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travelonlinetips-blog · 5 years

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The worst inflight meals we've eaten

A passenger on an Emirates flight to Dubai was recently stunned to find his inflight meal with the prestigious airline consisted of a roll with a square of what looked like processed cheese and a very, very small piece of chicken in the middle.

Here are The Independent‘s worst experiences of plane food.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent

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Over the years I have learned that the less hungry I am when boarding a flight, the happier the flight is likely to be. At the same time as airlines strip away complimentary catering, airports are getting better at providing fresh, nutritious fare to fill the “dwell time” between clearing security and boarding the flight.

But on long-haul trips, most passengers simply accept what’s on offer — and, as the airlines know, feeding us helps to pass the time on interminable flights.

Viasa, the leading Venezuelan airline, had a particularly painful itinerary from Heathrow to South America, but it beat the competition hands-down for price. The journey began by flying further away from Venezuela, to Paris Charles de Gaulle. After an hour or two on the ground in France, the elderly DC10 took off for Margarita, Venezuela’s holiday island. Half the plane emptied to go off and enjoy the beaches and lagoons, while the rest of us carried on to Caracas.

At the airport serving the capital, the journey was far from over. I connected to a six-hour overnight hop to Rio, with São Paulo a couple of hours beyond that — where an onward flight to Asuncion in Paraguay awaited.

Shortly after take-off from Caracas, dinner arrived. It was the standard staple of chicken and rice. By now it was 3am in London, my tastebuds had been dulled by 17 hours of travel and my appetite was all over the place. So even though it was lukewarm and looked unappetising, I finished the meal.

Whether it was the chicken or the rice, revenge was not instant. If you are familiar with bacillus cereus (from reheated rice) or salmonella (from undercooked chicken), you will know that it usually takes a good few hours before the stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea begin. I was checking in for the final leg to Asuncion when it struck.

Missing the flight would have been disastrous, financially and logistically. So despite feeling ghastly, I managed to get airside and ask at the gate how busy the flight was. Barely a quarter full, was the answer.

If you are to suffer a severe gastro-intestinal attack, a mostly empty Boeing 737 is a good place to be. With three seats of my own at the back beside the loo, and an unlimited supply of sick bags, I got through the two-hour flight.

All that remained for me to do was clear immigration.

Asuncion airport is not the busiest in the world, but it does have a lunchtime bulge as flights arrive from various other South American capitals. The queue for passports was long, and every time I got near the front, I had to race away to the baño. It was mid-afternoon by the time I emerged, pale and feeble, but by then with the bacteria responsible fully evacuated.

On the flight home, I managed somehow to persuade the Viasa ticket desk to endorse the ticket across to British Airways — which at the time flew non-stop to Heathrow. And soon afterwards, the Venezuelan airline went bust.

The best inflight meal? Sashimi at 35,000 feet. But the raw fish was not aboard a Japanese airline, nor a long-haul flight: just a short hop from Reykjavik to Heathrow, with Icelandair. Fresh, tasty even at six miles high, and nutritious.

Julia Buckley, acting head of travel

Flying from Curaçao to Haiti last year – via Miami on American Airlines, a six(ish) hour journey – I splurged on an upgrade to ‘first class’, one of the perks of which, I assumed, would be a good meal on the flight. Instead, I got an inedible attempt at breakfast on the crack-of-dawn first leg and took so long to get through passport control and customs at Miami that I had to make a run for the plane. No problem, I thought, there’ll be a proper meal on board. And there was, for virtually everyone except me – it turned out that on AA first class passengers are able to pre-book fancy meals, and because I hadn’t all they had for me was a limp salad with some crackers they were doling out in economy. The cabin crew were deeply unsympathetic to my flight – I hadn’t realised back then that they hate first class passengers.

My other perennial bugbear was the food British Airways used to serve on shorthaul flights – their ‘chicken’ wraps with no discernable filling have the dubious privilege of being the only plane food I’ve rejected outright.

