airplane safety procedures: paranoia or precaution

i spoke with my friend earlier today, hes going on a flight to Beijing and he mentioned he has a fear of flying. this reminded me of something i could never figure out for sure. why must ALL electronics be turned off during take off and landing?

mobile phones and laptops are switched off for obvious reasons, interference through wireless signals and whatnot. but what about mp3 players, portable consoles, those kind of things. i always thought it was to ensure that all passengers could stay alert and pay attention to flight attendants or any emergency situation which may arise. so why is it they allow people to sleep during take off and landing? that basically contradicts my little theory, so its most likely not the real reason.

i looked it up a bit more and found its because...
1) all devices apparently transmit radio waves. air control towers are built to receive even the slightest transmission, even a weak little ipod radio wave. its unlikely to cause any potentially dangerous interference, but even the slightest possibility that could put passengers lives at stake is taken into account i suppose. better safe than sorry.
2) not all flight attendants are given real training to differentiate a mobile phone or laptop from other electronics. i guess if youre not really a techy person then you could easily mistake a psp for a tiny laptop.. so as a precaution flight attendants are told to make sure ALL electronics are switched off.

well im glad i finally got that figured out. hope it was interesting, i found it interesting..

coffee anyone?

today i had my interview with PCC, Pacific Coffee. last week i submitted my application for any openings they may have in the company, be it working at the head office or making coffee in one of the stores. so the interview went well, though i wasnt exactly applying for a difficult position, unlike my first interview with Vtech (a story im not willing to share). it was fairly simple and it only lasted about 10 minutes, maybe even less.

strangely enough iv never made coffee before and i dont drink it at all. but its good to get to grips with a working lifestyle, having a schedule to keep is good i suppose rather than having absurd sleeping hours. im not particularly looking forward to doing a hard labour job as i understand it can be extremely tedious and more importantly, extremely boring. but at the end of the day im getting money and experience. long as theres some achievements then it cant be so bad.

i should hear back from PCC in a week, if not sooner. look forward to my first blog as a barista in the near future, where i will most likely be complaining about how boring the first day was.

curious note of the day: TNT (in terms of explosives) stands for Trinitrotoluene, a chemical compound with the formula C₆H₂(NO₂)₃CH₃ (courtesy of wikipedia). i always knew TNT was some form of explosive power used in dynamite and whatnot, but i never knew the actual acronym was for. why did i look this up? cause my blog address tntien reminded me of TNT... haha

"first" blog

not really my first blog, since iv made several blog pages in the past. but this will be the first to introduce my new blog site, "mikes blog". yes, very original. btw for the address tntien.blogspot, tntien is short for Tzu Nong Tien, my chinese given name (田子農).

unlike past blogs iv done, this will hopefully be more productive and less about random useless thoughts. i feel like iv been bumming around too much as of late (as pointed out by my father as well). blogging about more serious matters will hopefully be enough to stimulate my brain rather than rotting it away whilst doing whatever unproductive activity i usually do.

so look forward to my next blog! what will the topic be, who knows, hopefully it will be something interesting.