Re-booting a loo

A little quiz for you: picture yourself as pilot-in-command of an Airbus A340, sitting at the gate at the airport. One of your cabin personnel comes to you to report that the loos are not flushing. What do you do?

The answer: You "re-boot" the entire aircraft! This is exactly what happened to us today on a flight from Munich to Johannesburg. The captain came on the P/A to announce that he had to shut down and restart the entire aircraft for just that reason! Sure enough, the lights went dark (except the emergency lighting). Only that the toilets still wouldn't flush (to be precise, they just didn't "rinse", but the part that...uhm...takes care of getting out the load did actually work; so for the remainder of the flight, everyone was asked to add some water by using a cup...).

Now you know ;-)

The Ladybird

Tried a nice South African red wine by Laibach the other day: "The Ladybird Organic". Funny name, though. Sounds like some biological experiment :-)

Some cool movies of late

Going back and forth between Germany and South Africa on business trips in the last half-year, I of course took advantage of the excellent inflight entertainment system on SAA's A340-600 aircraft...

So I ran into a few movies I might not have seen otherwise that really stood out. Ok, my enthusiasm for some of them might have been helped a little by the lovely red wine they kept serving. Certainly seems to help to push both the positive sentiments (you could have seen me giggling) and the sad ones (you could have seen me weeping)...
Anyway, here's my last half-year's favorites, in the order I saw them:

The Holiday (cute one, sometimes quite hilarious, sometimes a bit touching, overall good entertainment)

Blood Diamond (a tough story, not for the faint of heart, makes one curious about what really happened; Leonardo diCaprio sporting a fun South African accent!)

Stranger Than Fiction (funny, clever, some innovative elements; Emma Thompson rather convincing)

Music and Lyrics (just plain fun if you liked early 80s pop...especially the music video at the beginning; stay for the credits, some fun stuff in there)

The Constant Gardener (altough based on a John le Carré novel, another one that makes one want to learn more about the cruelties committed on Africa; Fiennes' accent still a favorite)

Paris je t'aime (what I can I say...one of the best movies I have seen in a long time...probably the best about "love" as a theme I have ever seen; after each wonderful episode one thinks "nothing so clever and wonderful could still follow", yet the movie keeps delivering!)