Ciao, friends.
Welcome to Mamamia’s Best and Worst, where we come together every Friday to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly bits of the week gone by.
Please excuse my unforgivably wanky European greeting, but I’m flying to Italy on Monday for a long-awaited holiday and I need to brush up on my high school Italian.
The best part of my week was planning for the trip, including reviewing my Italian vocab and preparing my stomach for the ingestion of a significantly increased pasta load.
In fact, I’ve spent the whole week feeling pretty inadequate, thinking about the European children who speak two or three languages fluently by the age of six as I struggle through my feminine and masculine verbs. I wish we had an option like that for our younger generation – it seems like Australia is falling behind in that respect.
The worst part of my week began yesterday when I read about a pilot who switched off a commercial plane’s only working engine while airborne. The captain of TransAsia flight 235 was heard to say, “Wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle” before the plane plummeted to the ground, killing 43 passengers.
As you can imagine, this was not the news I needed before boarding a 24-hour intercontinental flight.
I’ve spent the last few days freaking out about the risks of flying. I’ll be on the plane alone, and I keep imagining being forced to hold a stranger’s hand as our plane crashes into the ocean.
I know the risks of flying are significantly lower than the risks of driving, which I do every day without batting an eyelid. It’s not helping much, though, so if you have any tips, they would be very much appreciated.
Over to you – what have the best and worst parts of your week been?
Planning your own European travels? Check out some ideas below:
An Aussie girl’s guide to Paris.
Rich history, incredible food, spectacular scenery: A traveller’s guide to Turkey.
Top Comments
My week has been momentous! On Monday, 29.5 years after the act, 15 years after reporting to Crimestoppers, 1 committal hearing, and 2 trials later, the man who raped me as a 17 year old girl in 1986 was finally convicted and sentenced. The first trial in 2013 was a joint trial with his other victims, and his guilty verdicts were overturned on appeal with separate retrials ordered. I was able to stand up again in court, this time just me against him, no other witnesses, and compel a jury to believe my truth over his fantastical lies. I feel like nothing could ever defeat me again.
how fantastic! you are an inspiration, wishing you all the best x
That's wonderful to hear! Well done for being so strong! I hope you feel satisfied with his sentence.
It's interesting, in the first trial, he got 15 years for my attack, and similar for each other charge, commuted to 20 years total with a non-parole period of 16 years. This time, the judge took into account the sentence of each previous re-trial when sentencing - so effectively he only got 12 months this time for the same crime against me. In total he is in jail for around 12 years, but since he is now almost 77, I'm confident that he's taken his last glimpse of life as a free man.
I'm really glad to hear that. I'm sure he's sitting in a cell, quietly rotting away. What a disgusting human being he must be.
Best :two weeks in Vietnam next week
Worst : getting all the end of financial year reporting, tax and BAS done before I go!