Have you ever noticed that pilots love to talk?

I've added Brother Ming to my Links. He's a pilot. Not a commercial pilot, but a pilot for fun.

I know two other pilots and they are both advisers to a company I formerly worked for. One was a fighter pilot from a peaceful Middle Eastern country, with a gigantic moustache. We had a conversation about his flying once, and, forgetting himself in the excitement of our chatter, he held up four fingers. "I had four victories."

I asked what was meant by victories, and after a brief pause and with an embarassed look on his face he explained that it meant enemy planes shot down. Actually, I don't remember whether he said it or just mimed pulling a trigger, but I do remember he was sheepish about it. Putting on a uniform might be fashionable -- remember Elvis? -- but the killing never is.

The other pilot was an engineer-executive who helped build, and then for several years ran, Malaysia's only light-aircraft factory, in Batu Berendam, Melaka. I once sat with him on a Malaysia Airlines flight, which placed us at KLIA with a very smooth landing. "There's no reason for them not to be. It's all automatic nowadays," he told me, in case I thought to give credit to the pilot.

When I flew back to New York from London just last month, we had an emergency landing at Newark -- meaning: nothing happened, just that we landed with a skid and there were fire-trucks on the ground to greet us. Apparently there was a problem with the hydraulics. And it just so happened there was a pilot in Row 34 (my row) sitting across the aisle, who explained to everyone in the vicinity, "Hydraulics means the wheels."

Smarty pants.