Flights of Fancy

"One day, people from both sides will just drop their guns and life will go back to normal. Tall grass will cover the battlefields. And all those pilots who died, you realise, died for nothing. But I wanna make sure that more Germans end up dying for nothing."

From P-51 to Mig-29s, it's the sensation of just floating in air that counts.





Watched Flyboys with friend H today. While it has all the recycled elements of war movies like the brotherly bonding chats, the "meaning of war and life" sharing sessions, "I'd die for you" bravado and all the neccessary action scenes to ensure the pacing doesn't slack off, I don't mind. Sometimes I need reminding on just how lucky we are at this age, without a "great war" looming like a thunderstorm, something I'm sure not many of us could truly fathom.

Flyboys also covered topics like racism. One of the "flyboys" was a black, and his father was a slave. At the time the movie was set in, blacks were still very much looked down upon. During a heart-to-heart chatting scene, the black mentioned how flying brought interesting career prospects later on in his life. He wanted to deliver air mail when the war ended. He claims that "as long as people get their mail, it doesn't matter that it was flown by a black guy. They won't know."

However, it was the other thing the black guy said that struck a chord in me. He mentioned that he loved flying as he felt that as long as the bullets are not flying around, it's "mighty peaceful" up there. He loves the fact that nothing can touch him, that up there, there's no one to look down on him and that he's free to go anywhere. Well, that was the illusion I got. I still wanna fly. I still wanna be in the middle of (almost) nothing, suspended by that magical phenomenon of Bernoulli's effect.

Oh well, thank you Singapore Youth Flying Club for taking that avenue of learning how to fly away from me. I might find a way to learn as a private student next time. I might not. But I'll always remember the bureaucracy surrounding your admission policy. Whatever the case is, I'll also always have Microsoft Flight Simulator. -Jimmy