelids slide shut in the giving of herself to this feeling. She says, “Let’s just go.” But they don’t part. They don’t move to leave this room. For just a few moments longer, they linger. This isn’t nearly enough to fix their world, but it’s a start.

[northernrainforest]

Windows

If you’ve ever stayed in a European youth hostel, you can picture the kind of room I’m in right now. It’s windowless and Spartan: twin beds, lumpy pillows, an ancient phone on a beat up nightstand between the beds. It’s cold in here because the air is cranked up too high, but there’s no thermostat. There’s also no clock. Time doesn’t matter here, and time also matters a great deal. The main difference between this room and a room at a cheap pensione in Florence is that when you step outside you’re not greeted by the picturesque banks of the Arno. This room is one of the two “sleeping rooms” in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Providence Pavilion for Women and Children in Everett, Washington, and I’m here because my baby is across the hall, hooked up to machines.

I was 35 weeks and 5 days pregnant when I woke up at 1:18 am.

“My water just broke,” I said to Flo, and my heart sank. They had told me several days prior that I should “chill out” and “take it easy,” when I visited labor and delivery to talk about the symptoms I was having, which felt suspiciously like pre-term labor. I did do things differently: I stopped going to the gym. I started doing dishes while sitting on a bar stool (for what it’s worth, we should all be doing this. It’s comfortable.) But at the same time, a small voice inside me was egging me on: reminding me to finish little tasks, to tidy up loose ends. By Saturday, I was walking through Safeway with Ladybug slower than I’ve ever walked anywhere. I almost could have predicted I’d go into labor that night. But I was at the grocery store, because we needed milk. (It’s currently turning into yogurt in the fridge. Turns out, we’d never drink the milk after all.)

Regardless, there I was at 1:18 am, trying to be clearheaded about what to do next. I packed a few things (real talk: mostly snacks) and tried calling a couple of friends before realizing that Ladybug would be joining us at the hospital. Unsurprisingly, she was thrilled. She had already packed a bag in case she needed to stay at a friend’s house. But staying at the hospital? Even better. (The next morning she did head to a friend’s for the day, and stayed there that night as well. I’m all for including the family in life events, but I don’t need to be managing a five-year-old between earth-shattering contractions.)

Earlier that week I had gotten a pregnancy update email (baby was the length of a head of Romaine lettuce at that point, I think) which highlighted the need to map out the best route to the hospital. Flo and I giggled about this, thinking back on our interminable drives to and from UCLA Medical Center as we waited for Ladybug to arrive. To get to PeaceHealth Ketchikan, by contrast, the directions were straighforward: turn left out of driveway. Turn right on Carlanna Lake Road. Turn left into the ER. It took us a minute and a half to get there from our house, where we parked steps from the entrance of the ER by a sign that said “Reserved for Patients.”

I will not bore you with my birth story. Was it Chekhov who said, “Every happy family…?” Forget it, I just googled the phrase and will spare you my version (it’s Tolstoy, by the way. Also Russian, so arguably I was close.) “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This is true for childbirth too. Every birth story is unique and gnarly and often funny, and the ones that go haywire are unhappy in their own ways. But if you’ve heard one birth story you kind of get the idea: the built-in spoiler alert is that it ends with the birth of a baby. As wild as the story may be, the ending is almost universally the same. All I will say is that Flo and I were holding our son at 5:43 pm, sixteen hours after we packed up our little bag and our little girl and left for the hospital. I am in love with the name we chose for him, but for the purposes of this blog he will be known as Bronson. (Long story. Ask Flo.)

Anyway, in our case it wasn’t labor and delivery that made for the interesting story. A few hours after birth, after the little man had crawled his way up my chest like his sister had done and rooted around for some dinner, the nurses noticed he was struggling to breathe. So began several days of cannulas in his nose to send air more easily to the lungs, and then an IV drip to regulate his blood sugar, and then a 24-hour moratorium on breastfeeding so he wouldn’t aspirate, and then and then and then. In the same way that they say one intervention in labor can lead to a snowball effect, it felt as though Bronson was encountering more and more obstacles day by day. But he seemed well enough by Thursday morning that we were talking about being discharged the next day. Then he stopped breathing. He was in my arms in the tiny nursery—he’d been in my arms most of the night—and he suddenly seemed sleepy. The night shift nurse stared hard at the monitor, adjusting the leads that connected him to it. Within moments, our quiet night together turned loud, bright, busy. A team of nurses, doctors, anesthesiologists, respiratory specialists—they all got to work, drawing blood, inserting a new IV, pumping air back into his lungs. It was quickly decided we would need to be medevaced to to a bigger facility with a proper NICU, which meant Flo raced home to pack me a bag. Ladybug and I cried softly in each other’s arms.

Bronson and I were loaded onto an ambulance, which drove onto the airport ferry, which then headed around the backside of the airport to a police escort and a waiting Lear jet. Bronson’s tiny body was dwarfed by the enormity of his incubator. The kind man who worked for LifeMed and sat next to me on the plane briefed me on flying in a Lear jet: basically, it goes very fast, and might make you sick, and you’ll get there in no time.

The whole time we were in the air, I honestly felt like I was dying. I was semi-reclined (perhaps in a nod to my recently revoked status as a patient.) I couldn’t breathe well, and it felt as though the top of the plane was pressing down on my chest. I stared out the window at the clouds and drifted off, out of exhaustion and terror. I couldn’t see my baby, but partway through the flight, the EMT who was sitting next to him asked for my phone. She took a picture of my beautiful boy, his eyes open and bright. He seemed to be doing better than I was.

We landed in an airfield in Everett and a firefighter walked me to the bathroom in a huge hanger. The whole thing felt so absurd that I wanted to make a joke, but for once in my life I really couldn’t think of anything to say. So I said thank you. En route to the hospital, the ambulance driver pointed through the window at the largest building in the world (so he said); a huge sign on the front of it said Boeing. I felt like I did the first time I stepped off the subway in Tokyo—that everything was big, foreign, pulsing with life in a language I didn’t understand. Bronson had another apnea episode when we arrived at the hospital but I wasn’t there to see it. I had been shunted upstairs to Admitting, where a woman who looked exactly like Iris Apfel spent ten minutes misunderstanding our primary insurance. (I think it’s in the middle of Mr. and Mrs. Smith that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt get into an elevator and hear The Girl From Ipanema; after a few seconds of calm and muzak, they get to the next floor and step out, guns blazing. This is what it felt like in Admitting.) Soon, though, I was back downstairs, staring into Bronson’s room as a soft spoken doctor stood next to me and plied me for information about what had happened. I turned to him.

“To be clear,” I said, asking the thing I realized I’d been wondering all day. “This isn’t a question of, ‘My baby may not make it.’ Right…?”

“No,” he said firmly. “He will be fine.”

Still. After my baby settled down for the night, his room buzzing with machines, his body a tangle of wires, I wandered across the hall to the sleeping room and made a few sobbing phone calls. I was decidedly not okay, because I was pretty sure my baby wasn’t either.

That was ten days ago. It’s been two weeks since I glanced around my living room to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, turned off the lights and drove away. Two weeks since I wandered the halls of PeaceHealth Ketchikan, looking through the windows at the wintry darkness between mind bending contractions. Two weeks since they said, “Pushpushpushpushpushpush,” and I did and I did and I did and then I held a small red-faced boy in my arms and cried. Two weeks of living in hospitals, he and I — and things seem easier. I chatted with a couple of nurses just now, using words I didn’t know two weeks ago, talking diagnoses and comparing the opinions and temperaments of attending neonatologists. Bronson can breathe on his own, though we’re still figuring out the root cause of his problem, which (it’s becoming clear) may extend beyond his prematurity and into something congenital or structural. Stay tuned; when I know, you’ll know. He’s eating, and sleeping, and pooping, and generally doing all the things babies do.