The best? Austrian Airlines allows all passengers to pre-book a meal made by Do&Co, and I had a fantastic unplanefood-like platter of spätzle flying Vienna to Heathrow a couple of years ago. And three years ago I flew BMI Regional from Bristol to Milan. Not only was the cabin a 1-2 formation so I sat by myself, as if I was in a private jet; but they handed out really solid snack packs with everything from biscuits and crackers to nuts. It was one of my favourite ever flights.

Josh Withey, assistant editor Indy100

My worst meal was last autumn flying BA to Hong Kong – not terrible but unremarkable. It was your standard chicken or beef selections with a bread roll, then a slightly sad looking breakfast. My best was to Taiwan (via Bangkok) on EVA Air. They served a range of meals including western cooked breakfast, tasty curries with rice and some gorgeous stir fries too.

Rachael Pells, education correspondent

It wasn’t my own worst meal, but flying Virgin Atlantic from Havana back to the UK in 2012, a vegan couple sat next to me were given first meat and then a vegetarian meal, despite having registered for vegan meals. The (British) air steward told them to just “deal with it”! Weirdly, the best plane meal I ever had was on Ukranian Airlines. It was only pasta but there was plenty of it and I just remember being really impressed. Qatar Airways were really generous on a recent flight – they had a really nice curry and savoury pastries last November. Emirates last week coming back from Dubai was pretty gross – really salty food.

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javmelendez-blog · 7 years

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“What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs…” (When the Whole of England Was Overrun with Ghosts, The Denham Tracts)

#folk stories #drawing of the day #childrensillustration #design inspiration #illustrationartists #illustration #ilustracion #shelly coat #witches #folk art #folkstoryfriday

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savingcontent · 4 years

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Microsoft Flight Simulator is the eleventh major entry in the series that began in 1982, and has evolved greatly even from the last official release in 2006. It’s a game that’s different things to many people: an educational tool for learning how to fly before getting in a real plane, a sandbox to fly from virtually any airport to the next, a role-playing game where you’re a pilot transporting passengers to their destination, or maybe just a means to pass the time by goofing around in the air. Whatever it is to you, Microsoft Flight Simulator has returned in 2020 to offer old and new players the thrill of flight. It may be simply named Microsoft Flight Simulator but know it’s anything but simple, as there’s a complex and detailed recreation of all things aeronautics that’s unparalleled.

Asobo Studio has focused on three key areas for how to build Flight Simulator: world, weather, and aerodynamics. The first is exemplified by using Bing maps to recreate 3D items from mountains to individual buildings. The world is represented 1:1, meaning that flights from JFK to LAX take the full five hours and change to complete. And aerodynamics are fully represented by the fact that realistic methods flying are paramount, to include but not limited to not having an excessive airspeed, adjusting flaps, having proper balance in weight, and not turning too hard. All of these elements coalesce into a beautiful reflection of our world’s physics system to near-perfection that’s both intuitive and authentic.

This being a Microsoft game, it does support keyboard + mouse, controllers, and most importantly joystick setups natively. Keyboard and mouse works well, but feels like more of an accessory than a primary means for controlling the game. The Xbox One controller works fine, if not a bit wily in terms of it overcompensating. So it needs some tweaks. The most exciting thing though, was it detected my Thrustmaster T16000M FCS HOTAS right away. During training, it even showed me a picture of my devices and their corresponding buttons. Even when using a HOTAS, you still have to be near your keyboard for certain actions. No matter how you want to play, there’s a way.

There’s three modes of play that make up Flight Simulator. There’s the World Map, which is where you engage in free flight. Here you can just pick an airport to fly out of and go, or you can create a flight plan to have an actual destination. This is also how you get into the multiplayer to be around others playing the game. The multiplayer can be turned on or off each time you go into it, with the options of setting it to live players, all players, or off (group only). You can opt for air traffic to be live (using real flight data), or AI (computer traffic). Then you can set the weather and time for live (utilizing real-world meteorogicial data), preset, or custom. The blending of both online and offline is seamless, being only just a few clicks away from playing with friends.

