Carbon Footprints and Metal Cutlery

I was just finishing off a nice Iberia korma-chicken-thing with rice, salad and tasty airline cake when I realised that I’ve done a lot of flying since July 2007. A quick count-up revealed that in the last 7 months I have flown about 40,000 miles over 20 legs. I’ve spent about 109 hours in oh-so-comfortable airplane seats. And I still haven’t worked out whether it’s an aeroplane or airplane. I favour the latter based on the film title alone.
But the upshot of all this means that I cringe whenever people mention “carbon footprints”. I dread to think what my carbon output for the year 2007/2008 will be when all is done and dusted with my time at Armonia. Factor in the science that tells us that CO2 emitted into the upper troposphere has about double the impact of grond emissions and it becomes the stuff that environmental tree-huggers have nightmares about. The weird thing is that, for someone who probably has above-average awareness of the issues, this hasn’t bothered nearly as much as I thought it would. But it does bug me because if I’m not tearing my hair out in order to offset then who will? And even if I did offset, does paying a man on the internet to tell me he’s planted a tree actually do anything towards saving the planet from what is looking like an increasingly probably environmental disaster (if it isn’t already)? I really feel like I should think this through more while I fly even if it seems like an ironic use of my spare time!
Which brings me onto another thing which I’ve had time to chew over at 10,000m (so to speak). Now, I’m all for reusable cutlery, having complained every week Eden Church uses disposable tea and coffee cups (which is only slightly less offensive than the liquid served inside). But I was sure that metal cutlery was banned on most airlines. Not so Iberia. The paranoid American air companies use plastic knives so blunt that a rolling pin would do a better job of cutting through whatever they are calling food on that day but it seems that Iberia has judged a cutlery-armed Spanish terrorist to be less effective than his USA counterpart. It reminds me of some lines from a recent Flight of the Conchords song:
I saw a man lying on the street half dead
With knives and forks sticking out of his leg.
And he said,
"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow
Can somebody get that knife and fork out of my leg, please?
Can somebody please remove these cutleries from my knees?"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLEK0UZH4cs)

Blog Interest

Having been in the UK for quite a while over Christmas and New Year, you will have noticed that there has been little activity on my blog recently. I’ve received a number of suggestions as to why I haven’t been in contact recently. No, I haven’t been eaten by Mexican dinosaurs and no I’m not residing in some sort of internet black hole. I’ve actually had a disappointing number of encounters with man-eating reptiles whilst abroad and unless Norwich counts as an internet black hole (sometimes easier to believe than you might think), the second is inaccurate too. One might assume that my absence from the blogspaace was down to one of two factors. Either my life when I’m in England is sufficiently dull that nothing interesting happens or I’m so busy doing English things that I don’t have time to put things up.
In truth, it’s more of the latter. I’ve further familiarised myself with the train service as I flit between my two lives in Norwich and Cambridge, although I did also make it to Edinburgh, Coventry and London Euston station (very pleasant– not been there before). Plenty of amusing or random events have occurred; I’ve woken up with someone’s pants on my head, attended my Eden support prayer meeting for the second time (more than some of my support group!), trialled a new version of the Armonia UK website which consists entirely of pictures of Saul’s head (it’s complicated why) and found out what ‘somnambulist’ means (T2 crossword clue). Plenty of laughs and good times but although leaving friends and family is always hard, I’m glad to be back where I’m meant to be spending my year – in Mexico.

Happy New Year

It's a bit late but I haven't been near the web for a while. So... Happy New Year to all you MexicanChris readers out there. Enjoy the holidays, watch out for the incoming snow and may God bless you more and more with his rich grace in 2008.