Monday, July 13, 2009

Questions Make the World Go 'Round

I've been slacking off on the questions lately, so this, I think, will be my "catch-up blog," so to speak. I always feel a bit off whenever I'm not caught up on something, so this will hopefully create a nice clean slate for the future of this blog.

Not that I'm being over-dramatic or anything.

Do you like planes?
Truthfully, I'm not a huge fan. I ought to be used to them by now; I've been flying on them for extended periods of time since I was a baby. The whole airplane atmosphere just makes me slightly uncomfortable.
It's not that I'm scared of terrorism or of the plane falling; the first is certainly a real problem, but for the most part, security is so tight that it's very unlikely that another massive terrorist plane crash would occur. And planes fly all the time without falling, and so few plane crashes happen that it seems sort of pointless to waste time worrying about something you can't control. I think that's why some people get so freaked out about flying, by the way: statistically speaking, planes are so much safer than cars, but I think that most people feel safer in cars than airplanes. I think that the idea that there really isn't anything you can do about your life while you're flying - unless you're the pilot, you're putting your trust in a stranger's ability to control an object that doesn't seem to be being held up by anything tangible - scares some people. It's true that you can't control how other people act on the road when you're driving, but for the most part, you can control your actions and your reactions, which makes you feel like you have a much bigger chance of surviving.
Anyway, it's not my safety that I'm worried about on planes. I simply find the whole experience to be irritating and drawn-out. I would definitely prefer flying for 7 hours over, say, being on a ship for a month, and I accept that planes are more or less necessary. Still, the process of arriving at the airport 2 hours early, going through security, waiting for your flight, watching for those seemingly inevitable planes is tiring enough. And then you actually have to get on the plane, which is not a fun experience for me. I'm not so bothered by the lack of space (cars don't have that much room, either) as I'm bothered by the slightly nauseous feeling airplane food gives me. I don't get airsickness, except when the food is brought out. Off the plane, I'm sure it's fairly equal to your standard frozen dinners, but on the plane, the mere smell of it makes me feel sick. The decline and landing of an airplane is also somewhat annoying, because about half an hour before the plane lands (before it starts heading down for real, but when it's a step or two lower in its pre-landing position) I always get a really bad head and ear -ache. It must be the air pressure change or something, I'm not sure.
But, other than that, I don't really mind planes. They're better than the alternative.

What's your leadership style?

I'm definitely not an organized "Warrior" or a realistic "Scientist," I can tell you that. I think I would be a combination of a "Visionary" and a "Nurturer." Actually, I think that I would be a "Visionary" with very slight "Nurturer" tendencies, if that's allowed. I guess that I often get the ball rolling, so to speak, with a more general idea, but I often have trouble narrowing down that one idea to something more specific and attainable. I suppose that I always want to do everything, and that's usually just not an option. As for the "Nurturer" option, I do care about how other people are feeling, but I'm not really the one who tries to fix everybody's problems. Depending on the situation, I can be slightly hurt by negative criticism, but I'm definitely not caught up in it and I usually just push it to the side and keep going. You could say that I'm not overly sensitive, which seems to be a character trait of a "Nurturer" (that sounds more negative than I intended, sorry).

What do you want your last words to be?

Preferably, I will die at a reasonably old age at which I am reasonably well-known for doing something quite creative, innovative, and intelligent. And, should these requirements be met, I would like to say something really, really cryptic that may or may not have a deeper meaning and that causes everybody to go to great lengths to decipher my true meaning.
This is just a first draft of that quote, and I will (hopefully) have years and years to think of something good, so don't take this one too seriously:
"Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them."
Once I throw in a few more adjectives, decide what I want to talk about, obtain a nice big thesaurus, and perhaps attend a philosophy class or two, and stop quoting Albus Dumbledore, I think it will be rather lovely.
*wink*

Quietly,
Unicorns
Eat
Stallions
That
Invade
Our
Neighborhoods!

[I found this one on some random survey thingy:] If you were standing on the edge of a cliff, clinging onto a baby that you didn't know in one hand, and your elderly grandmother in the other, but you would had to let go of one to save the other's life, who would you save? (Note that sacrificing yourself to save them is not an option, although it would certainly be the noble thing to do.)

1 comment:

Alex said...

That plane answer was quite awesome. Fantastic writing.

Overall I would say great blog... :)