Next, you have Flight Training. Which, this should ultimately be the first thing you do. It does an excellent job of teaching you basic flight, and all the essentials of playing the game. You’ll be given a Cessna 152 to fly in, a propeller plane that’s not very fast, doesn’t go very high, but is the best plane to start out with. There are eight sections for training, taking about 90 minutes to complete, and that’s not considering time taken for needing to restart any of the later lessons.

And lastly there are Activities. These are broken up between Landing Challenges and Bush Flights. The bush flights cover large areas, taking passengers on the flight of a lifetime, though there’s only a handful of them. The landing challenges are broken up into three tiers of difficulty that get progressively more challenging as they go on. They cover the world’s trickiest approaches and runways that you’ve probably not considered or have seen before. While there’s 24 landing challenges on their own, there needs to be more variety. I’m missing the missions from FSX, the ones where something catastrophic happens like an engine going up in flames or shutting down entirely and having to land safely in an emergency. Even something like the sponsored races would be a change of pace. I hope this comes in time, either from the developers or from the community.

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First-person view is incredibly detailed. Every button of the cockpit is interactive. You can zoom in as close as you need, isolate your view to certain panels, which will give you better understanding of everything available to you. For the first time, the third-person view is worth a damn. It’s always been great for screenshots, but here instrument panels are all on-screen for you to gain valuable information to fly from this perspective, and even land if you find landing a Boeing 747 too difficult from first-person. This makes the game much more accessible as a result, with both view points being absolutely incredible.

There’s a toolbar to give you quick access to items like prior entries. You’ll be able to pull up the ATC (Air Traffic Control), camera, checklist, controls, AI control (pass flight, comms, etc), fuel, navigational log, objectives, travel to (flight plan), VFR (Visual Flight Rules) map, weather, and custom toolbar (toggle previous settings off or on). Being able to change the weather and time of day on-the-fly is flexible and absolutely stunning to see in action. Whether it’s popping a thunderstorm or clearing the skies, it happens in an instant, and it’s awesome. You also have the ability to active pause the game, meaning you can put the game on-hold and pan the camera for amazing screenshots.

If you want total realism, you can enforce that you follow a pre-flight checklist in order to get off the ground. Coupled with lifelike airports with people on the ground and vehicles moving about, you’ll feel like a real pilot. When you’re up in the air, you don’t have to fight the controls when you properly set the trim, or engage the autopilot (if the plane supports it). The simulation aspect can be as hands-on or as hands-off as you like, this is Flight Simulator your way. As a reward for your time, the game will let you earn your wings. The more hours you spend in the game, you’ll be bestowed a higher tier wing. The entry-level one is given at 50 hours, it’s a great incentive for budding pilots.

Now, those looking for disasters will have to go elsewhere. For things like wind-sheared wings, water landings (for non-water capable aircraft), and collisions with the ground for planes will not be shown. Now there is a developer mode you can enable to allow for such things, but it’s off for a reason. Flight Simulator lacks a filter for craft that can land in water. To my surprise, there are aircraft available and capable of doing so, like the Icon A5. Once I confirmed I was able to do it, it was a pleasant surprise. But it’s puzzling there’s no way to know what ones can or can’t land in water.

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There are three editions of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Standard comes with 20 planes and 30 airports for $59.99, Deluxe adds five planes and airports for $89.99, and Premium Deluxe has a total of 30 planes and 40 airports. The extra cost is not just about more planes and airports, but more realistic and detailed locations. The “non-premium” airports are nondescript and certainly lacking. It’s unclear how far this’ll go, but it’s a preference and desire for all things if you want to spend the money for it.

Conversely, the Standard edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator is available on Xbox Game Pass for PC. Starting at $1 for new subscribers, you can start on Xbox Game Pass to start playing the game right away. For as much as this sounds like an advertisement, it isn’t. It’s just incredibly easy to try this game out for a nominal fee, especially if you’ve never played the series before now.

