Only 2000000 Air Miles...

Posted on 2007/01/25 06:18:02 (January 2007).

[Tuesday 23rd January]
Today was generally pretty boring at work. The middle of the day was however brightened somewhat by the opportunity to attend a presentation by Virgin Galactic. For those of you not in the know, this is the company planning to offer the world's first commercial space flights - a snip at $200,000 a ticket. Having looked around on the web, I found out that some guy had been able to trade in 2,000,000 Virgin Atlantic Air Miles for a ticket. I calculated that I would only need to make 160 round trips from London to San Francisco for that - apparently I may have to come here about four times a year (groan), so if I stick at this job for 40 years...

Having said that, given how nervous I get at the prospect of getting onboard a regular plane, I probably won't be one of the people queuing up for the first few tickets.

Still, it did make me think - what a fabulously adventurous business proposition. You've got to take your hat off to Sir Richard Branson (who as I've probably said many times before, I have in fact met). The guy who gave the talk - Steve Attenborough - was apparently an investment banker at some point, and just decided he wanted to change his job for something more exciting. He was kind enough to tell us what a cool company he thought ours was, but lets face it, we're all basically pissing about moving little bits of information from one computer to another. He, on the other hand, is going to be taking people into space!

In the evening I tried again to go to the Indian restaurant near my hotel, and again found it was closed. Quite frustrating for the second time in a row. I did at least this time notice the notice (!) on the window saying they were undergoing construction work. I initially just went back to the hotel defeated, but eventually my stomach took over, and got me to get the car out and go for a bit of a drive. I managed to find another Indian restaurant in downtown (that's the town centre to us British folk).

The food was OK I suppose, not great though, and the fact I had driven there meant No Beer For Me. As Oscar Wilde once said (more or less) - a curry without lager is like a day without sunshine.

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