Thirty minutes into a 15-hour plane ride and all I can continue to think about is "What is it about Asian airlines that makes them so great?" An outlet to plug in my computer on a plane, for one.
I admit my sample size is fairly small and I am excluding certain data points. Royal Nepal Airlines gets cut for thinking even though the weather radar failed, they could still make it fine back to Nepal from Bangladesh. That was not the case as I saw my dinner levitate in the air above me when we hit a thunderhead and the plane suddenly dropped a few hundred feet. Turning around to Dhaka, bad. Putting me up in a coach-roach laden hotel, very bad.
Air Pakistan gets the boot for confiscating my Discman batteries and my being picked up in a truck at the airport in Lahore (my host family had been car-jacked the previous day). Well, maybe that is not really Air Pakistan's fault, but at the very least they should have looked into branding their airline better.
Thai Airways, on the other hand, has always been a prize-winning plant. First, handing out dried, fried octopus instead of peanuts is pure genius. You don't even half to like it, you just have to appreciate that you are flying over the Himalayas eating octopus.
In misplaced patriotism (or just successful lobbying) the State Department will not fly a foreign carrier where a domestic one is present. So for much of my time traveling (not time-traveling), I was stuck with flying a domestic carrier as bloated and sour as their stewardesses. Cramped quarters, short-tempered stewardesses, bad food--your standard airline complaints.
Contrast that with my customer service experience at Cathay Pacific--the gate agents and counter agents practically fell all over themselves greeting me, checking me in, answering my every question. Sure they "lost my bag" and "they didn't know which city it was in" but they "felt really bad about it." It is all in the presentation--an agent approached me at the baggage kiosk, asked me who I was and confirmed that my bag did not arrive. He walked me over to his supervisor who had $500 HK ($70 US) waiting to give me so that I could buy toiletries and told me that I could file an additional complaint for the price of a new set of clothes so I could attend my meetings. (Which thanks to Zara I was able to do in an hour for $250 US--quite a feat in Hong Kong).
Finally, we come to my new love, Korean Air. I admit my class of service, in airline parlance, is a step higher than normal, but let me just detail why thirty-minutes into the flight I am forever converted.
First, free internets at the lounges (really pretty standard, but I feel like the internets should always come first). Second, the main steward greeted me when I sat down, knew my name, bowed very low, and thanked me for coming on the flight. We chatted for 20-30 seconds. (Eat that America.) Third, hot stewardesses. Cliché, I know. Chauvinistic, I know. But, men, am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Fourth, in-flight entertainment and it deserves its own paragraph. I haven't really explored it that much, but every seat (even the prolls in coach) have their own screen. Movies, corporate programming, music, updated tracking maps, and views from bottom and front-mounted cameras. Games like you would expect a South Korean would have. What, you want to play multi-player--NO PLOBLEM. What better way to cross the Pacific than to get in your base, killing your dudes? How ironic that just as my flight is tracing the path Soviet bombers would take over the pole, I can play a video game Ruskies created (and the west stole and marketed to great effect and profit).
Finally, the chair. These is probably more a function of a better class, but United is not pulling ish like this on their long-haul flights. Twelve-million degrees of adjustment, including into a fully reclining bed, built in massage capabilities, and a power plug. I could blow-dry my hair right now. I am not going to, but the point is, I feel more secure know that I could. Instead I will do work most of the flight. And blog. I love it. Now
Blogging Experience Continued
Continuing my blogging about blogging experience, below is what Korean blogger looks like. But to really understand what blogging in Korea is all about, you need the adolescent blob drooling and snoring across from the only open seat in the lounge. What is happening? First, how do prolls like him get in here? Second, why is the lounge full? These are places of refuge from the unruly mob, not their home.
Airlines I Probably Will Never Fly*
Touched down in Korea--I have to disgorge myself from my work on the flight, pickup new emails, so I can work on the flight back. In searching for the lounge (to hunt down free Int4rwebs), I came across the Asiana Air lounge, which apparently also accepts travelers from these airlines pictured. Uzbekistan? Iran? Really?*I actually really want to fly these airlines. I don't know which one would be better--Iran definitely has the we will imprison your scholars momentum, but don't discount boil 'em in oil Uzbekistan.
Censorship
So on the mainland, they don't take kindly to blogging. If only the Commies were more net savvy--they block my blog but allow blogger? I would assume they want to keep information out and in--oh well.
