UK 2022: The Pandemic Run.

In four hours, Karli and I leave for London. It's our first trip by airplane since February 7th, 2020, when we returned from Disneyland, just under the wire before the pandemic clamped down on international travel and only a few weeks before we all started working virtually via VPN and Zoom - at least, all of us who were lucky enough to be able to do so.

The UK has removed a lot of its restrictions, but we're still treating London as hostile territory, at least in terms of the pandemic. It all feels a bit like a near-future cyberpunk scenario written by William Gibson - masking up for the airport and the flight, producing our vaccine passports along with our regular passports, certifying that we haven't visited any red zones before our entry into England, and planning COVID-19 tests so that we can persuade Customs and Immigration to let us back into Canada in a week. (Although, given that the United Kingdom is currently being battered by one of the worse storms in 30 years, comparisons to Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather are equally appropriate.)

Cue the techno theme music - we're starting our run. 

- Sid

"Would you like a jelly baby?"

One week to go before we depart on our trip to England, and at the moment we are still planning to do the trip.  In preparation, I asked an English co-worker if she'd like me to bring anything back for her - crisps, chocolate bars, cheap tights from Primark*, anything like that.

She thought for a moment and asked for jelly babies.  Sadly, in spite of her English origins, she was unaware that the offer of a jelly baby was the characteristic conversational gambit of Tom Baker's 4th Doctor**.  Fortunately someone has already created collated evidence of this very English approach to breaking the ice:

- Sid

P.S.  It turns out that my co-worker had never seen Tom Baker as the Doctor, arguably the most popular of the portrayals of the last Time Lord - sic transit gloria mundi. 

* As recommended by another English employee when Karli and I were in London for our honeymoon.

** And, apparently, a number of other Doctors at least once.

Awakenings.

At my work-from-home lunch today I starting watching The Force Awakens - which I probably haven't seen in its entirety since seeing it twice in commercial release - and I have two comments.

First, as shown in the opening sequence, Rey's home planet of Jakku is surprisingly blue (at least on my monitor) and has an awfully high albedo for a desert planet.

Second, full points to Poe Dameron for targeting the neck gaps in the First Order Stormtrooper armour in the opening skirmish, it establishes him as an experienced soldier, both in terms of accuracy and knowledge.

 

 

Three comments, actually.  

The unexpected appearance of the Millennium Falcon on Jakku is a clever and subtle way of letting the audience know that the storyline of the new trilogy will be inextricably combined with the events of the past - it's an instantly recognizable link to the history that we're already familiar with.

- Sid