The other day, Flo smiled a little when he saw the blankets in the sleeping room. (He and Ladybug and my mom are staying at a Hampton Inn a few blocks away, which feels like the premise of a bad sitcom.) “We used to have these blankets in our house,” he said. This baby, our baby, who lives in a crisp clean room in a state of the art hospital — his grandfather raised five children as a single dad cleaning hospitals like this one. Our little guy has his middle name. There’s been so much talk in the last few years about privilege, but I’ve come to realize from this experience that privilege extends beyond race, class, gender, and so much else that we’ve addressed in the conversation. Privilege extends to access. Privilege extends to the ability to be relieved of pain and suffering. (That is, at least as far as medically possible.) Privilege means a shared language, and the ability to speak up for ourselves. Privilege gives us a window to look through: we can choose to see all the beauty others seem to have that we have been denied, or we could recognize the beauty we ourselves have been given that others may not have access to. All we have to do is open the window, and breathe. It’s the breathing, of course, that is the hard part. But we’re working on it.

[arplis]

Arplis - News: A service roller coaster: Review of SriLankan Airlines business class on the A330-300

TPG Rating 75 100 Pros Very good seat; great food; cheap price in miles. Cons Inconsistent service; expensive and very slow Wi-Fi. 15/20 Ground Experience 25/30 Cabin + Seat 10/15 Amenities + IFE 17/20 Food + Beverage 8/15 Service SriLankan Airlines is a small carrier with just 26 aircraft in its fleet, so it sometimes gets overlooked. But it’s a member of the Oneworld alliance with British Airways, American Airlines and 10 other major carriers, so it was high time we gave Sri Lanka’s flag carrier a whirl. Its direct flight between London Heathrow (LHR) and Colombo (CMB) is a great way to get to Sri Lanka using Avios or other Oneworld miles like American Airlines’. And Colombo is also a great jumping-off point to nearby destinations such as the Maldives. Flying through Colombo is also a good way to score phenomenally cheap tickets in premium classes, such as Emirates First. Ultimately, this SriLankan flight ended up below the 79-point average score of our long-haul business-class reviews. The airline delivered a great food experience and did relatively well on the ground, but couldn’t keep up in the service department. In This Post Booking TPG used just 42,500 American Airlines AAdvantage miles to book a one-way business-class ticket from Male, Maldives, to London via Colombo. The other obvious way to book the flight would be with Avios. Related: Here’s why you should care about British Airways Avios Round-trip cash tickets in business class from Colombo to London, and vice versa, averaged the equivalent of $3,500 in March and April. Ground Experience TPG Rating 15/20 4R-ALO Tail 4yr Age 13:01 Departure 11h 26m Duration As I approached the airport in a taxi, I noticed a sign for business-class passengers pointing off to the left of the main road into the airport. It was marked Silk Route, the name SriLankan gives the ground experience for its business-class passengers. The cab pulled up outside and staff immediately brought up trolleys to take my bags to the terminal. There was a security check to get inside the building. All bags were scanned and people had to walk through metal detectors as an extra security measure. My name was then checked off a physical passenger manifest and I was led to one of two check-in desks, which were both empty. There was a huge seating area with tables and chairs. I went out into the main terminal, walking past the main check-in desk on my way. I noticed there was a dedicated Sri Lankan business-class desk here too, which was also for Oneworld Emerald and Sapphire elite members, and a second priority check-in lane for Oneworld Ruby members. The lines at immigration were short and I headed into the main airside departure hall. The airport is actually quite fun, with a row of over-the-top souvenir shops besides the more typical international duty-free options. There were two lounges I was eligible to use: the Serenediva for Oneworld Sapphire members, and the superior Serendib for business-class passengers and Oneworld Emerald members. I checked out the more basic lounge first, which was small, drab, windowless and rather depressing. It also had poor food offerings — although at 11 a.m. they were between meals, according to a sign. The Serendib is more impressive. It’s brighter, with runway views through large windows. The greeting at the door was welcoming and I was offered a 20-minute complimentary massage. There are plenty of seating areas, and although the lounge was busy, it still had plenty of free chairs. There are two showers in the men’s bathroom and the facilities were clean. The food was varied, with local, Asian and Western options. I tried some of the local offerings — butter chicken, chili poppadoms and vegetable biryani. They were excellent. I was called for the spa treatment I’d booked and asked if I wanted a foot massage. I didn’t ask about other options, but the lady sitting next to me was getting a back massage. I’m glad I took them up on the massage. The treatment was fantastic, using oils and reflexology techniques, and I even got a little pot of ayurvedic balm as a gift on my way out. The spa is actually a weird little box of a room with two chairs, but it really did the trick. Overall the lounge was a great experience, even if it was a little rough around the edges. The quality of the food, the charming staff and the fun treatment carried the day. It was a five-minute stroll down to Gate 12 where the A330-300 was waiting. Full security is carried out at each gate, and there wasn’t much time to wait as I was one of the last to reach the waiting area. Boarding began around 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time of 12.50 p.m. A separate channel for business class led to door 1L — first on the left — and straight into the biz cabin. SriLankan is among the airlines that give their airplanes names; the Airbus taking us to London was a four-year-old jet named City of Senkadagalapura, a UNESCO World Heritage Site also known as the Sacred City of Kandy Cabin and Seat TPG Rating 25/30 1-2-1 Configuration 21 Width 2 Lavs Flight attendants, decked out in blue saris with a peacock-feather motif, welcomed me and pointed me to my seat. The business cabin of SriLankan’s A330-300s is arranged in seven rows of four seats in a 1-2-1 reverse-herringbone configuration. The center pair of seats are angled into each other and are better for a couple, but you have to lean forward to see each other. This is a much better business-class product than on SriLankan’s smaller A330-200s, which have three rows of seats in 2-2-2 configuration, meaning not everybody has direct aisle access. On the A330-300s, seats are upholstered in a teal-colored leather with a grey/beige headrest, which I thought I would hate after researching the cabin ahead of the flight. However, the seat actually looks quite smart; the photos I had seen made it look cheaper than it did in real life. Mine was 3K, a right-hand window seat. There is ample leg room, with a seat pitch of 78 inches. The seat is comfortable with plenty of padding. At shoulder level, there is a reading light, IFE control panel, USB and universal power outlet, plus a seat-control panel. The tray table extends from the console at the side of the seat and swings out in a folded position. It can then be folded out to double in size. It’s not huge, but comfortably fits a 15-inch Macbook. The area above where the table folds away is the only significant flat surface, and there are two other small storage areas — one underneath this console and one by the footwell for storing magazines. There is also an armrest that must remain stowed for taxi, takeoff and landing. The seat extends into a fully flat position for sleeping. When you lie down, your feet tuck into the footwell underneath the seat in front. No mattress pad is provided. There are two toilets at the front of the cabin for the sole use of business-class passengers. They are run-of-the-mill bathrooms but with hand wash, hand cream and mouthwash. Amenities and IFE TPG Rating 10/15 15in Screen 120 Movies 50 TV Shows No Live TV Yes Tailcam A soft and good-quality pillow was on my seat when I arrived. Shortly after sitting down, the crew handed out a blanket, which was thin but very soft and felt high-quality. They also handed out an Aigner-branded amenity kit containing toothbrush and toothpaste, lip balm, moisturizer, tissues, a hairbrush, hand sanitizer and earplugs. A separate pack of SriLankan-branded socks and a good-quality eye mask were left at the seat. Headphones were hanging on a small hook on the seat. They carried the SriLankan logo and seemed a bit beaten up but they worked OK, although they were not noise-cancelling, which has become a business-class benchmark. Wi-Fi was available on board but it kept dropping out during the flight and cost a hefty $40 for full-flight coverage, with a usage cap of only 400MB. The performance of the Wi-Fi was so bad that every attempt I made to test the speed failed. The IFE screen was a good size at 15.4″ and operated by touchscreen or by the handheld control device. There were over 50 TV shows, 120 movies, audio shows, a moving map and front- and downward-facing live cameras. Food and Beverage TPG Rating 17/20 2 Meals Piper-Heidsieck Cuvée Brut Champagne Yes Dine on Demand Shortly after reaching my seat, I was offered pre-departure beverages (orange juice, water and Champagne) and hot towels. Lunch orders were taken before departure and the lunch service began in earnest just 30 minutes into the flight. I chose the Arabic mezze starter which included muhammara, tabouleh, dolmade and labneh. It was fresh and delicious, the perfect way to kick off the proceedings. For the main course, the crew recommended the signature Sri Lankan-style chicken curry which was served with tempered beetroot, bitter gourd mallung, vegetable cutlet, and steamed basmati rice. It was exceptional, with delicious and subtle spices and good accompaniments, save for the bitter gourd mallung which was way too bitter for me (the warning was in the name). I washed this down with an Argentinian Sauvignon Blanc. After clearing the main, the crew brought a cheese tray, which was still wrapped in cling film and a little sad, but the accompanying fruit plate had fat chunks of pineapple, papaya and watermelon and was juicy and perfect after the curry. A trolley was then brought though the cabin with brandies and dessert wines, chocolate Sacher torte, and tea and coffee served out of beautiful silver jugs. It didn’t stop there — the meal closed with a choice of sweet treats. The menu stated that dine-on-demand was possible, although it looked like most everyone in the cabin took their food immediately because of the time of departure, but it was handy to know about the other option on a flight of almost 12 hours. For the second meal, I chose the vegetable kottu roti, a spicy shredded roti dish with dal, which was tasty if heavy. The fresh fruit it came with was a good antidote to that heaviness. Service TPG Rating 8/15 No Extra Pillows No Turndown Service The service ended up being a letdown. It was efficient on the whole, despite regular bursts of turbulence during the flight, and the crew showed flashes of warmth and excellence which made the overall service level harder to swallow. The crew seemed distant at times, yet somewhere over the Persian Gulf half the crew burst out of the galley, wielding a guitar, to sing (quite beautifully, including harmonies) five Christmas carols. It was five days before Christmas, after all. The good vibes came and went, though. Sometimes the crew were happy and friendly, and at other times I felt like I was a huge inconvenience, mainly on the few occasions I was just asking for water top-ups. Watching interactions with other passengers, it felt like crew members were going through the motions with fake smiles. When I asked around seven hours into the flight if I could have a snack (it had been five-odd hours since I’d last eaten), a flight attendant barked that the next meal would be served in the next hour. This was at odds with the “dine on demand” stated in the menu, but all I was really after was a few nuts or something. I went back to my seat to wait for the meal, which came about 30 minutes later. An hour before landing, I asked if there was anything sweet on board, maybe some chocolate. The response from the flight attendant was, “No, I gave everything to the other passengers,” and she turned to walk off. When I pushed and asked if there really was nothing at all, she rolled her eyes and said, “Yes, I can get you a biscuit.” I’m not sure why it needed to be so difficult. It was just so confusing to have such rudeness alongside what was often very good service, especially at mealtimes. Overall Impression SriLankan can often be overlooked because of its bigger Oneworld partners with far larger route networks, but its relatively new and modern A330-300s have a competitive business-class product with some real warmth and charm. Just be sure to choose the 300 model over the smaller A330-200 with the older business class. It is the service that was inconsistent here, but had that been better, I would have felt very positively about the experience. I can’t imagine Colombo is the most efficient place to transit though, so I would probably choose the big hubs of the Middle East to make connections unless the timing of flights really worked out. But as a way to get to and from Sri Lanka, I would be willing to give SriLankan another go and pray for a happier experience in what is otherwise a good seat with great food. All photos by the author. #FlightReviews #SriLankan #S-reviews #Reviews