Kent, You Ask, I Deliver
Kent, you asked to keep the hi-jinks coming--how's this? I have been officially summoned to New York--drop everything and get here asap. So in an hour I will hit the ground running, again. Taxi to ferry, ferry to airport, Hong Kong to Seoul, Seoul to NYC, airport to hotel--~30 hours. Price of being run into the ground--~$3000.Also, Blogger in Chinese looks pretty dope. To any mainland censors reading this, you know, effing aloha and junk.
...And Rains...
So far the view from my hotel room (love IM Pei's building) is the only redeeming quality of the trip. My new friend Perry has tracking down my lost luggage to add to his list of things to take care of, if the luggage can be found at all. Despite asking the check-in agent and the gate agent to confirm that my back made into onto the plane (which they did), they "still don't know" where my bag is.The confusion, and this is really my fault here, is that when I give them my bag claim number and they tracked it in their system, and their system said my bag made it onto the plane, that doesn't actually mean anything.
In the mean time, to change out of clothes that smell and feel like 36 hours of travel, I am going shopping....
When It Rains...
While at college, more than anything, I hated a certain type of intellectual pissing match that pervaded most dinner conversations at the dining hall. Those conversations went something like: "I am so busy lately…." The other people at the table would patiently wait their turn to unload the minutiae of paper deadlines, grad school applications, and other hallmarks of the over-achieving privileged liberal a-hole set while occasionally chiming in that they were shocked, *shocked*, that life is not actually a party.
This is to preface my post, saying, in effect, I know my subsequent ranting is wrong (I am shocked, *shocked*, that I am not the only that faces challenges), but I will do it anyway.
Up until the last two weeks, I had effectively "right-sized" my work-life balance. Doing its best to emulate the Empire (if the Empire were characterized by effulgent chaos, lack of planning, and a general willingness to sacrifice minions--1 out of 3), work struck back. The Empire had a few demands, couched in a passive-aggressive style so unlike Darth. Clearly I "have time" for some extra projects. Project Rumples is tedious and nebulous; Project Commy is the travel around the world type (literally, "we need you in China next week"); Project Mimi has been ongoing for months; and Project LOL is, ostensibly, my real job.
Project Commy excited me--until I realized that it accelerates every other project I am working on. "Because you will be out, we need this now." "Because you will be out, you need to move out of your apartment sooner." "Because you will be out traveling, you will clearly have some down-time" (don't understand this). Literally, with four different people circling me the way my size 32 belt will not (anymore), everyone feels like they are being blown off.
Moving sucks no matter when. Moving under a deadline while still working is like a witty simile that expresses how bad it was. I mailed my bike back to the mainland ($150, ouch). I still had two suitcases that were overweight ($80) and two extra surfboards ($160). My plan of slowly ferrying things back was as dead as dead Iraqis.
I needed all the time possible to get out, so I took a red-eye Friday night, getting into LA at 7:00 AM Saturday. Quick trip to Barbara's to drop off all of my loot, and back to the airport for Chin0rz for flight out at noon. Trip up to SF to catch the flight to Beijing to in turn start my hopping around the country.
Checking in when switching flights in San Francisco was the first time I realized my grave error of not having arranged a visa to the Peeps Repub of Chin0rz. No visa, no trip. Can't do it in country. Won't let you on the plane. And now I am in SF. Effing great.
After an initial sinking feel of imagining having to explain not showing up to one of my many bosses, Senator Ted Steven's words came into my heart. "To teh tubes" I said, mentally noting to make sure I misspelled the the.
Teh tubes did not disappoint. God bless the "one country, two systems" heart of the Commies.
* * *
As an aside, I think the Rage Against the Machine sums up the HK - Beijing relationship pretty well:
Beijing: And now you do what we told you, and now you do what we told you….
Hong Kong: F you I won't do what you tell me….
Beijing: Are you aware that we are willing to begin killing in the name of?
Hong Kong: this just in, we will do what you told us.
* * *
So Hong Kong still knows that while America is justified in subjecting anyone coming into this country to the most stringent scrutiny, maddening red tape, and arcane, downright, asinine visa process, Americans should not be subject to the same. Or even the inconvenience of having to get a rubber stamp.
So the plan is to waste approximately 9 hours at the airport waiting for a flight to Vancouver (not being able to leave, because they don't seem to be able to locate my bag), so I can catch a 3 AM flight to Hong Kong. Which, in the ironies of all my little ponies, is *exactly* how I hoped to spend my Saturday night.
Perry, my concierge at the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong (pheww, I have been waiting to mention that) informed me that, in fact, he would be delighted to take care of my visa trouble. Hopefully it will work out.
