Heathrow Airport

!±8± Heathrow Airport

The Overwhelming Enormity of Heathrow

The sheer size of the Heathrow Airport will daunt you if you're a first-timer in London. The Heathrow Airport sprawls across some 4.7 square miles and when your plane touches down on the tarmac of the Airport, you'll have to drink in the enormity of Heathrow's proportions while still sitting belted to your seat because airport authorities in London are pretty strict and don't allow passengers to disembark at terminals unless the terminals are free from traffic and planes that have landed moments ago.

The Heathrow Airport is the most important airport of London, the second-most important airport of the city being Gatwick. The Heathrow Airport is situated in a borough named Hillingdon on the outskirts of London. Heathrow Airport is designated to be the second-most bustling airport of the world, the most bustling airport of the world being the Atlanta Hartfield Jackson International Airport of Atlanta, USA. Heathrow claims to handle more global travelers than any other airport of the planet. The Airport has undergone renovations several times since it first started operations way back in the 1930s.

The Heathrow Airport is a halting ground for more than 90 airlines that connect Heathrow to 170 global destinations. The chief airlines that operate using the Heathrow Airport as their starting or ending destination are the British Airways, the Virgin Atlantic Airways and the British Midland Airways. Heathrow handles about 70 million passengers every year. Out of this number, nearly 50% use Heathrow as a stop-over so that they might board connecting flights that take them to distant places either east of England into Asia or west of England across the Atlantic Ocean into the Americas. A sizeable chunk of the 70 million board connecting flights from Heathrow to destinations close by. And about 7 million of the 70 million land at Heathrow in order to reach places in the United Kingdom.

Get Acquainted with the Flip Side of Heathrow

Security measures are stringent at Heathrow. They have been beefed up even more after terrorism has engulfed the world since 9/11 and 7th July, 2005. The British army has been stationed at Heathrow every so often when there has been need to protect the Airport and the travelers from the acts of various miscreants and terrorists. The irony of it all is that though Heathrow has been saved from the attacks of terrorists and heinous criminals, it hasn't been spared from the mischief made by small-time thieves and robbers. Passengers have been shocked when, on reaching the conveyor belt to pick up their baggage after obtaining clearance from immigration and other checking authorities, they haven't been able to locate their luggage on the carousel. As pickpockets and thieves have flourished in Heathrow over the last few years, the airport has acquired the new and unflattering name of 'Thiefrow' for itself.

Another reason why Heathrow is getting a lot of flak from passengers as well as from the media is because the Airport has reached its bursting point. Despite being spread over several square miles of English soil, Heathrow is currently experiencing difficulty handling some 70 million travelers every year. Packed to the full and more than it can manage, Heathrow is witnessing some serious bottlenecks in the form of delayed departures and arrivals and long queues of travelers waiting to undergo checks. Planes scheduled to land at Heathrow have to frequently keep circling the London sky as often, nowadays, they aren't given permission to land because Airport officials are taking longer than ever to handle aircrafts that have landed previously and check the passengers who've landed in those aircrafts. Airport officials, it seems, can't cope with the ever-burgeoning number of passengers and aircrafts at Heathrow and are taking hours before they can complete all procedures and let incoming planes land. The Airport is thus pretty hamstrung by excessive delays that are angering the travelers. Hence, fresh revamps of the Airport terminals and grounds are in the pipeline that will hopefully ease the flow of traffic through Heathrow.

Spiritual Airport?

As Heathrow is the landing ground for globetrotters and people from various parts of the world, it's a melting pot of cultures, a potpourri of civilizations, a spectacular fusion ground of religions, ethnicities, and mores. To accommodate the personal and spiritual needs of the motley crowds who fill up Heathrow every day in teeming hundreds, Heathrow has set up a whole array of religious centers in each of its terminals. Thus, we see the presence of Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh and Mohammedan priests, preachers and clerics in the precincts of Heathrow reading or saying prayers and invoking various divinities in the many prayer halls of Heathrow.