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/a-service-roller-coaster-review-of-srilankan-airlines-business-class-on-the-a330-301

[prepare4trouble]

Since I just watched a Red Dwarf episode with approximately this premise: the Ghost crew were in a potentially toxic area, and Chopper enjoys putting in quarantine procedures when they get back!

Um… What even is this story?

I might have gone a little overboard.

The problem is, I know that episode (and all Red Dwarf episodes) like really, really well.  As in I can almost quote it word for word.  And that is one of my favorites.  Honestly, I don’t think you wanted an entire retelling of Quarantine, but that’s kinda what you got.  I really did try not to take too much from the episode though (note the lack of Mr Flibble and Rimmer’s gingham dress – if the Ghost had a video link in the cargo bay, they might well have made an appearance though!  No luck virus here either, but who needs luck when you have the Force?

Also, to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, you have my apologies!

Ezra wasn’t claustrophobic, not by a long shot.  The Ghost wasn’t exactly spacious, and his windowless quarters even less-so.  In the past, he had regularly relied on his ability to crawl through small spaces to escape or to hide, it had saved his life on occasion.  This, however, was very different.  They had entered the Ghost through the cargo bay doors, and found that they couldn’t get out into the rest of the ship.

There was something about being in a place that he couldn’t get out of that bothered him.

It wasn’t a completely unfounded discomfort, considering what had happened to his parents.  Or considering the lingering threat of an Imperial jail that had hung over his own head for so much of his life, and still did, if he should be unlucky enough to be captured.

He walked across the center of the cargo bay until he reached the wall, stopped, turned, and walked back again, trying to ignore the feeling of rising panic building inside him. “This is ridiculous!” he complained.  “We’ve been trapped in here forever.  There’s nothing wrong with us.  If we were going to get sick, surely we’d have done it by now!”

Kanan shook his head, a curious expression on his face.  “It’s only been half an hour,” he said.

Ezra forced out an exasperated sound and flopped down on the single bunk that Chopper had thought to provide in the cargo bay.  His knees and elbows hit an unexpectedly hard surface.

Well, that was just great.

“He does have a point though,” Zeb said.  “I mean, not the half hour thing, that’s ridiculous, but how long is Chopper going to keep us prisoner in here?”

“And,” Sabine added, “if one of us does have it, surely locking us all up in here is a great way to make sure we all get sick.

Hera frowned.  “Chopper said the incubation period is up to four days.  If we’re still healthy then, we’re okay to leave.”

“Great!”  Ezra sighed loudly.  Four days?  There was no way he was going to be able to do this.  “I’m fine,” he said.  “I don’t get sick.  Not often, anyway.  And if I was, surely I’d be able to feel it.  Nobody we spoke to on the planet was sick, nobody had even mentioned an illness going around.  Chopper’s probably just messing with us.”

Sabine glanced around, looking worried all of a sudden.  “You don’t think he might be right, do you?” she asked Hera.  “You know what Chopper’s like, if there’s any chance he’s just playing some kind of a joke on us…”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Hera promised.

“Yeah,” Zeb agreed.  “He knows what I’d do to him if he tried it!”

Kanan shrugged.  “Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t.  Either way, it’s going to be fine.”

“Hey,”

Ezra looked up from the space between his feet to see Kanan standing in front of him.

“You okay?” he asked.

Ezra nodded.  “Sure,” he said.  “Why wouldn’t I be?  After all, who doesn’t want to be locked in the cargo bay with four other people for a week, with a porta-fresher and only one bed?”

The corners of Kanan’s lips twitched in something that looked like amusement.  “We’ll talk to him about the sleeping situation the next time he checks in.”  He sat himself down on the bed next to Ezra, then frowned.  “Wait a minute,”  His hands explored the surface of the bunk.

“Yeah,” Ezra confirmed.  “He ‘forgot’ to put any padding on it too.”

