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Richy's Random Ramblings

News: Lufthansa Adopts Traditional Dress

Lufthansa Cabin Crew In Drindl DressesLufthansa, the airline I used to fly to Japan and Portgual (both via Germany – so in the case of Birmingham, UK to Portugal, I went a very long way round), is adopting traditional dress: the Dirndl dress as used at Oktoberfest.

The thing that confuses me is that my experience of Lufthansa staff is that they are polite, understanding, and multi-lingual (on my Germany to Japan flight they recognised me as English and spoken in fluent English to my, in German to the gentleman sitting next to me, Japanese to some other passengers and I even heard French – the Portugese flight had German, English and Portugese speakers) – and I also believe there is some sort of Global Airline regulation that specifies that cabin crew need to be able to speak English.

So why does the BBC have an interview with the cabin crew who are going to be on flights from Munich to North America and Asia (so English will be needed to be known by the staff) – so why interview them in German and have to dub them into English 🙁

Net: Good timing (sick!)

From BBC News:

Maria Esther de Capovilla – officially the world’s oldest woman – has died in Ecuador aged 116, relatives said.
Capovilla died at dawn on Sunday in the coastal city of Guayaquil after succumbing to pneumonia. Her funeral was planned for Monday.

That’s what I call good timing – if she hadn’t died on Sunday, she would have been buried alive!

How did I get from A to K?

Can somebody please explain to me how, over two hours ago, I checked Wikipedia to see if the Vicar in the latest episode of “My Hero” (Michael Fenton Stevens) the actor I remember from KYTV – and then make my way through the history of BSkyB (and consequently Sky Broadcasting, British Satellite Boardcasting), then through NTL and Telewest, then via UK Gold, via Have I Got News For You, via Ian Hislop, via Private Eye, via something else (including, but not limited to, the History of the BBC, White City, Television House, Top Up TV, Xtraview, Richard “Dirty” Desmond, Mohammed Al-Fayed), then to the Mary Whitehouse Experience, then to Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, then to Fantasy Football League, and then to Chris Morris, then to Chris Langham, then to Armino Iccananeou (no, I can’t spell his name – the Scottish actor/comedian with an Italian father), then back to Chris Morris, then to “The IT Crowd” and Autism’s Syndrom finally finishing up on the wikipedia entry on “goatse” (I’ve still got Firefox tabs on Spitting Image, Retts Syndrom and Autism to read).

I wanted to go to sleep 1.5 hours ago, but damn wikipedia…..

How to find a New Zealand street in Google Maps

I’ve found something that the all-knowing and all-seeing Google cannot find! Streets in New Zealand. This is despite these streets being in its database!

So how can we pull up a nice Satellite view of a New Zealand street? Here’s how I did it.

First of all, know the name of the street you are looking for. For this example, I will use “Reeves Road” in Christchurch (South Island).

Now go to http://www.wises.co.nz/ and search for that road to make a map.

Now zoom out on the Wises map to get a good overview of the area.

Now go to Google maps at http://maps.google.co.uk and type in “Christchurch, New Zealand” to get as close as Google will allow you to search.

Compare the two maps until you can match up the major road names/locality names.

Zoom in on Google maps and low and behold – there’s your street! With it’s street name!

If you want to then see it in Google Earth (which doesn’t have street names and has the same resolution photos), then click “Link to this page” and in the URL bar at the top of Firefox/Internet Explorer, copy the &ll=-49……. section until the next & sign and copy that bit into Google Earth.

There you go – not that difficult, but fiddly.