Sunday, July 22, 2007

Innovative new technology

Now, you'd think that airlines, what with their hundred-year involvement in the sort of physics voodoo that allows apartment blocks to fly, would be pretty hard to impress when it comes to the 'innovative new technology' department. I mean, they pay it all cool when it comes to hundreds of people enjoying video-on-demand from their seat-back touch-screens which traveling a thousand miles an hour 35,000 feet up in the air. "Oh that?" they ask, pretending to stifle a yawn, "yeah, it's just a little something that we do."
But the industry does have one trick that it loves to tout as Innovative! New! Technology!: e-tickets.
Here's a tip airline industry: being able to use a computer to look at a list of names at an airport check-in counter does NOT count as 'innovative new technology'. Unless those screens are being read by sexy-voiced robots that can also beat you at checkers any day of the week while tagging your luggage.
And here are a few things that might actually count as innovative new technology: i) rfid-ified luggage tags. So they actually know where your bags are. Even if they end up in Ouagadougou, at least they know it.
ii) meals that don't smell like urinals. You know that odd combination of gross and disinfectant? How do they get it to smell like both at the same time? Actually, that is pretty innovative.
iii) a plane that can't be hijacked by cutlery. I mean, plastic knifes are fun and all, but when your hand slips because the plastic knife has softened up while cutting your hot entree, and you slice your hand open on the edge of the metal chinese-takeout tray (which, ironically, is as sharp as a samurai blade), it's hard to get the flight attendent's attention for a bandage without bleeding all over yourself.
iv) clear, sound-proof domes that drop, oxygen mask style, from the ceiling in the event of a crying baby or snoring row-mate. Please affix over your travelling companion, securing snugly by pulling firmly on the plastic tabs.
or, best of all, v) in-flight hibernation mode like in sci-fi space flight. I'd gladly doze in an upright, glass-fronted coffin stacked in rows in giant supersonic transport planes if it meant that I could forgo the plastic knives, horrid movies and crying babies.

Anyway, this little tirade was spawned when I booked a ticket last week on Malaysian Airlines and they insisted on sending me a paper ticket (and believe me, when you're in Cambodia, booking a ticket online to leave from Kuala Lumpur and you don't have a mailing address anywhere, it's a giant pain in the ass.)
paper. ticket.
What is this? 1995? Why the retro stylings? Perhaps it's related to the current malysian tourism campaign. It has been 50 years (sort of) since malaysia gained its independence so 2007 is 'visit malaysia year'. Maybe they're trying to make us feel like it's 1957 all over again.

4 Comments:

At 11:32 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

welcome to Malaysia Truly Asia!! :P

 
At 7:31 a.m., Blogger aMy said...

and u still come coz u love us so... :)

 
At 2:15 a.m., Blogger amelia said...

another great invention would be a coma inducing easy to swallow pill for the parents of those crying babies. The coma wears off when the child cries itself to sleep. that is a million dollar invention.
by the way, where are you?? are you still going to grace our sandy shores? love mrs. ishikawa

 
At 10:32 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.

 

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