Kanan sighed.  “We’ll talk to him about that too,” he said.  “It’s going to be fine.”

“Chopper?” Sabine said, arms folded and glaring at nothing, as they didn’t have any kind of a view screen installed in the cargo bay and were relying on audio only to communicate with the outside world.  “Here’s a thought.  Why do we have to stay in the cargo bay when the only other person on the ship is you?  You’re not organic; even if we did have this virus you wouldn’t be able to catch it.”

Chopper explained about the contamination of surfaces aboard the ship.  It didn’t sound very convincing.

“Chopper, if you’re lying to us, you’re going to be in real trouble,” she said, her eyes narrowing in frustration.

An indignant sound came over the comms, and Chopper cut out the signal.

“Great!” Sabine said, her voice tight with anger.

“Calm down,” Hera told her.  “We’ve just got to get through the next few days, then we can get out of here.  Why don’t you draw something, I’m sure I saw a sketchbook and crayons in the box of stuff he gave us.”

Zeb let out a derisive snort from the other side of the room, one that began to make a lot more sense when Sabine opened the box.  A brand new, crisp sketch pad, and a box of crayons, every single one broken down so far that they were useless, and no way to sharpen them.

“Damnit!” she shouted, and threw the box across the room in frustration.  “He did that on purpose!”

Hera, watching from the corner, glanced at the surveillance cameras through which she was sure Chopper would be watching them.  “I think you might be right,” she said.

“What else is there in there?” Kanan asked.

Sabine reached into the box.  “Oh, hours of entertainment,” she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.  “A children’s board game with the pieces missing, a datapad that’s either broken or run out of power, I can’t tell which, and a holovid.”

“Well, at least that last thing isn’t so bad,” Kanan said.  “Not as much fun for me, but maybe you guys could narrate…”

“We don’t have a player,” Hera interrupted.

Kanan sighed.  “Right.”

“Think he’s gonna feed us?” Zeb asked.

Ezra shook his head.  “I wouldn’t count on it.  It’s Chopper.  Not like eating is a big priority for him, he’s probably forgotten that we even need food.”

“Well, he has one minute to remember, or I’m going out there and…”

“Going out there?” Sabine said.  “How are you planning on doing that?  Hera’s already tried every single code she could think of on the number lock he set on the door.  Do you see any tools around here to break out?  Do you see any lightsabers to cut through the door?  No.  Because the people of the planet insisted we go unarmed.  If we could just ‘go out there’ there wouldn’t even be a problem, would there?!”

“I’ll get out there somehow,” Zeb growled.  “Just you watch!”

“Guys,” Ezra said, placing his hands behind his head in an expression of nonchalance that he did not feel.  “Relax, okay?  It’s been five hours, I’ve gone without food for way longer than that, we’re not going to starve yet.  He’s given us water, we could easily survive four days with just that.  I’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, well we can’t all be as resilient as you, can we?” Sabine said with a scowl.  “Some of us need food!  And art supplies.  And somewhere to sleep at night!”

Zeb folded his arms.  “Don’t worry Sabine,” he said.  “We won’t really starve.  If it comes down to it, we can eat the kid.”

Hera folded her arms.  “Stop it!” she said.  “I’ll speak to Chopper.  In the meantime, sit down and be quiet, we’ve done nearly a day already, we’re getting there.”

Food, when it came, was five ration bars passed through a tiny airlock capsule that Ezra hadn’t even known about.  Hera took the box and distributed the food to everybody to prevent arguments.  “Sprout flavor,” she said, as she handed them out.

“All of them?”  Ezra hesitated before taking the bar.  He looked up, at the surveillance camera.  “Chopper, you know I can’t stand these, they literally make me throw up!”

Chopper’s voice came through the intercom.  No other flavor on board.

“Chopper, I know��that’s not true!” Ezra insisted.

Incorrect.  All other flavors have been jettisoned due to possible contamination.

“Jettisoned?  Chopper, that makes no sense at all,” Hera insisted.  “Find something else for Ezra to eat.”

“Why bother?” asked Zeb.  “He said himself, he doesn’t need to eat.  Keep these coming.  They might be disgusting, but if he’s not eating there’s more food for us.”

Ezra rounded on him, only barely resisting the urge to give in to the dark side of the Force.  “Fine, if you like that idea so much, why don’t we take your waffle stash when we get out of here?  Share it out among everyone else.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have a waffle stash,” Zeb said.  He tore open his ration bar and finished it in two gulps.  “This isn’t half bad actually, by the way.  A bit to eat really hits the spot.”

Ezra balled his hand into a fist and pulled it back ready to plant it in Zeb’s face.  Seeing this, Zeb’s expression spread into an amused grin as he prepared to retaliate.

“Stop it!”

Kanan’s voice from the other side of the room cut through the argument.  “That’s enough.  Ezra, sit on the bunk.  Zeb, over at the other side of the room, now!  It’s going to be fine, we just need to…”

All four other occupants of the room turned on him with one voice.  “Stop saying it’s going to be fine!”

Kanan backed off a step, and was just about to answer when Chopper switched on the intercom again.

Irritability is symptomatic of the virus.  Please stand by for room decontamination.

“Wait, what?” said Kanan.  “Irritability is symptomatic of being trapped in a room with four other people for a day with nothing to do and nothing to eat!”

Correct, however it is also symptomatic of the virus.  Further symptoms include irrationality and mental instability, followed by eventual system shutdown.  Preemptive system shutdown and reboot required for any chance of cure.  Stand by for decontamination.

“Reboot?  Full shutdown?” Ezra gulped as everything began to click into place.  He hadn’t seen anyone that was sick on the planet.  He also hadn’t seen any droids.  “Chopper, what kind of a virus was it you said they had on that planet?”

Irrelevant.  Stand by for decontamination.

Ezra stared wildly around the room.  “It’s a computer virus,” he said.  “And Chopper’s already got it.”

“Never mind that!” Kanan said.  “What does he mean by system shutdown?”

“Nothing good,” said Hera.  She was already by the panel at the door, the cover removed and her hands in among the wiring.  “I don’t think I can do anything without tools,” she said.

Ezra took a deep breath.  Was it his imagination; the panic returning, or was the air getting a little thin?  How exactly was Chopper planning on executing the ‘systems shutdown’? “Guys?  I think…”

“Don’t talk, save your breath.”

Okay, so they figured that one out already.

Hera’s fingers continued to work at the wires, but with no way of cutting them, even if it were possible it would take too long.  “I’ve already tried every numeric code that might mean something to Chopper.  I can’t access the wiring properly without my tools.  I don’t suppose the Force would help with this?”

Ezra stepped forward.  “I guess I could try to guess the number…”

“No, Ezra.”  Ezra turned to see Kanan behind him.  “I don’t think that’s what she means.”

Ezra turned back to Hera, eyes wide, questioning.  She nodded.  “Do it.  Use the bunk, maybe, that looks heavy enough.”

Standing side by side, Kanan and Ezra concentrated on the single bunk that Chopper had provided them, lifting it and driving it with as much force as they could into the door, again and again until the metal started to buckle and a gap appeared.  Air, recycled and stale, but full of precious oxygen, began to enter the room, and Ezra took a deep, thankful breath.

“Keep going,” Zeb called.  They pulled the bunk back again, and once again thrust it forward into the door.  The metal buckled further.

“I think I could get through there,” Sabine said.  “I’ll go find Chopper, make sure he doesn’t try anything else while you guys get everyone else out.”  Without waiting for a response, she headed for the door, dropped to her knees and began to squeeze through the small gap.

“Go easy on him,” Hera called as she disappeared.  “It’s not actually his fault, and he has told us the way to cure it.”  She stared at the damage to the door.  “I can’t believe he made us do this to my ship!”

