Unfortunately, Australian television doesn’t usually throw up many surprises with the many foreign shows and copies of foreign show mainly aired or produced. However, while flicking through the channels last Thursday night looking for something/anything to watch, I stumbled upon Family Footsteps.
The show immediately caught my attention and had me hooked for the rest of the hour. Family Footsteps is a documentary series which follows young Australians as they experience a taste of what their life could have been like had their parents not migrated to Australia. Participants in the show are expected to immerse themselves in the life, work and culture of their parents homeland and try to live as they would have lived had fate not taken them to their current situation.
I find the concept of this show very interesting, as a person who believes that our lives are dictated by the decisions other people have made in the past and that fate has delivered us to become what we have become. The fact that I’m in the situation I find myself in now is a direct consequence of the decisions other people have made in the past, people I haven’t even met. There are an infinite amount of possible ways in which peoples lives could end up and this show gives the participants a chance to experience an alternative reality of how their lives could have turned out.
Currently the show is half way through its second series so I wish I’d discovered it at the start of the first series. However I’m sure I’ll be able to download it or get a copy of it from somewhere.
The current series is viewable as a stream on the ABC website (see link below) or through the ABC iView.
After booking my flight to London LHR from Brisbane BNE via Singapore SIN online I was pleased to see that the flight from Singapore to Heathrow was on the new Airbus A380. I reserved my seats in Economy on the Singapore Airlines website, I used SeatGuru to find the best seat. However, even though I’d gone to do this quite a while before the departure date I found that a lot of seats had already gone. Next time I will reserve my seats as soon as I book the actual flight. Anyway, on the first flight to London I managed to get an aisle seat on the Upper Deck on the way back I got an aisle seat on the Main Deck. When I boarded the A380 the first thing I noticed was the smell, it smells exactly like a new car. The brand new fittings, fixtures and upholstery are a pleasure to see, everything is nice and new, shiny and clean.
The economy class cabin is similar to economy on other Singapore Airlines aircraft except for the following: The actual seats are different they are a little harder than usual but I prefer a harder seat. The leg room has improved, I could pretty much stretch my legs right under the seat in front (I’m 6′2”), if it wasn’t for the seat pocket and the foot rest my legs just touched the seat in front. The personal screen in economy has also improved they are 10 inch and the entertainment system is fully on-demand, I found it a lot easier to watch the movies and TV shows on the bigger screen and there was almost too much to choose from. The entertainment system also had a great selection of music to listen to. The food was pretty much the same as other flights I’d been on, the usual Chicken, Beef or Fish options which tasted OK. At the back of the Upper Deck next to the galley there is a staircase which leads down the the economy cabin on the Main Deck at the back of which are 4 toilets and an area about a metre and a half long and the width of the plane. A good enough space to stretch the legs and have a stand for a while.
I thought the lighting on the A380 was very good, when the cabin crew are getting ready to serve breakfast the cabin lights gradually go from off to fully on over a period of about 10 minutes. You don’t really realised it is happening, this is much more reasonable than suddenly turning the lights on while everyone’s eyes are still used to the dark, it also allows you to wake up gradually as if it were morning.
The flight time from Singapore to London is still roughly the same and it is still a long and boring flight but in situations like this little things seem to make a difference. It was over all a good experience and made my trip back to London easier to handle. The only thing I would grumble about was the fact that when the plane arrived at Heathrow it took us in the Upper Deck economy cabin about 30 minutes to get off the plane into the terminal building. This as we found out was due to the two level air bridge being broken and the ground staff having to get a normal one set up. Therefore everyone in the Upper Deck had to wait for all the passengers on the Main deck to exit before we could. However, it did give me an opportunity to see what the first class suites were like – all I can say is they are very spacious and sleeping wouldn’t have been a problem.
The flight back was much the same except for the fact that my entertainment system froze while I was watching Kung Fu Panda this required the stewardess to reset the whole system which took about 20 minutes to reload. I then had to fast forward back to the point the movie froze. Also, they had run out of the Beef option at dinner.
Video from youtube of Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 Upper and Main Deck
These pictures of the A380 were taken at Heathrow Airport Terminal 3 on Saturday 17th August 2008 immediately prior to departure for Singapore.
As mentioned in a previous post I have recently returned from Turkey after spending 5 days staying at my Dad’s place in Fethiye.The day I arrived I visited Oludeniz – the only place that really stood out in my mind from my last visit to Turkey when I was a child.I was sort of expecting it to be the same as it was 21 years ago.My Dad confirmed my memory that when we had first visited Oludeniz there were only a few wooden structures on the beach at the lagoon end of the bay and a boat mooring – very untouched.However, this was not what was presented to me upon my arrival this time.On the beach at the lagoon end of the bay is a sea of beach umbrellas, which in fact stretch quite along way along the beach.Also, back from the main beach is basically a town which has developed to cater for all the tourist which visit Oludeniz every summer.Hotels, shops, restaurants etc. (You can see how big the town is in picture_03 below) I was also interested to find out that Oludeniz has become one of the most popular paragliding places in the world, the evidence of this was by the fact that while I was there one landed on the beach every few minutes.Having said that Oludeniz and the surrounding area is still a beautiful place and well worth a visit.Oludeniz is however a victim of its own magnificence, there are still untouched places on this coastline like the Oludeniz of 21 years ago but they are few and usually only accessible by boat.
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