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A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holiday.
Australia, we have a confession. Mandarins. Two of them. I'd like to say it wasn't my fault, largely because that would be correct. But my wife and I were equally at fault for this little fruit fiasco.
Like many fruit fiascos, it started innocently enough. The intentions were good: grab a couple of mandarins from the kitchen before leaving for the airport, eat them either in the car or at the airport to save on having to buy snacks, smiles all round. Like the time as a 10-year old I'd forgotten I'd put a banana in my school bag until a month later when the slow-burning stench finally made me investigate what was cooking amidst the bag's tennis balls, books, crayons, felt-tips, pencils and refill. These mandarins were to be similarly neglected.
Buried by gravity in my wife's hand luggage, the mandarins boarded the plane bound for Brisbane where we were transiting en-route to Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Fast-forward four hours and a Tasman Sea later, and we waltzed right through security, oblivious of our illicit citric cargo. Later, flicking through her bag at Brisbane Airport to find some money for food, she saw them: two unblemished mandarins. Panic! We'd forgotten all about them! How had they made it through security!? What do you do? Do you quickly throw them into a rubbish bin, knowing you'll be on camera? Do you own up? Or do you peel and eat? Consume the evidence?
We peeled and ate. At great speed, too. The peels were then placed in a departure lounge rubbish bin and we hopped on our next flight fruit-free. Australia, our sincere apologies. At least the mandarins didn't make it beyond Brisbane Airport. This is the sort of transgression you fully understand why there are heavy fines. Fines which we'd have happily paid*. Lesson learned though: don't ever take fruit to the airport thinking you'll remember to eat it prior to take-off.
* Fundamentally untrue.
Why are airline headphones so consistently useless?
For some reason, the cheap pair from my beloved 2009 iPod seem to work better with inflight entertainment systems than the presumably brand new ones you are handed by the stewards. I guess it's a bit like 3D movie glasses: it always did seem a bit gratuitous that you had to get brand new ones every time you saw a new 3D film. Luckily that fad has passed, because cinemagoers were being encouraged to purchase (for a dollar or two) their own glasses to bring to each screening.
It sure saves on waste, but who really wants to keep 3D glasses at home? And the geek-factor of arriving at the movies with your date or friends where you get to smugly say to the person at the counter, "No, no, don't worry about me, I've got my own glasses", would've been immense. So yes, there's clear wastage in insisting that airlines provide all their passengers with headphones for every flight, but while we're still getting in the habit of remembering to bring our own, why are the freebie headphones so sonically-challenged? I normally find I have to bung at least one hand up over an ear, pressing the device closer in just so I can hear the dialogue. It's genuinely not a hoot. And I love hoots!
Tim Roxborogh hosts Newstalk ZB's Weekend Collective and blogs at RoxboroghReport.com