At the other side of the door, Sabine turned and peered through incredulously.  “I’ll try not to hurt him too much,” she said.  “Well, at least until he’s back to his slightly less murderous self and we see what he has to say for himself.”  With that, she disappeared.

“Whatever she does to him, he deserves it,” Zeb said

Ezra thought about that  Actually, he wasn’t so sure.  If Chopper had been sick without realizing, and his sickness had made him paranoid enough to believe that a group of organics could be carrying a computer virus, then Hera was right, it wasn’t exactly his fault.  

Still, there was no way that Chopper wasn’t going to pay for this.

[rolandfontana]

North Dakota Changes the Rules on Solitary

Among the slightly more than two million people incarcerated in the United States, thousands serve time in solitary confinement, isolated in small often windowless cells for 22 to 24 hours a day. Some remain isolated for weeks, months or even years.

In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that the practice of solitary confinement, sometimes known as “administrative consensus,” is cruel and ineffective.

North Dakota is one state that is addressing the drive for change..

Thanks to efforts by  Leann Bertsch, North Dakota’s director of corrections and rehabilitation, and president of the Association of State Correctional Administrators, the state has begun to change solitary from an exclusively punitive  approach to one aimed at changing behavior and helping inmates develop new skills that they can use when they are released from administrative segregation—and from prison.

Her inspiration came after a trip to Norway organized by U.S. prison reform groups.

Bertsch called it a defining moment and decided to speed up reforms already in the works for the state’s prison system.

“There’s such an overemphasis on punishment and punitiveness,” Bertsch says. “You know Norway talks about punishment that works and when they mean it to work, it’s to actually make society safer by getting people to be law-abiding individuals and desist from future reoffending.”

North Dakota prison officials met to figure out how to do that in the United States.

Bertsch says they worked to define what could land people in segregated housing in the first place.

“There were a lot of different behaviors that could get you in before so we really narrowed it down,” she says.

The Old Prison Philosophy

Solitary confinement goes by many names: the hole, isolation, protective custody, the SHU (special housing unit). Whatever the name, its designed purpose is to punish disruptive inmates who break rules and to keep the prison safe by removing them from the general population.

But for many inmates,  it left psychological scars.

“You’re shut off from the world and you wait,” says Olay Silva, a 41-year-old inmate serving time in Bismarck, N.D.’s maximum-security prison. Silva spent six months in solitary after he was involved in a stabbing.

“You just sit there and wait.”

During a tour of the state penitentiary in Bismarck, Chief of Security Joe Charvat walks over to the West Wing and gestures toward the solid doors that close off the entrance of each cell.

“This area used to house our administrative segregation unit which has since been moved to another area,” he explains.

“Administrative segregation” used to be the prison system’s name for solitary confinement. In those days, there was little contact between corrections officers and those behind the doors. Warden Colby Braun says for years,

North Dakota’s isolation unit operated just like many others.

“It was 23 hours a day lockdown. So you had one hour of recreation a day including showers. That was for five days a week,” he says. “So on the weekends you were generally locked down for 24 hours… you were in your cell, you do not come out for any reason.”

The European Influence

Now things are different. There’s much more recreation time for inmates in solitary. Prisoners spend several hours learning new skills. And they also focus on changing their behavior.

They dropped minor infractions like talking back to a corrections officer, and created a top 10 list of dangerous behaviors, such as serious assault, using a weapon and murder. The new name for the prison’s segregated housing became Behavior Intervention Unit (BIU).

Clinical Director Lisa Peterson says the goal is to help people succeed after they leave, as it was clear the old way wasn’t working.

“The idea that somebody is just going to sit there and think about what they did and magically know how to handle a situation differently in the future is not accurate. So we have to be pro-active in helping people know how to change,” Peterson says.

The state penitentiary in Bismarck can house about 800 inmates. They are mostly white. Native Americans make up the largest minority population. In late 2015 when North Dakota started changing its solitary confinement practice, there were 80 to 90 people in isolation. In late June of this year, there were only about 20.

The people in the unit go through a mental health screening to determine in part if they have any suicidal thoughts. They participate in group therapeutic sessions, and learn skills, such as how to cope with anger.

As correctional officers make their rounds, they talk with inmates about how they’re doing. Instead of just writing up an inmate for any negative behavior, officers also write “positive behavior reports” for any positive activity they notice. Skill building and rapport building are big at the prison now.

Solitary’s Impact

In the BIU, Cell 102 is empty. The door has a long vertical window plus a slot for food. Warden Braun walks in and sits on the slim mattress on top of the metal bed. In the room, there’s also a metal toilet and sink, a small metal desk and seat.

What’s surprisingly different is that there also are several electrical outlets in the room. Some prisoners who own a TV or a tablet can have it in the cell. Another narrow, vertical window lets in light from outside.

Chief of Security Joe Charvat walks the halls of the state penitentiary’s Behavior Intervention Unit (BIU) — the prison’s name for solitary confinement. Typically there are about 20 inmates in the cells, far fewer than in previous years. by Cheryl Corley/NPR

“So when you get closer to the end of the wing, the person can actually see cars going by,” Braun says.

Medical groups have issued strong warnings about how prolonged isolation causes human damage — depression, anxiety, a loss of contact with reality and suicide, especially among the mentally ill. The United Nations and other groups call it torture and say in most cases, solitary confinement should be banned. In North Dakota, the average stay for inmates, with some exceptions, is 30 to 45 days.

Inmates Respond 

Michael Taylor says the first time he landed in the old segregation unit it was for using the law library without permission.

Taylor says he was angry and acted out whenever he was placed in solitary.

“I would go back there and trash the tiers,” the 21-year-old says. “I’d argue with staff, I just didn’t care.”

Taylor says working with the therapists in the new solitary unit has made a difference. So much so that Taylor says he’d like to become a counselor after he gets out.

lay Silva agrees the switch has helped change an often tense situation between inmates, whom Silva says would curse the prison staff, and corrections officers who would often ignore the people in solitary or didn’t get them things they needed.

“That’s not really the case a lot now,” Silva says. Now officers “reward you for being involved. They don’t let you just sit back there and just basically dwell.”

Staff Buy-In Wasn’t Easy

Corrections Director Bertsch says getting buy-in from the staff wasn’t easy. The staff had to overcome the damaging perception that violence would increase and that the changes would put them at risk.

“We still have some resistance,” Bertsch says, “but when we started doing this, there was a lot of resistance and some people just needed to leave.”

Even Warden Braun had misgivings.

“I was scared to death,” he says. “I was scared for staff. I was scared for the facility. I was scared when we talked about specific guys leaving, and I was wrong.”

One of the staffers who stayed on the job is Case Manager David Roggenbuck, who oversees officers and activities in the BIU. He worked previously as an officer in the old solitary unit and was skeptical about the change at first.

“Kind of the mindset is if you don’t like being in prison, don’t come. Don’t commit a crime, don’t come. You’re here — well, tough cookies,” he says. “I’ve really looked at that and what does that accomplish? If I have that type of mentality, all that’s going to do is keep a person the same as when they came in, if not make them worse.”

Roggenbuck admits it took him awhile to change his attitude. Now, he says, everyone deserves a second chance.

For Sgt. Frantz Jean-Pierre, the switch to a unit that focuses on behavior has meant that he and other corrections officers get to know the people in the unit on a more personal level — not just as some inmate locked up in a cell. Jean-Pierre says he believes the changes have made a difference.

“In 2016 we probably had an incident down here on our shift at least maybe three or four times a week. By incident,” Jean-Pierre explains,” I mean someone trying to commit suicide, or someone trying to flood their cell, or being completely disorderly. We haven’t hardly had any of that this year. I think we’ve had one or two on our shift.”