It doesn't help that I buy one-way tickets to foreign countries at the last minute, then don't fly on them, and buy more tickets. I was hit with the quadruple SSSS on my boarding pass twice already. That stands for Special Screening Special Screening. Apparently, much like the goose in Charlotte's Web, TSA has to say everything twice. Also, apparently DHS thinks that real Americans always buy round trip tickets and always plan ahead. Terrorists, on the other hand, clearly do things like coordinate four simultaneous plane hijackings at the last minute and are very cost conscious ("We have to think about our mayhem-to-cost ratio here, guys. You *know* they are going to audit are expense reports.)
I am tired. Already it has been 36 hours of packing, planes, pickups, and panicking--four of the five P's of traveling. I think for the next 24 hours I will gladly enter and heartily embrace the fifth P--piss-off everyone.
This is to preface my post, saying, in effect, I know my subsequent ranting is wrong (I am shocked, *shocked*, that I am not the only that faces challenges), but I will do it anyway.
Up until the last two weeks, I had effectively "right-sized" my work-life balance. Doing its best to emulate the Empire (if the Empire were characterized by effulgent chaos, lack of planning, and a general willingness to sacrifice minions--1 out of 3), work struck back. The Empire had a few demands, couched in a passive-aggressive style so unlike Darth. Clearly I "have time" for some extra projects. Project Rumples is tedious and nebulous; Project Commy is the travel around the world type (literally, "we need you in China next week"); Project Mimi has been ongoing for months; and Project LOL is, ostensibly, my real job.
Project Commy excited me--until I realized that it accelerates every other project I am working on. "Because you will be out, we need this now." "Because you will be out, you need to move out of your apartment sooner." "Because you will be out traveling, you will clearly have some down-time" (don't understand this). Literally, with four different people circling me the way my size 32 belt will not (anymore), everyone feels like they are being blown off.
Moving sucks no matter when. Moving under a deadline while still working is like a witty simile that expresses how bad it was. I mailed my bike back to the mainland ($150, ouch). I still had two suitcases that were overweight ($80) and two extra surfboards ($160). My plan of slowly ferrying things back was as dead as dead Iraqis.
I needed all the time possible to get out, so I took a red-eye Friday night, getting into LA at 7:00 AM Saturday. Quick trip to Barbara's to drop off all of my loot, and back to the airport for Chin0rz for flight out at noon. Trip up to SF to catch the flight to Beijing to in turn start my hopping around the country.
Checking in when switching flights in San Francisco was the first time I realized my grave error of not having arranged a visa to the Peeps Repub of Chin0rz. No visa, no trip. Can't do it in country. Won't let you on the plane. And now I am in SF. Effing great.
After an initial sinking feel of imagining having to explain not showing up to one of my many bosses, Senator Ted Steven's words came into my heart. "To teh tubes" I said, mentally noting to make sure I misspelled the the.
Teh tubes did not disappoint. God bless the "one country, two systems" heart of the Commies.
* * *
As an aside, I think the Rage Against the Machine sums up the HK - Beijing relationship pretty well:
Beijing: And now you do what we told you, and now you do what we told you….
Hong Kong: F you I won't do what you tell me….
Beijing: Are you aware that we are willing to begin killing in the name of?
Hong Kong: this just in, we will do what you told us.
* * *
So Hong Kong still knows that while America is justified in subjecting anyone coming into this country to the most stringent scrutiny, maddening red tape, and arcane, downright, asinine visa process, Americans should not be subject to the same. Or even the inconvenience of having to get a rubber stamp.
So the plan is to waste approximately 9 hours at the airport waiting for a flight to Vancouver (not being able to leave, because they don't seem to be able to locate my bag), so I can catch a 3 AM flight to Hong Kong. Which, in the ironies of all my little ponies, is *exactly* how I hoped to spend my Saturday night.
Perry, my concierge at the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong (pheww, I have been waiting to mention that) informed me that, in fact, he would be delighted to take care of my visa trouble. Hopefully it will work out.
It doesn't help that I buy one-way tickets to foreign countries at the last minute, then don't fly on them, and buy more tickets. I was hit with the quadruple SSSS on my boarding pass twice already. That stands for Special Screening Special Screening. Apparently, much like the goose in Charlotte's Web, TSA has to say everything twice. Also, apparently DHS thinks that real Americans always buy round trip tickets and always plan ahead. Terrorists, on the other hand, clearly do things like coordinate four simultaneous plane hijackings at the last minute and are very cost conscious ("We have to think about our mayhem-to-cost ratio here, guys. You *know* they are going to audit are expense reports.)