Shop till You Drop at Heathrow

Heathrow can easily be dubbed as a shopper's paradise. Heathrow boasts of hundreds of retail outlets and shops and eateries that regale the hundreds of travelers who pass in and out of the Airport every day. The Airport had invested heavily and fruitfully in retail during the 1980s and the 90s. Heathrow has now become the home of fabulous retail outlets that sell everything that is useful, handy, attractive and necessary to travelers embarking on journeys. Heathrow's current design and layout is such that passengers are compelled to walk through the shopping areas en route to the departure lounge or when coming out of the arrivals section. There are duty-free shops galore at Heathrow selling perfumes, chocolates, liquor, books, stationery and other knickknacks. It's a pleasure to visit the various retail outlets of Heathrow, stand and gaze at the bric-a-brac, the rows of foodstuffs, the toys and the souvenirs. A last-minute gift, a fountain-pen set, a novel, a memento that will always remind you of London is what you can pick from these shops before departing London, one of the world's capitals. A box of chocolates that you buy at a duty-free shop can make an excellent present for a loved one back home. On the contrary, if you've just landed at Heathrow, the shops of the Airport will give you a remarkable taste of London in their own inimitable way.

Why Heathrow Stands Out

There's something about Heathrow that distinguishes it from the other famous airports of the world. If you've been to the Changi Airport of Singapore or the Dubai International Airport, you'll notice that Heathrow is quite plain compared to these airports. While Changi takes your breath away with its never-ending lobbies and foyers, spotless and gargantuan departure halls, amazing flowers and plants and gardens that are situated within the airport premises, incredible transit areas, one of which is even filled with a swimming pool; the Dubai International Airport stuns travelers with its dazzling glitz and scintillating glamor. Next to these airports, Heathrow might seem a bit wan and old-fashioned but this is precisely what differentiates Heathrow from new-fangled, showy airports. Changi is a marvelous airport, its beauty and sophistication serving to appease the eyes as much as to fulfill utilitarian objectives. But Dubai International Airport has been accused by many of showing off more than it can afford to. In fact, the Airport came under the scanner when Dubai was badly hit by the recession of 2009 and had to be bailed out by its benevolent bigger brother, Abu Dhabi. One look at the Dubai International Airport is sufficient to tell any traveler that besides helping people to connect to various cities of the globe, the purpose of the Airport is to overpower everybody with its pompous décor. And this is the reason why Heathrow is considered to be a classy airport, an embodiment of elegant traditions and British values. The starkness of Heathrow as compared to the sparkling ostentation of Dubai Airport will surprise you no end. Heathrow is an Airport that's obviously more utilitarian than showy. You'll get a feel of quiet tradition, heritage and competency the moment you step into Heathrow. 'That's what makes Heathrow "Heathrow"', many travelers say.

Outside Heathrow

The parking space outside Heathrow is very large. Cars and tourist buses often park here. Tour operators endeavor to crowd the parking space in order to woo tourists as soon as they step out of the Airport. Gigantic tourist buses are often seen rumbling up to this area to pick up tourists who've booked the buses on a prior basis. London slowly creeps into view as you start your journey in these buses. It takes some time before you can get to downtown London, to Oxford Street, and to Knightsbridge, from Heathrow. You can stay in any of the hotels that are located in the vicinity of Heathrow. These hotels are generally cheaper than the ones situated in the heart of London. Staying near Heathrow can be convenient if you're not interested in sightseeing. But if you really want to see London, it's better you loosen your purse strings and put up at an expensive hotel near Trafalgar Square, near Piccadilly, or in Knightsbridge, on Oxford Street, on Regent Street, on Bond Street, or in Mayfair.

Meeting Diary: Your Amanuensis at Heathrow

And you can use Meeting Diary as your assistant throughout - when you're flying, when you're sightseeing, and when you're staying in London. It's a must-have for leisure travelers as well as for corporate go-getters who alight at Heathrow to breathe the air of London.

Heathrow Airport

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The Psychology of Collecting

!±8± The Psychology of Collecting

Where do I get off writing about the Psychology of Collecting? I have no degree in any of the behavioral sciences. (Took a Psychological Foundations of Education to get my teaching credential some years ago. Got an 'A', but frankly, I thought it was all a bit silly.) The answer is simple. I've made a hobby of observing people's hobbies. Talking to them -or more accurately- listening to them talk about a subject they love. (And I have to say that there are worse ways to learning about something. An interesting discourse and a dull discourse are often separated by little more then the discourser and his or her interest in that subject.)

