In a hurry Captain?

I was on a Sydney to Canberra QantasLink flight the other day on a Q400 (the latest Dash 8 model). During the taxi in Sydney the Captain noted that we had left early and thanked us for our cooperation. Of course we then sat on the tarmac waiting for an opening for us to depart. Anyway, the flight was uneventful and we approached Canberra from the South for a landing on Runway 35. There was a lot of turbulence on the approach, but of course when the ground effect took over it was a smooth and normal landing.

That's when it started being not normal. I've been in aircraft when they slammed the brakes on to make an intersection to return quickly to the terminal, but that's not what happened. After the smooth landing we "chucked a U-ey" on the active runway (rwy 35), something I have never experienced before (Sure, at other airports it's necessary, but never at CBR). Also as an ex-pilot who in the past has landed at CBR many times it's not something I would ever have contemplated requesting. We then taxied really quickly until we were on the apron. I need to point out that I'm not just making this up for a better story after the event - I commented to my wife that we were going much faster than normal.

We then arrived at our parking point and while at least one engine was still running the "Fasten Seat Belts" sign was switched off.

In all my numerous flying days I have never known the sign to be switched off before all engines have been shut down.

I can only surmise that the Captain was in a real hurry to get somewhere. The flight was on time, so it wasn't to ensure a quick turnaround. I'm guessing it was his last flight of the day and he was totally over it. I have to say there was nothing on the flight that wasn't totally safe, but it was certainly a humourous departure from normal procedures.

Apropos of nothing, on the previous day's CBR - SYD Virgin Australia flight we had two Captains. One of them must have been being checked out. It happens all the time, but it's the first time I have ever noticed it on a flight I have been on.

Stage Manager addenda

In an effort to publish my latest blog post quickly I forgot the most important parallel between stage managers and pilots.

When something beyond your control goes wrong, and it will, you need to come up with a solution. This may be required within a few minutes, or it may need to be resolved within seconds. Regardless of the time frame, you live or die (again, literally in the pilot's case but metaphorically in the stage manager's case) by the decision you make. A top pilot and a top stage manager will take such deviations from the expected in his or her stride. Again, perfection is the expected result, so getting it right will not bring praise, but making an incorrect decision will bring at the very least severe complaints, and will be on the record forever.

I would be remiss if I didn't illustrate by example. At our latest production the curtain mechanism failed. That meant that instead of being raised and lowered, it needed to be opened and closed from side to side. From my stage manager's point of view this changed the timing of the curtain movements because (for example) at the start of one act there was only one character on stage and she was way off to one side. With a vertically raised curtain it could start its movement three seconds before she started to move and she would still be seen. However with a side moving curtain I needed to guess (because we obviously hadn't rehearsed it) how many seconds to call the curtain call before she started to move.

I still need to review the DVD, but provisionally I am happy with the decisions I made. Whether others agree with my assessment remains to be seen.

[I also had an extreme example as a pilot. I was flying an unfamiliar aircraft type and messed up a landing on a fairly short country town runway. Once that happened I retracted the flaps and put on full power. I looked at my air speed indicator to see that I was flying below stall speed, meaning that it was only ground effect keeping me afloat. I was nearing the end of the runway with trees lurking beyond. I put my hand on the electric flap deployment switch and spent a few seconds trying to recall my physics and aerodynamics training to decide whether it would be better to lower the flaps or keep them retracted. Having made my decision I pushed down on the switch to lower the flaps, and still with full power I gradually gained altitude and cleared the trees. I belatedly achieved the required result and avoided the alternative, which would have been total blame for an accident.]

Perfection means nobody notices. Anything less means you have not achieved the required result.

On being a Stage Manager

My wife runs a ballet school. Each year the school has end of year performances at one of the major theatre venues in Canberra. I am the Stage Manager for these productions. I very much enjoy the role, but I have been unable until recently to explain exactly why. I now realise it's part of my psyche.

Although the connection will not be immediately obvious, I need to explain that when I was 19 (and an ANU graduate) I was a trainee commercial pilot. I also need to explain that I left the pilot training academy to pursue a career in IT, but I later obtained my Private Pilot's Licence.

I have only just in the past week realised the connection between enjoying being a Pilot and enjoying being a Stage Manager.

Here are the dot points:

• Both roles involve most of the time doing nothing other than keeping a monitoring eye on what is going on. This requires quite a lot of attention because it is easy to let the mind drift and lose focus on the important tasks. This is the "boring" bit, although it is vital in its own right.
  
  
• Apart from the "boring" bits, both roles need (in very short bursts of time) a lot of precise and complex actions to be undertaken quickly and accurately.
  
  
• If everything goes smoothly nobody comments, because perfection is the assumed level of performance. Pilots and Stage Managers never expect thanks. Basically not being noticed and the lack of complaints are the highest compliments there are.
  