North Dakota Advantages

North Dakota corrections officials admit that changing the prison’s solitary confinement policy may be less difficult in a state with a mostly homogenous prison population and few prison gangs.

Cheryl Corley. Photo by Steve Barrett/NPR

Even with the reform efforts though, North Dakota officials say there are some prisoners too dangerous to eliminate segregated housing completely.

Corrections Director Bertsch says even so, prison has to be about providing an opportunity for change so that North Dakota’s effort to use solitary confinement as little as possible,  and in a different way makes sense.

Cheryl Corley, a correspondent for NPR’s national desk in Chicago, is a 2-18 John Jay Justice Reporting Fellow.  An earlier version of this story was broadcast on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

North Dakota Changes the Rules on Solitary syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[lychborne]

Long time

Deeeeeeeeeeeeee…..

Deeeeeeeeeeeeee…..

Deeeeeeeeeeeeee…..

Deeeeeeeeeet deeet deet deeet deet…

A sharp intake of breath resounds, a groan of pain. Slow pained erratic breathing follows. In the background the rhythmic beeping continues… the breathing steadies and evens out slowly… The machines retract from their duties and go dormant. The whirring begins to stop. Lights surrounding the area begin the light up, slowly and dimly.

“The subject…” The odd voice sounding thousands of miles away, “it lives… You may proceed…” the voice faded as if it was floating further away, there was a response somewhere but it was too far away to be interpreted.

…

Now I know what you are thinking. Isn't this supposed to be going the other way around? Isn't that person supposed to be dead or dying? Well that is true, but I'll have to continue telling you later. I am here to tell you the story of the FireFrost war, also known as the forever war. It started at first contact. I know I know “ another story about space and aliens and whatnot… Thing is… Oh you'll find out later. Anyways it sparked a brutal first contact. What transpired that day has been lost to the ages, all that is known is a planet has been lost. I am here to tell the story of the only witness and their tale. Now back to the tale.

…

“Oh… my head…” Iona said as she clutched her head. She tried to sit up but, regretted it instantly, her body was covered in aches and pains movement seemed to induce. Laying back down flat she decided against moving for a little while. After a moment Iona realized this wasn't her apartment in the wharfs. What had happened?There was a gentle whir of machines near by, Iona wondered if it was the machines near the bed or something else.

The door across the room slid open and a nurse seeming almost to be glowing came gliding in with a tray of food setting it on the table nearby the nurse gave Iona a small remote with a few buttons on it and told her that it controlled the bed and the bigger button would be a ring that would call for assistance.

“Thank you” Iona said as the nurse left seeming to not have noticed. The food was. called EasyEats or so the label said, the label claimed that it could be eaten without utensils and left no mess. It lived up to the name but the food wasn't all that bad.

After the meal Iona found herself to be in need of relieving herself, not trusting her legs she pressed the bigger button on the remote. No one came, not wanting to press her luck Iona climbed out of the bed as soon as she was standing the urge left.

“Weird…” Iona said, as she did the door slid open “and weirder still…”

Iona stuck her head out of the door and looked down the corridor, it was devoid. Not a living thing could be seen nor was there any medical gear.

“This just keeps getting better and better” Iona whispered

Iona’s body ached from the movement, she winced and tried to ignored the pain as she left the room. The corridor had a few doors but each was locked, as she found out by trying to open each door. The final door was at the end of the corridor, it wasn’t much different than the others, the only thing different on the windowless metal door is it's color. The other doors were medical red and white, this door was a light grey with black half stripes on the edges. An exit! Iona thought excitedly as she rushed through the door and… into an interrogation room. “Oh, joy” Iona said in revulsion.

The room resembled the ones in the police stories Iona read in her free time, except way more advanced. A metal table, a mirror, and stark room. There was two metal chairs, undoubtedly uncomfortable.

A folded paped was taped to the back of the furthest chair. After a quick glance around the room, Iona made her way to the chair. She pulled the paper from the chair and unfolded it. It told her to sit and wait, before sitting Iona walked up to the mirror. Why would they have a mirror here? It doesn't ma— startled she stepped back quickly. Was that movement? Iona hurried around the table and sat. She worried what she could do if it came down to it. What could she do? Only the chair weren't bolted to the floor.

…

Sitting in silence, Iona let her mind wander. What could only have been yesterday she was getting the Sunday paper and was talking with her friends, the house wives of the neighborhood, Iona’s friend were excited about a device that could record something said or something performed with an instrument and be able to play it back. The newest and greatest of the the machines it could record better than any in the past. The device sounded wonderful but, sounded like an odd thing. What would you record? What would you do with that recording? Guessing I'd be up to the recorder to decide… her friends went on and on about the wonders of a recorder, all their ideas sounded wonderful. Iona only thought about what was the point of such a thing? They were bulky and heavy they wouldn't serve much purpose, at least none she could see.

Why am I thinking of that right now? In this situation? Come on Iona! She thought angrily why aren't you worried about this? What c—?

The door opened and a smartly dressed Man walked in briskly walked in and sat across from iona. His suit was made of a fabric that Iona had not ever seen he wore glasses that were pitch black, how could he see? Iona looked down at her own clothes she wore a black shift dress made by Chanel at the time one of the most influential fashion designers. Her closest friend had convinced Iona to buy this dress, Iona much rather preferred the women's suit by Charlotte. In this situation she felt sorely underdressed. Iona tried to shrink in her seat. Why was this room so cold? Good bumps ran up her arms. The man across the table raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. He put the case he was carrying on the table and opened it, the man pulled out a pad of paper and a strange flat metal looking box. To her amazement he opened it without any problem, the the reflection on the mirror showed it glowed and had moving images. What kind of thing was this? she thought.

“Ahem” the man said

“Yes?” Iona asked

“I asked for your name, would you give it to me?”

“Um.. yes, I am Iona Blackwood…” Iona said shyly

As he scrawled it down he asked “Middle name?”

“None” she said

“Occupation?”

“House maid”

“Employer?”

“Mrs. Maria Faradaya, an elderly woman who could no longer take care of herself or house. I am one of three that work and care for her.”

“Alright, next question I know is a sensitive area…,” He sighed “ how old are you? And do you have a significant other or a family?”

“Almost twenty sir, no significant other. My family lived in New York, my mother died when I was young and my father raised me, no siblings.” Then she leaned forward and added in a whisper “Age doesn't bother women until they're done with schooling”

“Noted, when is your birthday?”

“Well, since its nineteen twenty-five, June, twenty-second, nineteen-o-five.”

“What?” He said “that is not possible… that's over…” he scrawled it down “Let’s move on.”

The questioning went on for almost an hour, afterward Iona felt… dirty. Someone she hadn't known ever asked and got answers about every part of her life. It was odd it was almost like she couldn't say any but, the truth… what was going on? The man was sitting there still writing one of her responses  she glanced at the reflection on the mirror the metal case thing was showing an image some words it was eerie. The image was runes? What did that mean?

“Sir?” Iona asked the man

“Hmm?” He responded without looking

“What is that image?”

He looked at her, then to the image, and back to her.

“Not your concern” he said sternly

[wbouldingblog-blog]

Hello, dear readers. This is strange. We’re not on the move. We’ve been in the same place for 6 days, so there’s not been a natural break in proceedings to update you AND we’ve got another 2 days before we finally make it to New Zealand. Most importantly, we’ve crossed the equator and are now having to do handstands all the time here in the southern hemisphere and wear special harnesses to stop us falling off this side of the flat earth. Here’s how we made it.

After an uneventful night in a windowless hotel room in Ho Chi Minh (apart from a second cheesy foodgasm experience in Pizza 4Ps – we couldn’t get enough of it), we were checking out and, of course, it was at this moment, 2 hours before our flight to Singapore left, that the credit card machine stopped working. Luckily, as is often the case in HCMC, there was a guy with a scooter available to take Henny to another branch of the same hotel to pay there, where the machine was actually working. Henny was returned on the same scooter, and we hopped in a fresh-faced (couldn’t have been more than 22) Uber driver’s car and wove through the traffic to the international terminal of the airport.

