Lateral Thinking

When Heathrow Terminal 5 was opened 10 days ago, it quickly descended into chaos when the automated baggage system failed. It quickly resulted in a missing baggage mountain of 28,000 and cancellation to date of nearly 500 flights. To add salt to the wound, in what some people consider a brilliant piece of ‘lateral thinking’, the bags were sent all the way to Milan in Italy to be sorted! That’s because the struggling baggage handlers of Heathrow's Terminal 5 couldn't handle them. It took 24 hours to get them to Italy in a fleet of lorries and apparently it’s faster to do that than sending them by air. This is surely another great export success story for Britain…like the failing NHS, rundown rail system, the falling standard of British education and so on.

Just last Friday, when we talked over dinner at Olgaland on our recent driving trip to London, the roads are so similar to Brunei. As soon as we hit the black top, the standard of the roads are nothing compare to those Europe. When we think about it, most of us are trained and moulded the British ways; it seems we are reproducing all of this in our own place. May be this is the time to do real ‘lateral thinking’. Rather than too reliant on the British ways, lobbied by all sort of parties to pick and do business with British consultants and companies, lets us look elsewhere.

By the way, while stopping over at Schipol airport to buy Sunday newspaper, Faris got mesmerized by the size and power of this jet engine, two of this can thrust a large Boeing 767 which can carry up to 300 passengers.