Paper Planes Revival

- Never Stop Dreaming -

Only in my wildest imagination would I ever dreamed of impressing a horde of 30 odd individuals with paper aeroplanes on a professional level. That certainly became reality as of 12 November in the Year 2008. You see I was actually conducting an educational lesson contrasting the differences between childhood games played in Japan and Singapore. Games from my lost childhood years were dug up good, games like "One Leg", "Hum Tum Bolah", marbles, catching, eraser battles, coin soccer and paper planes were introduced to Japanese kids aged 11 to 12.

Diving straight into the Paper Planes context, I could still remember how my good buddy Noah used to fly insane paper planes with me. And not to mention the very fact that we were 16 or 17 at that time and working at Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (undisclosed location due to security issues). We had crap to do each day and at times, we were simply loafing evidently to get caught because there weren't anything else to do. Taking advantage of the situation with 2 incredibly nimble individuals, we began to "manufacture" paper planes with the intention to creating the ultimate jet.

After numerous hypothesis, trials and failed models, the unassigned, unmarked and un-named jet was born. That was of course less the imaginary "pilots" whom ejected safely before their paper jets crash horribly into the paper shredder. I can't really remember how long we took from concepting the actual flight model to tweaking the designs for longer "hang" time and to the final flyable jet. It was then we realised that we had taken mere paper planes to a whole new level. Features like weight to distance ratio, rudders and air flaps were all taken serious which had ended up in the final jet. Then came the real maiden long distance flight instead of the "hanger test" where the air was stagnant with no turbulence in a confined office room.

On the 7th storey, sometime between 4pm to 5 pm (I think)...Noah and I had sneaked into the stairway stashed at the back of the building with multiple conceptual paper models in our hands ready to take the leap of faith. There were 2 huge upward facing air-conditioner condensers on the second storey's balcony feeding the rising hot air needed for the initial lift. So peering out from a tiny window opening, we launched our planes. Some "cursed" planes plunged straight into the condenser to their doom, while others took tragic turns and crashed. Few had trouble with the turbulence and only 2 among all the planes made the epical flight.

The most remarkable model cruised the air like a glider, diving at less than a 10 degrees incline only to gain more height and distance from the winds. It sailed and curved round the edge of the building passing more than a minute in flight time before disappearing beyond our sight. Delighted was clearly an understatement as the instant gratification from the hours of research that paid off were concealed in our victory smile. This had to be one of the most beautiful day in history.

Since then the legend of the plane which was never found was lost with time. With Noah crusading on in his life, and me in my conquest, those past glories and thrills simply faded away. It was probably by a stroke of luck or maybe even God smiling down on me that this legend was brought back to life for just this once. Not in Singapore but in a little less know school hidden among rice fields and mountains. Initially I had a little problem retriving the blue print of the plane out of my head but because that was a salient memory hidden somewhere, a stimuli was all that was needed to trigger the retrival. In the end, I had 3 conceptual models made, the prototype which was a tragedy, Eagle 1 which made decent flight time and then Eagle 2 which was probably a derivation of the original Legend. To be honest, I cannot actually remember every single detail of the original Legend but Eagle 2 was almost 70% similar less the flaps and missing on the actual dimensions.

Then came the class where I had to tide thru 40 minutes of other misc. games before I proudly unveil my Eagle 2 from an encased box to the class. Of course the kids did not had any "WOW" look on their faces because I had actually made them create their best paper plane prior to showing Eagle 2. Besides that, Eagle 2 resembled like an ordinary paper plane with a lower profile and hidden modifications. By then I had finished my presentation and had gathered the kids on the balcony of the 3 floor. With a decent cold, dry wind blowing, I launched the plane with everyone keeping their eyes peeled on how far Eagle 2 actually went. Yep higher launching grounds did help but ultimately the flawless design of the plane was all that matter. Eagle 2 sailed a ridiculous distance before landing softly. Nothing close to the Legend but this one day of Paper Plane Revival was all that was needed for me to relive those great memories with my buddy, good old crazy times.

At the end of the day, I simply donated the 2 jets to the school as a mark of my paper planes glory history.

End.