Collecting might be thought of as a subset of a larger human behavior named -if only for the sake of convenience - hobbies. But I'm not sure this is true. I theorize that collectors and hobbyists are entirely different things. Take model train people as evidence. I used to take my casework to train shows when they came to northern California. Nice people the model train 'hobbyists', but they come in two distinct flavors. There are those who build tracks and little cities and mountains etc. and then play with their trains.   Then there are collectors who are somehow compelled to own a sample of every locomotive the Lionel made in a given year. Or all the locomotives Lionel ever made. Or all the locomotives, cars, tankers, cabooses, etc of a given scale / year / manufacturer. Often they don't even open the package -reduces the value, I'm told. Both the builders and the collectors go to the same show and -I suppose- talk to each other -but they are completely distinct species.

PATHOLOGICAL COLLECTORS:

There are some poor souls who are pathological in their collecting. Not my word, 'pathological'. The research folks use this word to describe collecting to the point that it interferes with daily life. Their houses are filled -and I mean literally every-square-foot- floor-to-ceiling-filled- until-it-crashes-through-the-floor-below FILLED with stuff. These people usually have no interest in the stuff in their collection, but pitch a fit if someone tires to take any of it away. There is some research indicating how this might be explained.   Steven W. Anderson, a neurologist, and his colleagues at the University of Iowa studied 63 people with brain damage from stroke, surgery or encephalitis who had no previous problems with hoarding before their illness, but afterward, began filling their houses with such things as old newspapers, broken appliances or boxes of junk. The good Doctor says:

These compulsive collectors had all suffered damage to the prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in decision making, information processing and behavioral organization. The people whose collecting behavior remained normal also had brain damage, but it was instead distributed throughout the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

Anderson posits that the urge to collect derives from the need to store supplies such as food--a drive so basic it originates in the subcortical and limbic portions of the brain. Humans need the prefrontal cortex, he says, to determine what "supplies" are worth hoarding.

I need to make one last point before moving on to the merely nutty-non-pathological-collectors. All the reading I've done suggests that collecting for -what-ever reason and to what-ever degree- is little understood and there is really not all much clear research out there. This takes me back to my starting point -I get to pretend to be an expert on the psychology of collecting because t'aint no one else out there who is any better qualified then I am.

NUT-CASE (non-clinical) COLLECTORS:

Somewhat less 'traumatic' / 'dramatic'? - and it's pretty clear I'm on thin-ice psycho-babble here - are the merely obsessive compulsive disorder collectors. No detectable brain damage - just good old OCD - or we might call it OCCD, (Obsessive Compulsive Collecting Disorder). But I wonder how many people who are truly committed to a given subject, (coin collecting, the Denver Broncos, UFO's, conspiracy theories, you name it) have family and friends who look at them, shake their heads and mutter something about OCD under their breaths. But before we get on to collectors -Collectors with a capital C, coins, stamps, model railroad car Collectors, etc., we might consider the collector in all of us. There is a delightful story written by Judith Katz-Schwartz - Remembering Grandma. Her grandma was a refugee -as a very young girl- from Tsarist Russia who collected.... and I quote...

...the tops of Bic pens neatly wound with rubber bands; hundreds of tiny garment snaps threaded onto safety pins; at least one hundred glass jars, all sparkling clean; eighty-seven neatly rolled and clamped Ace bandages.

I thought this was a little funny, till the chap with whom I share a wood shop reminded me about the two big garbage bags I have filled with carefully cleaned BBQ sauce bottles. I love BBQ sauce and eat it on almost everything.   About a bottle a week. No idea what will ever come of them, but I KNOW the day will come when I'm dang glad I have all these empty BBQ sauce bottles.

Judith sums it up beautifully and with kind & rare insight, I think. In the above mentioned article, she closes with....

Some people collect for investment. Some collect for pleasure. Some folks do it to learn about history. And some people "save things" because it helps them to fill a gaping hole, calm fears, erase insecurity. For them, collecting provides order in their lives and a bulwark against the chaos and terror of an uncertain world. It serves as a protectant against the destruction of everything they've ever loved. Grandma's things made her feel safe. Though the world outside was a dangerous and continually changing place, she could still sit safely in her apartment at night, "putting together my things".

