Elbow room and such other minor points to ponder

* On international flights, I usually opt for a window seat. Thats because 1. Except for occassional walk breaks I stay put in my seat. Which means I am not a bothersome passenger. 2. I prefer to not get bothered by sitting in the aisle seat and having to get up every time the window/middle seaters wish to step out. 3. Aisle seats mean you get poked in your elbow and shoulder by the carts, people and everyone that passes by rudely jolting you out of stupor. Now, I am not a big built person- I am short, slightly overweight and try to keep my elbows off the armrest so as to not inconvenience the neighbor. I've always had this question- how do you share armrests? Is there a undocumented rule on how long you can use the shared armrest before letting the neighbor use it? Any insights?

So this time around I was sitting next to a person from Ghana. Before I launch into this snippet, allow me to mention that I am a bad sleeper on international flights. I hardly get about 1-2 hrs of shut-eye if at all, since I have a huge sleep problem right in my own bed. In an economy class seat, its a miracle I even get this much. After initial pleasantries had been exchanged, the drinks cart had come and gone, special and regular meals served and it was time for some forceful shut-eye. I woke up an hour later with a sore neck to see my neighbour asleep with this head against the seat in front of me. You get the picture. He was diagonally positioned with a lot more than just his elbows against the armrest we shared, his head rested on the back of the seat in front of me, which means I had 1/3 less space and locked in my cramped position. I let out a small yelp, not wanting to wake up the rest of the junta who apparently had no issues drifting into slumber. For the next 15 mins, I tried varying decibels of a yelp. My right leg had decided to take a nap by then and was killing me. I needed a walk. No luck. Then some 30 mins later a stewardess passed by. I flailed my arms at her and requested she help me out by waking Mr Ghana up. She obliged, she patted him on his back hard enough and lo and behold he was awake. I made a hurried exit and hung out as a restroom door guard for considerable amount of time. When I did head back and was comfortably seated, he says "You could've woken me up yourself, you know?". "I did try, you were in deep sleep(I didnt mention the minor fact that he was sprawled all the way into my space, of course)". Any pointers on this elbow room issue? Anyone? Anyone at all?

* So, early in spring of this year I realised I had a dead tree in my front yard. The person that had come to mulch my garden pointed it out to me and kindly offered to have it removed, if I wanted. Well I did want to, but I had to check with the higher powers(aka the Home Owner Association, who have given me some grief when I wished to install a storm door. Now, I was ok getting permission from them for this, but what I didnt understand was why they needed for me to send pictures of how the storm door looks. Well anyway they've got the rules, who am I to question? So I let it be). When I called the officer assigned for this, she insisted she had to come down to "inspect" said tree. Since I was going to be out of the country, she agreed to send an email once she'd inspected to let me know what had to be done. When I got back, and I still hadnt seen any email from her, I called her up. As always she wasnt around and I had to leave a voicemail. 2 days later I received the promised email. It tells me she had come, she had seen and she had measured(there are different rules for tree with varying dimensions, btw, if you care enough to know). She says the tree trunk is more than 4 inches in diameter, the height is bla and bla inches bla bla and bla and I referred to our covenants guide and it says you need to submit an application for approval to get it removed.

"Please print this form out(a 5 page document), get approvals from the inhabitants of all the houses in your row, send us a copy of your house plan, send us pictures of the tree in question, tell us what you plan to plant in place of said dead tree, send us pics of the same, write off your first and second born and promise us you will stand on your head for 3 months till this approval comes through!"

* Why is it that your schoolmates are delighted to be in touch with you after all these years, are so keen on playing catch up on whats been happening in all the years you've been AWOL, check on you ever so often, care and concern pours out of every pore, but your collegemates make no attempts be in touch and what's worse, when you do have some chance encounters, pretend they dont know you and dont even bother to exchange contact information, and even if they do, never bother to call/email? The cherry on the icing is pretending they dont know you, or not divulging they met you. In short, they prefer to think the chance encounter never even happened! Weird, that!