Once inside, we played a game of ‘Where’s The Check-in Desk?’, followed by a lightning round of ‘Which Queue Is The Fastest?’, where the plot twist was that they were all glacially slow. Once at the desk, we were offered emergency seats (fistbump – legroom!) and made our way to immigration, where the authorities made sure to line everyone up to have their passports checked by smartly-dressed sloths. We eventually made it through and got through security (where more attention was paid to the football on the TV than to the x-ray machine) and found a little café, where we grabbed a baguette (I wanted more pho but there wasn’t enough time ☹), and sat down at our gate just as they started boarding. Once we’d finished our food and climbed on board (the extra legroom was aaaaaaaaamazing), we settled into our travelling routine of dozing, reading and listening to music. Before we knew it, we were at the gloriously modern arrivals terminal of Singapore Changi airport.

The difference was immediate and superb. The information desk spoke an English better than most of south London. The airport was spacious, with great big relaxation gardens featuring Koi carp-filled ponds and chirruping cicadas, an entire entertainment deck (as if we were on a cruise ship) with consoles, ‘jam room’, and cinema, and more shops in one place than I’ve seen in a terminal building. The catch? The price. Our first set of coffees outside of cheap Asia was in the 15 euros range (I did, admittedly, have a sausage roll too, but that was the cheapest of the three items). We’d gone from being able to live like royalty (if we’d wanted to) to being able to just sit quietly and sip at our coffees, trying to maximise the enjoyment.

We were going to be here for 12 hours. We wandered around looking at things we will never be able to afford, booked ourselves on the free city tour for the evening and even crossed into a different terminal to see if there were any major differences (none apart from the air conditioning being three degrees lower). We wandered some more, marvelled at the gardens, went to the loo (still not able to beat my shopping centre experience) then looked at phones, as mine was about to give up. I found a good few models, but they’re all still a bit too expensive at the moment, particularly as I’m not sure what my job situation will be in the next few weeks. We went and attempted to play on some games on the entertainment deck, but the computer was slower than I’d thought. After some button-mashing on street fighter II (Henny must have been cheating – I lost convincingly both times) and Henny being devoured by the ghosts on Mrs Pacman, we headed over for our tour, which took us to two major sites in Singapore. First was the Merlion, a new fountain which represents the wealth of the city pouring out of the lion’s mouth. The word ‘Singa’, we found out, means ‘lion’ and ‘Pura’ means ‘city’ (a prince saw a lion on a hunting trip here, so the tale goes), so the lion symbol represents the city itself, the fishy tail its marine economy. Second stop were the Gardens by the Bay. These newly-created, eco-aware gardens are fantastic for getting lost in (as a French couple displayed by being 15 minutes late to the pick-up point) and for getting good sunset pictures of the Marina Bay Sands hotel. After two hours of walking and seeing new sights, we headed hungrily back to the airport, skipped through security and went to a food hall, where I had some Thai green curry and Henny had some Korean barbecue.

  Once we were gastronomically satisfied, we headed to the cinema, where we caught the action-packed finale of Fast and Furious 8, and I got an email about another translation, which was to be submitted in 2 days (or whatever it was after taking into account the time difference – this has really messed up my perception of time). I went to charge the laptops and begin work on it while Henny watched the beginning of Boss Baby (the only film in the cinema’s repertoire that I’d wanted to see, but hey ho). The hour before we needed to get to our gate disappeared into a flurry of typing and it was soon time to say goodbye to Changi and hop on a plane which would take me over the equator for the first time.

Our seats were, sadly, not in the emergency escape aisle this time, and we were surrounded by people who seemed to want to cough up their insides every five minutes, or sniff at 20-second intervals without using a tissue. This continued through most of the flight and is what I blame for my currently-annoying throaty cough. We slept through most of the flight though (it only lasted 7 hours) and were suddenly on our way down to land in Melbourne. We got off the plane, ran to the immigration barriers and, after a brief moment of panic when the automatic gate didn’t recognise me, I engaged in some sport-based banter with the immigration official and was let through unmolested. We had to wait for a bit for our bags, but eventually got them, Henny purchased her new-country sim card and we hopped on the express bus to take us to the city.

We trundled along the freeway (the Aussies seem to have taken the American word for this one) and, at some point along the journey, we turned a bend to see the towering heights of the Melbourne skyline spread out ahead of us. It was fantastic – a moment for a Hans Zimmer score, maybe from the Gladiator soundtrack.

We hopped off the larger bus at southern cross station and onto a smaller bus (more like the local ones we get in England – Surrey peeps, think the 465 to Kingston) to take us the United Backpackers hostel, where we’d be spending the next couple of nights. Through the small yellow entrance which you’d just walk past if you weren’t looking for it, the hostel was clean and bright and everything you could wish for from a place that wasn’t a hotel. Henny claimed a top bunk and I took a bottom bunk (on the other side of the room; most beds were already taken in our dorm) then, after a refreshing let’s-not-smell-like-plane-any-more shower, we headed out for Henny to show me briefly what there was to see in our little corner of Melbourne, including a glimpse of federation square and Coles, the supermarket chain. I initially baulked at the prices, but soon did the maths for the exchange rate and worked out that it was just like inner-city London prices; high, but manageable as long as you were careful.

Henny had been liaising with her former au-pair mum and the girls, and so arranged to go and meet them at their hotel (they live in Canberra but had come to stay in Melbourne for the weekend) while I finished off a particularly urgent translation and made some friends at the hostel at the same time. After I’d finished my translation, I headed off to meet the ladies at their hotel. The girls are diabetic and have a beautifully cute and patient dog called Molly who is also a registered assistance dog; she can smell when their blood sugar levels are dangerous and will alert Adrienne (mum) or their carer at school so that they can take action. After lots of stroking the dog and hearing about their adventures so far, we headed out for dinner, little Molly Polly trotting along alertly beside us.

Everyone wanted sushi, so we walked the 15-or-so minutes it took to get to a particularly well-rated one in a shopping centre near the central shopping area of the city. We’d finally found somewhere to get to the sushi conveyor belt which would sit all 5 of us (Molly could stay on the floor), when a man, who looked as if he’d taken inspiration from Ken (of Barbie fame) for his plastic-moulded hairdo, flatly, yet with an apology or two, refused us service, citing the fact that our dog couldn’t be in the restaurant. Despite Adrienne’s best efforts, showing him the assistance dog card and explaining the need for him, the man (like his hairdo) was not for moving.

Flinging a threat of legal action in the court of human rights over our shoulders along with some Paddington-esque Hard Stares, we left the centre and headed to the David Jones (think an Australian John Lewis) food court for some reduced-price (it was the end of their trading hours) sushi and fried chicken, which was lovely. The girls had a minor spat over a sip of milkshake (apparently the other’s spit would still be in the straw and original owner needed a replacement), which escalated and gave Adrienne a chance to highlight the differences between antipodean and middle-class British parenting approaches – there was no messing around with her. Direct and to the point, with a hint of frustration in her tone and vocabulary, she told the girls that there would be no replacement and that was that. Our sushi eaten and milkshake-wars in a state of ceasefire, we headed out to the street and parted ways, arranging pickup times for the morning after next when we were to head to the zoo for the day!

