flight
2 days in a row without a.net (mon, tues) left me gasping for air. i found myself feeling uneasy because i hadn't updated my album for 48 hours and i hadn't voted for a picture for the photographer's choice award. this addiction is unhealthy...
anyway, we had a list of 56 compo titles and we had to do 1 per week (weird, innit? seeing that a year has 52 weeks and the number of weeks between now and the o'levels is way less than that) and you know what? #10 is FLIGHT. yep. write a composition about FLIGHT. well here goes.
Flight. For centuries, even milleniums, Man has dreamt of flying among the clouds in the skies. Even Greek legends tell of Daedalus making wax wings for himself and his son, Icarus, to escape from prison. But Icarus, carried away by his newfound freedom, found himself flying too near to the sun, which subsequently melted the wax holding the feathers of his flying contraption together, and he fell to an unsightly death.
An interesting but ridiculous myth. We all know that our arms cannot generate enough lift for us to fly. But the fact that this legend exists is proof that this huge thing called Flight has mesmerised people for ages. From the first sketches of a flying machine by da Vinci to the biggest airliner in the world, the Airbus A380, Man has been in constant pursuit to conquer the skies. Isn't it amazing to be able to soar like birds among the clouds and look at the world from a whole new perspective? Isn't it remarkable that we have managed to build a heavier-than-air machine that is able to glide through the air like a bullet, that is powerful enough to propel itself at speeds at up to Mach 0.89, and yet look as graceful as a swan?
Nowadays, with technological advances and the need for connectivity and speed, air travel has become an important form of transport, a way of life even. What was once a month-long journey has shrunk to a few hours, thanks to the invention of planes. In fact, flying has been such an everyday occurance that we take it for granted. Some even view it as a necessary chore.
The airlines have been doing their best to lure customers, coming up with things like bars, showers, even double beds on board their aircraft fleet. First and business class passengers draw a lot of admiration from everybody, but for me, as an aviation enthusiast, flying is not about comfort. It never was. Flying is the experience itself, the reassuring roar of the engines, the feeling of being thrown back against the back of my seat as the plane takes off, the sight of the world zipping by below me as we ascend to our cruising altitude of 36000 feet, the breathtaking view of cloud formations this time seen from above.
Inflight entertainment? What inflight entertainment? To me every plane has an IFE, and it is called the window. Next time you are on a commercial flight, forget about the movies; you can watch them when you're on the ground. Instead, pull up that window shade and admire the world outside. Watch the sunsets 36000 feet in the air, you won't see anything like that on earth. Sometimes you might meet another plane, its contrails trailing like smoke behind it. At night, watch the stars twinkle against the pitch black sky with no clouds to cover them because you yourself are above the clouds.
Appreciate flight, for it is one of the greatest miracles of the 20th century. It is something that cannot be compared with anything on earth. We'll let the great painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci have the last words: "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
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