Month: April 2017

How the Drone Killed the Postcard

Joy Kundig

Down in the bomb shelter there is a rusty tin biscuit box that is full of postcards. They were collected and saved when I was a child living in small Ontario villages. They were sent from around the world – well, mainly from holiday corners of Britain and “The Continent.” Every move I’ve made, that tin box has moved with me.

Our own parson-poor holidays were always taken for four weeks in the searing summer heat. They were mile-full rides across the country from coast to coast. Cloth diapers were jammed into the little triangular side windows to dry in the car-speed. We camped in a huge and heavy canvas tent. There was porridge for breakfast and our wine was grape kool-aid.

We did, though, send postcards.

Still today, I occasionally buy old postcards at the Geneva flea-market and unravel the spidery handwriting with pleasure: formal invitations, formal thank-yous, formal salutations. They are little pastel-coloured hands waving from the past.

Suddenly, though, postcard quests are not being met with success.

In Tranquebar, the cards were so cracked, curled and dirty that not even the mercurial manager could take rupees for them and gave me a few for free.

In Ubud, the former postcard capital of the world, postcards had to be mined like precious gems at twee stationery shops.

In Xi’an, at the main airport post-office, there was a selection of cards featuring hybrids of fat babies and Micky Mouse. Not a terracotta warrior or plump horse in sight.

At Wat Pho, the postcard racks were empty. And here on the Andaman Sea, the hotel offers postcard views of itself. Here we step into serious postcard total-loser territory.

Where are the great images – the sunrises, silhouettes on a crescent moon-lit beach, the branches of fuchsia bougainvillea draping impossibly over a wine-dark sea? All those exciting things that we never see with our own amateur eyes?

The clientele here at this eco-lodge are a new breed of adventurers; they possibly have never licked a stamp. They are all tattooed to prove their individuality. They spend their time thumbing their little screens. They sport pairs of outsized non-jiggly breasts with heads and skinny legs attached. They do not sketch, paint, or write. Very few read.

Yesterday, a cool American dude blew in with his chick and his drone. Inside the veranda filled with real people on lounge chairs he ordered a double gin and tonic and launched his millennial man-toy.

Not wanting my eyes poked out, I was gathering up my affairs to leave as I watched the girl lower herself into the infinity pool and gaze through bug-eyed sunglasses over the sea as the drone circled her, filming her, before returning to its master.

The postcard is definitely out, but once drones completely take over the world I do hope they do not take pictures of themselves, but nostalgically reinvent the paper postcard, take lovely and unusual pictures, and send them to each other. By drone, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Baby Farm in the Sky

Joy Kundig

No one writes about business class travel except business people – Richard Quest (CNN) for example, considers it quite a grunt—speed, efficiency, and a secure computer connection being the main ingredients of a good flight.

Well, roll over business people, there is a more mature crowd moving in. Those of us who have paid top bucks for economy tickets all our working lives and have amassed an Everest of flier miles are taking over. We call ourselves the Hot Rolled Towel Generation.

And we deserve it. Bum knees, rotten eyesight, sore backs, occasional disorientation, and the imperative of sleeping lying flat all medically indicate that we are no longer fit for slum class. Who wants a rather rotund, occasionally drooling, rheumy-eyed old geezer sitting beside them? And the worst: he might even start telling stories about how things used to be—better/worse/different.

Shakespeare, as usual, was right. In his “All the world’s a stage” speech, the last stage of human development circles back to the first, and the old man becomes a baby again. Never has this been truer than on a good 10-hour business class flight.

You are cocooned like a papoose in a plastic cubicle. You are back in a roomy womb. (It is the same idea in coach class, but there it is more like being triplets.)  You are nurtured, cleaned, and looked after.

The impeccably groomed young lady comes and kneels in front of you (just like a kindergarten teacher), addresses you by name, and in a clear voice that you can actually hear assures you that she is your personal slave for the duration of the flight. You can eat and drink what you want, when you want. They give you chocolates and champagne and green tea and then ask if you would like more.

When you lower your mechanical seat into sleeping position you can snore, snort, drool, burp and fart to your heart’s content inside the comforting roar of the jets. Under the light-weight duvet, with your reading light adjusted just-so, you could even be forgiven for sucking your thumb.

Your clothes becomes crinkled, spotty and messy if you have chosen not to change into the complimentary pyjamas. Turbulence can result in a surprising little vomit in the handy vomit bag. You are not scolded, but comforted and protected. Macho is out. Maternal is in.

The washrooms are close-by, smell like roses, and usually empty. The toilet paper is constantly folded into peak ends for easy roll-offs. There is a button to call a cabin crew member in case of washroom emergencies.

Upon landing, you re-enter the cold cruel world. Your time of no-control, no-responsibility is over. You are heartlessly thrown back into the earthly morass of immigration line-ups, taxi swindles, and stultifying heat. You wonder where your next meal is coming from.

Again, you become a player in the Shakespeare monologue as you turn into the (tourist) soldier “full of strange oaths … sudden and quick in quarrel.”

The flight is over.