If you’re still playing Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition, then this is a qualified upgrade in just about every way.

If there’s one glaring problem, one bugbear to Microsoft Flight Simulator, it’s the performance. The game looks incredibly photo-realistic on Ultra settings. However, the thing that becomes the most taxing is: dense cities. There’s almost nothing you can do about the framerate when you get in those locations. I noticed that no matter whether I was on Low or Ultra settings, I couldn’t get it above 50fps. Now, this is a game where 60 to 120fps is not really needed. On average, the game ran at about 40fps, and this is absolutely fine for what’s happening on-screen. In addition, the loading times are shockingly slow. I only have SSDs installed, and the game is loaded onto my fastest one. Yet, the game takes a few minutes to load up initially, and then more minutes to get into the game.

Now if there’s one benefit of everything that’s going on, is that Asobo Studio have created the most awe-inspiring and realistic clouds to-date. They look like you can reach out and touch them, seeing them dynamically form and dissipate is a technical marvel.

Something to consider about the game is its size, which comes in above 100GB. This is also based on version of the game you purchased. In addition, there’s live data that will be streamed in to achieve real-time data and more accurate maps. Now, if you’re have a data cap enforced by your ISP, then you might want to restrict or limit the amount of data you download. Data is what allows for multiplayer, you’re given plenty of options to toggle these things on and off at-will. Just make sure you’ve got the room to fit the game as it’ll be inching closer to 125GB.

My PC Specs:

– Microsoft Windows 10 Pro – Intel Core i9 9900K @ 5Ghz (Turbo) – Corsair H115i RGB PLATINUM 97 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler – Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory – EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB XC ULTRA GAMING – Seagate FireCuda SSD (500GB) – Seagate BarraCuda SSD (1TB / 2TB) – Thrustmaster T16000M FCS HOTAS

Flight Simulator at launch is only the beginning, as it’s set to be a game that evolves and grows over time rather than being a static product. If this was all the game would be, it’s great as-is. It’s a shame that the performance in areas, even on its lowest settings holds this back from reaching legendary status, but it’s a grand return to form for the series. No matter whether you buy it, or download it via Game Pass, you’re getting the best flight simulator to-date. Microsoft Flight Simulator soars to new heights, and has easily been worth the the fourteen year wait.

A Microsoft Store code for Microsoft Flight Simulator – Premium Deluxe Edition was provided in advance by the Microsoft / Xbox for review purposes

Microsoft Flight Simulator Review Microsoft Flight Simulator is the eleventh major entry in the series that began in 1982, and has evolved greatly even from the last official release in 2006.

#Asobo Studio #Flight Simulator #Microsoft Flight Simulator #Microsoft Store #PC #Reviews #Steam #Windows 10 #Windows Store #Xbox Game Studios

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Can Trump win a trade war with China?

By Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, March 23, 2018

For years, President Trump has railed against the threat of Chinese trade. China, he said, was operating on an uneven playing field, using unfair trade practices that supposedly harm the U.S. economy, steal American jobs and contribute to a vast trade deficit that now stands at $375 billion.

“The current trade imbalance is not acceptable,” Trump said during a speech before Asian leaders and dignitaries in Vietnam last November. “The United States will no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating or economic aggression. Those days are over.”

On Thursday, he finally took action against Beijing. The president announced his decision to impose tariffs on $60 billion worth of Chinese imports a year and limit China’s capacity to invest in the American technology industry.

Trump and his lieutenants defend their actions as a way to reassert American “sovereignty” over matters of international diplomacy and trade. An investigation launched by the administration in August found a range of “unfair” practices in China, particularly related to Beijing’s apparent theft or forced transfer of intellectual property from American businesses. And, like Trump’s earlier move to slap tariffs on certain steel and aluminum imports from various countries, including some close allies, the latest measures are another sign that Trump is following through on his campaign promises.

News of the move sent the stock market plunging and boosted fears of a looming trade war. The Economist calculated that for every American firm in favor of Trump’s protectionist policies, there may be as many as 3,000 opposed.