  
• If anything goes wrong, no matter how minor, there will be many complaints and the Pilot or Stage Manager is automatically assumed to be responsible.
  
  
• To disprove the previous point, the Pilot or Stage Manager needs to build an unassailable defence.

(Of course a Stage Manager making a mistake will almost never lead to people dying, unlike a Pilot.)

Yet at the end of the day, the satisfaction when I responded to the final Air Traffic Control communication as I left the active runway with my callsign, and the satisfaction I now feel when my final call of "House curtain 'go'" is enacted in a timely manner, are very similar. It's over, and I've done the best I can do to assist with the big picture.

Moreover, I hope no-one has noticed my involvement at all, because that means I have done the perfect job.

Anonymity may seem like a dubious goal, but it means I have performed perfectly. Nobody will give me a Christmas present for my involvement, but as long as they don't complain or curse me then I'm happy.

Tate Modern

I may have already said this, but since I became a regular London visitor about a decade ago there have been some things I have intended to do eventually and others which I've never thought the need to do. Recently I was in London, possibly for the last time in a while, so I did some stuff I always meant to get around to. The poster child for this was walking on the Abbey Road crossing made famous on the Beatles' album cover.

I have to be honest and say that the Tate Modern art gallery never held any attraction to me. While I can swoon over Impressionist masterpieces at the Courtauld Institute (feel free to call me a philistine, or indeed a Palestine for comedic effect), my exposure to more modern art is limited enough that I still regard it as the Emperor's new clothes. I have come to love Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles at the National Gallery of Australia, but for the most part I just don't "get" modern art. I stop short of dismissing it out of hand (although I come close), rather I think of it like many other artforms that, perhaps to my detriment, I don't appreciate. I won't list the many and varied examples of expressions of the human spirit which elude me, for fear of being dismissed as totally lacking any artistic merit at all.

I won't apologise for the following, but I will say that the reason I ended up at the Tate Modern was that I wanted to let my daughters know that I had walked across the bridge that was blown up in Harry Potter 6 ("Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"). Its real name is the Millennium Bridge. Admittedly the other reason was purely to walk across such a controversial bridge - when it was first built there were all sorts of reports about it swaying alarmingly. However there I was crossing the "Harry Potter" bridge, so when I reached the southern bank of the Thames in front of the Tate Modern, it seemed silly not to go in.

I have to say that I am surprised I had not previously heard what a ridiculous design this building is. It's so bad that you almost feel like it was a deliberate attempt to keep out the plebs. However I eventually found a way to look at the art. I was suprised to see a Monet there, but that's neither here nor there. Here is the description of one piece of art that I captured on my iPhone. Stupidly I didn't take a photo of the actual painting, but I eventually found an image of it online.

"The Bigger Picture. Clyfford Still, 1953. Matthew Collings, painter and critic.

"The blue in this painting is full of differences.
"Ruffled and disturbed, it sometimes seems brilliant and full, sometimes dark, almost black. It's a shape but it also has shapes within it which gradually emerge - you can see a kind of vertical trawling shadowy form, indeterminate, like weather changing, or something passing by under water. When you register the other colour areas the whole arrangement snaps to, and the painting becomes much more flat. It has very little to it, but the effect is amazingly rich. The yellow creates a feeling of great distance. Nothing is careless, everything relates to everything else."

I'm sorry, but clearly Matthew Collings is a wanker. It's an almost entirely blue painting with tiny bits of other colours on top and bottom. But wait, there's more. Surely this is the wankiest description ever to accompany a painting (the same painting by the way, this time by the artist).

"Clyfford Still 1904 - 1980
"Born and worked USA

"1953
"Oil on canvas

"'My paintings have no titles because I do not wish them to be considered illustrations or pictorial puzzles', Still wrote. 'If properly made visible they speak for themselves.' In a letter discussing this work, he explained that the red at the lower edge was intended to contrast with and therefore emphasise the depths of the blue. He saw the yellow wedge at the top as 'a reassertion of the human context - a gesture of rejection of any authoritarian rationale or system of politico-dialectical dogma."

Since he refused to give titles to his works it took me even longer to find an online image of the piece.

The old saying is that if you can't find anything nice to say, don't say anything. In the spirit of that belief I won't say anything at all about this total load of bollocks that pretends to be art.

I mean really, "politico-dialectical dogma"? Anyone who takes that seriously deserves serious derision, pointing and laughing.

[I really wanted to use the expression f***ing b***s*** in this blog, but I'm much too polite to use words like that.]

The Royal Visit

I took my daughters to see Queen Elizabeth the Second last Sunday. I didn't particularly want to - we had had a hectic few weeks and we were for once happily lazing around the house. The girls and my wife were also about to go to Cooma for an afternoon tea (I had some work to do so was staying in town).