Before heading to the Zoo though, we had much to see of the Melbourne CBD, so the next morning, we went on a walking tour, learning about the history of Melbourne, the meaning of various sites and their importance in the development of the city, as well as some of the more notable citizens, including a particularly nefarious Robin Hood-inspired Irishman by the name of Ned Kelly. He and his gang were bank robbers and did the common people a service by combining their raids with the destruction of personal loan documents, which, unsurprisingly, made them rather popular. We saw the laneways where countless street artists had applied their skilled hands to jazz up the between-streets, and ended up with a beer in the pub. Here, Henny took her leave to go and see an old friend from her previous time in Melbourne, and I went on a lovely long walk around some other parts of Melbourne with some of the guys from the walking tour. When we’d had enough (the sun was baking), we headed back to our hostel and had a game of pool over a beer, which I lost (the pool that is, not the beer).

    Once I’d got over the loss, I chilled in the aptly-named ‘chilling room’ until my evening’s entertainment arrived. Steph got to the hostel around 7 and we had a drink at the bar, whilst realising that it had been 7 years since we had last seen each other – she had been a supervisor at the farm a long time ago. She now works for Victoria Zoos and had managed to wrangle us free tickets for Melbourne Zoo for the next day. The free stuff didn’t stop there; she’d also won a competition at a Chinese dumpling place and had free dumplings for a year! The dumplings were excellent and I added some crisp pork belly to the order too, which was fabulous – melt-in-your-mouth tender and crunchy where you wanted it to crunch. Afterwards, we headed to what has become one of my favourite places in the world. A bar called Bartronica – a heady mix of retro-gaming awesomeness, pinball and beer. We played and lost heavily at Mario Kart (I was so good back in the day!), then I started kicking some serious gaming butt at smash bros., where Link sword-spun his way to secure me victory countless times. I had a go at Family Guy pinball, the Who song running through my head the whole time (… a pinball wizard’s got such a supple wriiiist… but not from holding a pint of beer), but couldn’t quite engage my inner Tommy to dominate the leaderboard.

We returned briefly but unsuccessfully to the Super Smash Bros., but I couldn’t emulate my previous success against much stronger competition (sorry Steph!) and so we headed our separate ways, promising to meet up again before Henny and I jetted off to Kiwiland.

The next day was full of excitement – we packed up our things, moved out of the hostel and headed downstairs to be picked up by Adrienne again and taken to the zoo. It was a baking hot day, so I wore my England rugby cap (carefully chosen to do maximum damage to local sensitivities after last year’s tour) and a pint of sun cream to keep out the ozone-free rays.

The girls (and Molly) raced around the zoo, the girls flitting like freed butterflies from one exhibit to the next, Molly following suit, a little perplexed by the richness and variety of scents coming her way. Molly was only allowed in certain areas, marked in pink on the map, so Adrienne took care of her at those times. We saw lions, tigers, sea snakes, African wild dogs, pelicans, monkeys (but no gorillas – they were hiding from us, we decided), iguanas, macaws, meerkats and penguins. We also saw a lot of Australian wildlife, which the girls weren’t as interested in as I was, having seen it all before; kangaroos, wombats, emus, kookaburras and a platypus were all fascinating to me but old hat to them.

The girls did, however, manage to spend some time (and a decent amount of their poor mum’s cash) in the gift shop, much like I’d done at the tender age of 10. Adrienne then drove us to our new home with Chris and Leesh, at their flat in the trendy suburb of Collingwood near Fitzroy, Melbourne’s answer to Neukölln or Shoreditch. They are renting a comfortable, modern 2-bed + open-plan kitchen/diner/living room flat in the former Yorkshire brewery, which has been redeveloped into a large housing complex complete with rooftop garden (with a BBQ, naturally) and gym. We said hello, dumped our stuff in our lovely little room, and headed back outside to meet Adrienne, who took us to Lygon street, a famous foodie street. It is a street, it is full of food, but 90% of it is Italian ristorantes, whose borderline aggressive front-of-house teams all seem to emulate Vietnamese street sellers (“You come eat here, I have very happy customers, I give you good deal, best price best price”). Not quite in the mood for pizza, we opted for a very tasty fish and chip place and tried all the deep-fried delicacies they had to offer. Things almost kicked off with Molly again, but the waitress was nice and understanding and Molly could remain under the table.

By the time we’d polished off the last of the nice thick chips, it was time for the girls to hit the hay and for us to go and meet Chris and Leesha at one of their friend’s gigs, where he would be playing funk/soul/r’n’b beats from 11. The bar was called Boney and the décor took us the 16,000ish kilometres back to Berlin. Arty things hung from walls, lighting was minimal and red and the patrons were suitably (under)dressed or just in the black-jeans-and-beard hipster garb necessary in this sort of place. We grabbed a drink with our hosts, headed upstairs to see his friend play to a room packed to the rafters with smoke from a smoke machine and not much else – we were the only four who had come to see him so far. Gradually though, other acquaintances dribbled in and the music got louder with each new audience member, so much so that we couldn’t really get acquainted with the newcomers, and decided to dive back downstairs. C&L joined us later, then left for their next gig. We called it a night (‘This is a night!’) then went back to our new room (possibly stopping for a McD’s 10-piece chicket nugget box) and slept until it was socially acceptable to wake up.

The next day dawned, but in our quiet, dark, cool cave of a room we didn’t notice until it was almost too late. We were supposed to meet the girls at 10.30 at the Victoria Markets (yay more shopping), which would take nearly half an hour to get to. Luckily, the girls and Adrienne had already headed to a different set of markets before, so we made our leisurely way down to the markets and had a breakfast of bacon and egg bap for me (plenty of ketchup, thanks) and a beetroot and feta salad for Henny. Just as we were polishing off the last morsels, we felt a familiar fluffy presence next to us and found that the girls had found us. Off we went on a zig-zag path past all the stalls with their various trinkets and tourist tat. I found a new adapter for my chargers as well as 2 decks of cards for 5 dollars (bargain). The girls found a few things that they liked, including a fake diamond-encrusted name tag for Molly and a set of earmuffs for themselves, in preparation for the harsh winter ahead.

We had to do some shopping for our promised (my fabled) roast dinner, so we almost tearfully parted ways with the girls for the time being and made our way around to find some decent veg and wine. We then toddled back to C&C’s and, after a while chilling out on the roof (Henny had to finish off her Hoi An post) and a couple of visits from a territorial pug, we prepared for the night’s entertainment: an outdoor cinema extravaganza with a picnic and Get Out. We took a nice ride in a taxify (similar to Uber but better for the drivers and customers apparently), and got to the botanical gardens, where we walked down a dusky path to a great big blow-up screen, in front of which a crowd of people were lying on the grass. We set up camp, tucked into our picnic and opened bottle after bottle then a box of wine, while the events of Get Out (a very, very good Black Mirror-like film) played out in front of us. But that wasn’t the only thing I was watching. As the sun had set, hundreds of crow-sized fruit bats had started winging their way to their twilight dinner above us. I sat, captivated by the slow, graceful movements of the huge bats. Luckily, I managed to pay enough attention to both and, once my wine-addled, bat-distracted, Get Out-head-blown state was brought to a close, we got in another taxify and roared home, where someone (Chris? Was it you?) decided to watch Whiplash (a film about a drummer – awesome) on their projector, just to keep the cinema feel going. It was fantastic – so much was relatable in the film, though maybe I had yet to experience the stresses of being a professional drummer like that. Tapping my legs in time to the music still bouncing around my head, we went to sleep and ended our second night in Collingwood.

This is also where I’ll leave you guys for the time being; there’s plenty more to come! For now though, I’ll just try and keep my eyes open – I’ve just taken some cough medicine and it’s one of those ones with ‘do not operate heavy machinery after use’ or something like that. Do laptops count as heavy machinery?

Yours drowsily,

Boulders

Superb Singapore + marvellous Melbourne (part the first) Hello, dear readers. This is strange. We’re not on the move. We’ve been in the same place for 6 days, so there’s not been a natural break in proceedings to update you AND we’ve got another 2 days before we finally make it to New Zealand.