The mile-high club

Love Cloud, an aeroplane charter business, offers private flights that help couples take their relationships (and relations) to new heights. For $995, Love Cloud will fly you and a partner in a private airplane for 45 minutes so that you can be intimate. You could also pay $1,195 to get married on board. For $100 more, it can be booked for a romantic one-course meal; for $1,595, you’ll get three courses. But according to Andy Johnson, 40, a pilot and the founder of @lovecloudvegas, its Mile High Club Flight, which comes with a commemorative membership card signed by the pilot, remains the business’s most popular offering. Those who buy the Mile High Club Flight will find a plane decked out with a twin mattress on the floor and several pillows, all ensconced in red satin. A curtain separates the passengers from the pilot, who wears noise-cancelling headphones and remains in the cockpit for the duration of the flight. Yes, the plane and its bedding are cleaned after each trip.

(Adapted from “The Mile High Club, Complete With Membership Cards,” by Shane O’ Neill, published on February 5, 2022, by The New York Times)

Time to jump ship?

Here are six signs that it’s time to leave your job: 1) You have stopped growing — see if you can’t reinvent your role to create new opportunities to learn and grow. 2) You have achieved what you set out to achieve — think back to who you were when you started your job. Reflecting can help you determine whether there is still some work left to do. 3) You actively look for ways to avoid doing your job. Have you been procrastinating more and more lately? Sometimes, you need to power through. Other times, it’s necessary to take a temporary break — or a permanent break to find work that sparks anticipation. 4) You regularly approach work with exhaustion, burnout or dread. 5) Your role no longer aligns with your values. Do you find yourself doing things at work that you wouldn’t in your personal life? If so, your work might be compromising your values. 6) Your workplace has become toxic with no work-life balance and unhealthy competition.

(Adapted from “6 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Job,” by John Coleman, published by the Harvard Business Review)

The philanthropy of the British diaspora

Pakistan has the world’s seventh-largest diaspora population estimated at around 8.84 million living in various countries across the globe, with nearly 1.2m residing in the United Kingdom. A study carried out by Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy (PCP) in collaboration with the British Council Pakistan reveals that about £1.25bn is contributed annually to charitable causes both in Pakistan as well as the UK. The most common way of giving is in monetary terms (£742m), of which the largest amount comes from Zakat donations (£536m), while the monetary value of time volunteered is the lowest at £165m, being 13pc of the total philanthropic giving. The diaspora community’s philanthropic giving for Pakistan-based causes is estimated to be slightly higher at £636m in comparison to £617m for UK-based causes.

(Adapted from “Monetary Giving Patterns Of Pakistani Diaspora In The UK,” by the Research Unit of the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy, published in 2021)

The time of Omicron

The world is living through a unique moment: in the past five or six weeks, the Omicron coronavirus variant has likely gotten more people sick than any similar period since the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, according to global health experts. While Omicron infections have peaked in many places, February is likely to see similar caseloads as the variant continues to spread before it flames out, causing worker shortages from hospitals to factories and spurring debate about Covid-19 restrictions, particularly since Omicron appears to be causing less serious illness. Roughly one in five Americans had contracted Omicron by the mid-January peak, a number that could double by the time the surge ends in mid-February. Unlike previous waves of the pandemic, which infected fewer people and often surged in different parts of the globe at different times, the current wave is largely worldwide, even if parts of Asia still haven’t seen a substantial Omicron outbreak.

(Adapted from “The World Is Likely Sicker Than It Has Been in 100 Years,” by David Luhnow, Joanna Syden and Rajesh Roy, published on February 6, 2022, by the Wall Street Journal)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, January 21st, 2022