I am tired. Already it has been 36 hours of packing, planes, pickups, and panicking--four of the five P's of traveling. I think for the next 24 hours I will gladly enter and heartily embrace the fifth P--piss-off everyone.
A Quick Trip Through Teh Tubes
What did people do before the internet? Seriously? You are working, need a few minutes break, could you just pull out a magazine? A few sites that have made into my work day today:
Purdue physically accurate re-creation of 9/11 plane crash into Twin Towers
Way to make marketing presentations for terrorists.
Map of US states if they were foreign economies
Wyoming = Uzbekistan. Eat it.
PR vs Branding vs Advertising vs Marketing
Read it. Read it. Read it.
Famous depressing photos
NSFWIYWFF (Not Safe for Work, If You Work For Facists.)
Hottest 100 Women chosen by ostensibly straight men at Maxim versus those chosen by lesbians.
SFWBSAICKATP (Safe For Work, But Slightly Awkward If Confronted, Keep Alt-Tab Prepared). I prefer the latter.
Why Did the USSR Self-Destruct?
Simplified version: no groceries, sold some gas, ran out of money, asked for a loan from Uncle (Sam).
Purdue physically accurate re-creation of 9/11 plane crash into Twin Towers
Way to make marketing presentations for terrorists.
Map of US states if they were foreign economies
Wyoming = Uzbekistan. Eat it.
PR vs Branding vs Advertising vs Marketing
Read it. Read it. Read it.
Famous depressing photos
NSFWIYWFF (Not Safe for Work, If You Work For Facists.)
Hottest 100 Women chosen by ostensibly straight men at Maxim versus those chosen by lesbians.
SFWBSAICKATP (Safe For Work, But Slightly Awkward If Confronted, Keep Alt-Tab Prepared). I prefer the latter.
Why Did the USSR Self-Destruct?
Simplified version: no groceries, sold some gas, ran out of money, asked for a loan from Uncle (Sam).
Before & After
I tried to teach sister Hannah how to surf. My instructions:
- Paddle hard, catch the wave, you will be fine.
- Careful, the channel we are surfing in is only 10 yards wide
- PS watch out for the rocks on the left--the current will suck you into them.
- Also watch out for the rocks on the right--don't paddle over too far
- Also watch out for the rocks on the bottom--some are only submerged a foot or too
- Finally, fall "shallow" and don't kick--the reef will tear you up.
Luckily, there were only two-sies & three-sies today. Somehow she is still alive, despite a mid-session board switch.
ROFGMFEOWLOLBRJIAB
Some situations:
- Vendor, on staffing levels: "We staffed fewer people because we had a larger amount of work."
- Vendor, on performance: "I don't know what happened."
- Vendor, on availability: "We had an electrical fire yesterday."
- Vendor, on pricing: "Due to an oversight, we are going to double bill you."
That's right, folks. ROFGMFEOWLOLBRJIAB stands for Rolling on the Floor Gouging My $^*#ing Eyes Out While Laughing Out Loud But Really Just Inside A Bit.
- Vendor, on staffing levels: "We staffed fewer people because we had a larger amount of work."
- Vendor, on performance: "I don't know what happened."
- Vendor, on availability: "We had an electrical fire yesterday."
- Vendor, on pricing: "Due to an oversight, we are going to double bill you."
That's right, folks. ROFGMFEOWLOLBRJIAB stands for Rolling on the Floor Gouging My $^*#ing Eyes Out While Laughing Out Loud But Really Just Inside A Bit.
Home Sweet Home
Recently I have been getting home right around dusk with this view from the 38th floor awaiting me. I have a thousand pictures of it, all much better than this and just as boring to look at on a blog.In order to conform to some norm of contemplation I have learned from such philosophical, indie movies as Good Will
I don't know why, but I have an overwhelming desire to start running, hit the chair, table, railing, and execute a gainer / swan dive off the veranda. I have never been much of a diver. To tell the truth I have never been able to do anything that involved rotating backwards (more of a front flip kind of guy). Frankly, upon analyzing it, a gainer into a swan dive may not be possible and probably is quite boring.
My friend Kim came over to the apartment the other day. Unprompted, she also mentioned a desire to take a dive. A second friend, Clay, confirmed this. Thus in the mouths of two or three...
Btw, in GRE studies testimony comes from latin testari (to bear witness) from Indo-European trei (three)--> testimony meaning to be a third person.
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