“Trade is not zero sum. It helps to grow the standards of living of people around the globe,” wrote Steve Odland, the CEO of the Committee for Economy Development, a pro-free trade think tank, on CNBC’s website. “We need the inexpensive products from outside the country to raise our standard of living. And, with only 5 percent of the world population, we need open access to markets for our own goods to grow our economy. We cannot have one without the other.”

Then, just hours after Trump’s announcement, Beijing showed its willingness to strike back. “China does not want to fight a trade war, but it is absolutely not afraid of a trade war,” said China’s Commerce Ministry in a statement issued Friday morning in Beijing.

The ministry said it had “compiled a list of 120 products worth nearly $1 billion, including fresh fruit and wine, upon which it would impose a 15 percent tariff if the two countries fail to resolve their trade differences ‘within a stipulated time,’” reported my colleague David J. Lynch.

There were no further details about the products that Beijing might target, but there is no lack of options. China, a huge buyer of commercial jets made by the American firm Boeing, could look to Airbus or other non-U. S. companies in a bid to hurt the American aviation industry. American tech companies like Apple and Intel, which have significant manufacturing operations in China, could be squeezed with punitive measures.

Beijing could also mimic the European Union’s potential retaliatory measures against the United States, such as tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. And it could depreciate its currency, the yuan, to make Chinese exports even more competitive--and further infuriate Trump.

Then there’s the agriculture sector, where China could target American imports of sorghum and soybeans. “China could rely more on South America for soy: Brazil exported more soybeans than ever last year--nearly 51 million tons--and nearly all of it went to China,” noted NPR. “Should China take measures against U.S. soybean imports, it would likely hurt American farmers, a base of support for Trump.”

Beijing seems keenly aware of that. “If China halves the proportion of the U.S. soybean imports, it will not have any major impact on China, but the U.S. bean farmers will complain,” noted an editorial in the state-run Global Times. “They were mostly Trump supporters. Let them confront Trump.”

Indeed, American consumers will be the losers no matter where China may apply pressure. “There is no way to impose $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports without it having a negative impact on American consumers. Make no mistake, these tariffs may be aimed at China, but the bill will be charged to American consumers who will pay more at the checkout for the items they shop for every day,” said Hun Quach, vice president for international trade at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, to my colleagues.

And while Trump’s perennial bugbear is the lopsided deficit between the two countries, economists stress that he is misreading how global trade works. “Retaliatory trade barriers put up by other countries would hurt U.S. exports and offset reduced imports, meaning the trade deficit wouldn’t vanish,” wrote Eswar Prasad for The Post’s Outlook section. “What’s more, lower exports would mean less employment--a possible unintended consequence of Trump’s policy.”

Prasad warned Trump against firing the first shot of a battle no one wants to fight: “A trade war wounds all combatants: It rattles business and consumer confidence, restrains exports, and hurts growth. Many U.S. businesses rely on low trade barriers to create international supply chains that reduce costs and increase efficiency. These could come apart amid the new tariffs. The last time the United States imposed sweeping tariffs, in the 1930s, the effect was to prolong and worsen the Great Depression. Winning a trade war by destroying both imports and exports would be a Pyrrhic victory.”

Yet, Trump seems undeterred. It’s unclear where things go from here. “We don’t know how this is going to turn out,” said Scott Kennedy, director of the project on Chinese business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to my colleagues. “It could be resolved in a few months, or it could spiral out of control into a broader strategic rivalry.”

Trump administration officials speak of reshaping the post-World War II international system, whose rules are no longer apparently in the American interest. Critics decry such thinking, given the extent to which Washington wrote those very rules.

“On present form, ‘America First’ is a threat to the entire basis of the multilateral trading system,” wrote Michael Johnson, a former British trade negotiator, in a blog post for the World Economic Forum. He added: “America does seem to be stepping back from its history as a main driver of the open international trading system.”

Trump’s critics are hoping he won’t be also driving the international system wildly off course.

#Trump's tariffs #China

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