While I was sitting there trying to think of reasons not to mention it to them, I suddenly realised how much it meant to me to have seen QE2 in Darwin in 1977, during her Silver Jubilee. I knew that this would be something they would probably remember for the rest of their lives. Moreover, in all probability this would be the Queen's last visit to Australia, and who knows what the future of the Monarchy holds for Australia after her passing. The girls weren't particularly keen - they were also happy to take a rare opportunity to lounge around the house.

I guess there was also the thought that it would be silly not to go there, given that Government House (where HM was staying) is only about three minutes' drive from our house.

So we all bundled into the car and drove to Yarralumla. We parked and walked two minutes to Dunrossil Drive. One minute later a few Police motorbikes passed, and then the Royal motorcade went past. We were on the right hand side of the road. Prince Philip was in the right hand seat and Queen Elizabeth was in the left hand seat. Both waved as they went past.

My elder daughter was beside herself ("I saw the Royal Queen", my iPhone video recorded). My younger one was also happy, but not quite as much - being six years old I think there is a limit to how much she can understand. Regardless, they will both be able to retell for the rest of their lives the day they saw the Queen. I can't believe I almost denied them this experience.

How times have changed - in the past the road would have been 10 deep with people cheering. As it was, we could turn up with a couple of minutes to spare and be right on the edge of the road only a couple of metres from our Monarch.

For the record, as well as seeing QE2 in 1977, I was in the crowd at the opening of New Parliament House in 1988. I also accidentally saw her and most of the Royal Family in London once. I was on a business trip in Berkshire and had used a free day to go into London. I took the Tube to Westminster and was planning to walk to Hyde Park. On the way I suddenly found barricades in my way and lots of people standing around. I went as far as I could and after a short amount of time I heard the clip-clopping of horse and carriage. The first one had William, Harry and Charles, then another went by with QE2 and Phil the Greek. Apparently it was Trooping the Colour day, and I had missed the memo.

Tasmania votes for gay marriage

Misleading headlines 'r' us.

On 21st September 2011, the lower house of Tasmania's Parliament (House of Assembly) voted to "support gay marriage". Great. I support gay marriage too. What they didn't do was introduce a bill to both houses of Parliament to legalise gay marriage. Why not? Tasmania's upper house (Legislative Assembly) has two Labor Party representatives, one Liberal Party representative, and fifteen independents.

The Labor Party knew that they couldn't guarantee passage of a bill through the upper house, so they took the option of only presenting the motion to the lower house. Essentially then it means nothing. No law has been changed and opponents of gay marriage have ammunition to say that the Tasmanian Government were too scared to introduce a real bill which may have made a real difference and legalise gay marriage.

In closing, I fully support what the Tasmanian government has done. I just wish they had had the courage to make it an actual legislative change rather than just a "vote of support".

The fact that loving couples may or may not be married purely because of their respective genders is an outrage as far as I'm concerned. I married my wife because I loved her, not because I am a man and she is a woman. Why shouldn't a man (or woman) be allowed to marry the love of his (or her) life, just because of the partner's gender?

It makes no sense. But until States and (I wish) the Federal Parliament start passing bills/acts to legalise gay marriage we are stuck with ridiculously discriminatory marriage laws.

Faster than light? Maybe.

Some results from CERN seem to indicate that they have discovered a faster than light particle. As the Daily Telegraph have said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100106792/faster-than-light-extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence/

Someone close to me has tweeted, "Don't get the fuss. If an atom can be in 2 places at once, or instant comm b/w atoms in diff countries, surely faster than light is poss?"

I sort of understand the sentiment, but finding a faster than light particle (if that's what has happened) is a huge deal. As much as quantum mechanics gives us really odd stuff, nothing in physics theory has ever needed something exceeding the speed of light. Sure, there have been loads of hypotheses which hypothesise (as they are wont to do) faster than light particles, but to actually find one would be earth shattering.

The great thing about science is that if something thought impossible is discovered, science will investigate the Hell out of it, and if it proves to be valid then science will modify existing theories to accommodate the new findings.

To give a trivial example, consider Newton's theories of motion. They are valid for almost all of our experiences. It's only when you look at extremes that Einstein's theories need to be taken into account.

If faster than light particles have actually been discovered, it's almost certain that Newton's and Einstein's theories will still explain 99.9999% of the universe. It's just that there will need to be an additional theory that covers the extra 0.0001%.

I hope it's true - the implications are amazing. But if not, then that's the great thing about science - it's self-correcting.

Abbey Road

Almost 32 years after first visiting London, and at least 20 more visits later, I finally fulfilled an adolescent dream. A couple of weeks ago I walked across the Abbey Road crossing. I'm the one in front:












Edited to add: I didn't mention how this video was captured. Abbey Road has a webcam, and for 24 hours after the event you can see yourself on the crossing: http://www.abbeyroad.com/visit/