Then there was an episode from the TV sit-com Third Rock from the Sun. You might remember that Dick -(John Lithgow) became obsessed with Fuzzy Buddies. I take "Fuzzy Buddies" to be the producer's way to avoid being sued by the folks that make "Beanie Babies."   If one were to be perfectly honest about things, I suspect most - if not all of us - saw a little of ourselves in the character.  

There is another quite unique kind of nut-case collecting -that practiced by dictators as they accumulate bric-a-brac. Possible motives for collecting abound: compulsion, competition, exhibitionism, desire for immortality and the need for experts' approval. According to Peter York, a British journalist who studied dictators' decor for his book Dictator Style, recognizes all of the above in his subjects. It's basically a dictator's job, he says, to take everything over-the-top. For example...

Saddam Hussein  

Sci-fi fantasy paintings featuring menacing dragons and barely-clad blondes.

Adolf Hitler    

Bavarian 18th century furniture. Munich antique dealers were ordered to keep an eye out for him.

Kim Jong II

20,000 videos (Daffy Duck cartoons, Star Wars, Liz Taylor and Sean Connery flicks)

Idi Amin

Several racing cars and loads of old film reels of I Love Lucy reruns and Tom and Jerry cartoons

Joseph Stalin   

Westerns with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Wayne. Stalin also inherited Joseph Goebbels's films.

He also points out that "Some of these people," he says, "were really very short."

VICTIM COLLECTORS:

Don't know what else to call this set. There are a few companies that sell stuff so well -and with such frightening insight to their customers, and do so with such deliberate marketing plans carefully designed to exploit the poor collector's peccadilloes, that these collectors are victims of something -themselves - or the mean old marketing companies, don't know which.

Case in point is Hallmark Cards and their Christmas Keepsake Ornaments. Note particularly the word "keepsake" and compare it to the idea of "nostalgia". (Any research into collecting by the PhD crowd seems to hang on the word "nostalgia.") It is reasonable to collect things that speak from the past. This is no more nor less then any historic museum does. It is also reasonable to collect things that trigger -let us hope- pleasant memories of our own past. (People of my age remember Chutes and Ladders and Candy-Land games. This it the sort of thing Daniel Arnett writes about in her article Why We Collect, published elsewhere on this site.) But these things are authentic. 

Hallmark has made millions -and I have nothing against making money- selling fake nostalgia -and let us not mince words here- to women. If you were to read the articles I have, it also seems clear that these women are not women with careers, educations, children to raise, or -and we are still not mincing words here- much else to do.

And what lengths will Hallmark goes to get these poor women to buy the next ornament -or series of 5 or 10 ornaments? Seminars, conventions, news letters, autograph opportunities (the artists), and advance viewings. (Advance viewings for plastic ornaments stamped out in by the millions??? YEP!)

Not just Hallmark either. Consider Franklin Mint, Hummel Figurines, little ceramics of English cottages, memorial plates with Elvis painted thereon. Not for nothing are these things 'nostalgic'. When ever a kid's movie comes out either McDonald's or Burger King has little plastic toys / figurines / antenna balls of each character. Then kids of a certain age must be fed Happy Meals until they have the entire collection. (For kids "nostalgia" stretches all the way back to the movie they saw a whole week ago.)

ACCIDENTAL COLLECTORS:

My sister tells me of a fourth and final category of collector.  This sort might well be viewed as a victim as well, but I chose to call them accidental. She writes... 

Someone mentions once that they like X and then for years later all their friends give them is X and then they really start to hate X. Loren and Bonnie [my nieces] once had a teacher that everyone in the whole school knew loved giraffes and collected them. I was talking to her one day and she said it all started years ago when she was explaining a project the kids had to do to tell about themselves. She used herself as an example and said out of the blue that she liked giraffes. Now this poor women has received every possible giraffe thing ever made. She told me that she doesn't even like the damn animals.

The psychology of these poor souls is easy to understand. They are the 'co-dependent,' ('accidental enablers'?) nexus of a mild mass-OCD. They know it to be well meant but they are too kind to say anything to get themselves out if it. What are you gonna do?

Judith has a wealth or excellent advice to offer collectors. And some very nice stuff of her own for sale. Check out her site Twin Brooks and her book Secrets of a Collecting Diva. If I had her book before I wrote some of my articles it would have saved me a lot of time researching and making-up stuff. 

The Psychology of Collecting

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