For a long time I forgot what air travel was like. After countless flights on USAir and Southwest, I had come to think that a ride on an airplane entailed gripping my armrests tightly while the engines make popping and rattling noises and flight attendants growl at me. That was my conception of air travel… until I stepped on board a Singapore Air 747.

While walking to my seat at the back of the plane, I’m pretty sure I was personally greeted by all 22 flight attendants. On my seat I found a pillow and a blanket. And an hour into the flight, I found on my tray table a meal fit for a flying king.

Beef with white rice and steamed vegetables, a side of ham salad, a roll with butter, rice pudding, spring water and Coke light. Yum. The last flight I was on I got a Sprite. Only a Sprite. On my last international flight I got a Sprite and a yogurt. Oh, happy day.

But on Singapore Air, I was fed handsomely and treated like a person, not a bacteria culture. It was refreshing to fly with an airline where the crew were taking pride in their work instead of taking shelter in the galley.

I have never been to Singapore. But for eight hours, Singapore came to me.

To take a break from the rice and beef’s excellent European adventure, I’d like to recall a sign I saw at a gas station pump while driving through Iowa this past winter. With its simple, scripty (and paradoxical) text, the sign embodies everything that has gone wrong with our financial system in the past few years.

Pre-heating an oven after will give you cold lasagna. Pre-recording a television show after will give you a half-hour of blank air time. Pre-boarding an airplane after will give you small children and people in wheelchairs gripping desperately onto the wings as the plane takes off. Pre-paying the cashier (or the bank for that matter) after will give you a consumer credit crisis. Voila! That’s what we have.

It is to signs like this one– that tell us it’s OK to spend after we consume– that we owe our current standing. The trickle down theory is hard at work. Sometimes economic prosperity trickles down. But sometimes irresponsibility trickles down as well. When banks tell you’ll be fine if you buy a house you can’t afford, when they tell you to “pre-pay after” by giving you a teaser interest rate, they do irreparable damage to society.

It could be said that this sign is incomplete, that it should read something like, “Please Pre-Pay Cashier After 9pm.” Yet it doesn’t. If it was meant to give a specific time, no one filled it in, creating an image of total apathy, an apathy which is compounded by the sign’s new meaning. Why do today what you can do tomorrow?

Because we can. Because we should. Because we must. That’s why.

It’s time to take our cues from our own sense of decency and feasibility. It’s time to ignore those who try to tempt us into our own doom by seducing us with the option of disregarding our responsibilities. It’s time to take back our economy from the morons who think it’s OK to screw over thousands of people if it means getting a 7-figure bonus at the end of the year.

We are so over that.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Unfortunately, I am not in Rome. I, like rice, am in Vienna, referred to locally as Wien. So if we are to apply the saying to other cities, we must ask ourselves a very important question: what do the Wieners do?

Answer: they eat boatloads of pork. So that’s what I did as well.

Pictured above is a plate with a pork chop, ham, bacon, and wiener sausage. In case that’s not enough, they added a breadball (breaded, as per rice’s observation about Austrian cuisine), a mountain of sauerkraut, and two small potatoes.

The other white meat? I think not. Here pork is the meat. Period. End of discussion. After countless sausages, much ham, several pork chops, and bacon, I can say confidently that when in Wien, I did as the Wieners do. And it was delicious.