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Wed, 28 Oct 2009
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I'm not sure where to start this story. I could tell you how I've been flying around the world on a business trip, or I could tell you what I think about Swiss Air business class. Instead I'm left thinking I should mention carbon. You see, I was sitting in first class on a Swiss Air flight to New York City yesterday, and I was surrounded by tree. Big centimeter thick panels of it are all over the place. When other airlines are doing things like using lighter foam for seat cushions or asking passengers to go potty before boarding to reduce the weight of their aircraft (and therefore carbon emissions), Swiss has chosen to find a forest and cut it down to put in their brand new plane. This forest will be flying around for a couple of decades I would think.
Sure, its only in first class (business class gets veneer), and I'm a bastard for being in first class at all. There's a story to that too though. I booked an ultra cheap around the world business ticket through Swiss Air. It was in fact cheaper than the same flights in economy with Qantas. This is despite the fact that two of the business class segments are in fact on Qantas. That's how I ended up in first class -- I was going between London Heathrow and San Francisco, but Swiss had oversold the Zurich to LA flight. So, I'm bumped to first class via NYC, which added about six hours to my total travel time yesterday.
Being bumped wasn't all bad. I've never been in first class before, and it was very nice. I might have chocolate poisoning of some form. I also got to "experience" American Airlines business class from New York to LA, in a plane which is possibly older than me. In fact, its entirely possible this plane predates flight. The seat pitch was nice, except that my chair kept involuntarily reclining. I didn't mind too much, as I hadn't slept in about 24 hours at that point, so I nodded off. Before I nodded off, I was also forced to decide that it was in fact the chick from Gilmore Girls (the one who plays Lorelai) two rows in front of me. She dropped her bag at one point in the airport, and I am excited to report that she watched a DVD during the flight. Citizen journalism at its finest.
I wouldn't normally mention the actress in the front of the plane, especially after TechCrunch taught me that no one gives a crap about what's happening to me (or in fact you) in real time. However, this being a stream of consciousness blog post written at 8am in LA airport while killing time for yet another flight, I think I am justified. Oh, and I also don't care if you give a crap.
I have more to complain about. Take for example the Swiss Air business class flight that I've just taken from Narita near Tokyo to Heathrow, via Zurich. Its clear why the ticket was cheap. Swiss business class simply isn't up to the standard of Qantas'. The seats don't lie flat (when you try to sleep you slide down to the end of the footrest in a little mound), the on demand entertainment system works, but appears to have some sort of image resizing error (everything is pixelated), and the cabin service is terribly slow. Lunch has just taken about two hours to serve. It took two hours in first class as well, but that's because they were trying to shove five courses into me.
The cabin fit out on that business class flight was the same standard as Qantas had before they went to their new lie flat configuration. To put that in perspective, that conversion was done at least ten years ago. I think the standard of the equipment being used might also explain why only half of the seats are taken in business class, where Qantas would be running at capacity. This was clearly one of the older Swiss aircraft, but even the brand new one with the forest in it had a business class which wasn't up to the same standard as Qantas.
I can't complain too much though -- it still beats the pants of Qantas economy, and the flight did give me a chance to discover what I believe might be the most boring television program ever made. Its called "Swiss Railway Journeys", and I heartily don't recommend it. Unless you deeply care about the age of each wheel on the train.
One last thing. While the Swiss Air staff were all much older than I am used to on other airlines, I think that's because of the vagaries of the youth of today. Each of these staff could speak four languages fluently, and would begin the conversation when you first boarded with a little protocol handshake where they said hello in all four languages and waited to see which one you replied in. Once they had you figured out, they would use the correct language from then on. Modern youth are too busy twittering to learn one language, let alone every language ever used. Oh, and if you know four words of German, don't use them at the start of a Swiss flight. You'll be stuck for the rest of the journey conveying your desires through interpretive dance.
Tags for this post: travel( )
posted at: 14:10 | path: /travel | permanent link to this entry
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Mon, 17 Aug 2009
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I had to take a flight a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd do the financially (and environmentally) sensible thing and use an airport shuttle service. Especially because the airport train in Sydney is so expensive and slow. I found Jetbus online, and paid with PayPal. The first time I used them they were just fine, but the second time was extremely frustrating. So frustrating that I wont be using their service again, as I value actually getting on my plane.
Interestingly, Jetbus' Sydney office is across the road from my pickup location, so how badly can it go?
I had a 4pm booking. I arrived at the pickup location 15 minutes early. The bus drove past me at the speed limit approximately on time. It did not slow down or stop. I rang the dispatch number to inform them of the error. The bus drove past about 10 minutes later, again without slowing down or stopping. I rang again. The bus didn't reappear. In total, I rang dispatch 5 times in an attempt to be collected. After the bus was 45 minutes late, I took a taxi to the airport instead, which cost $47, and arrived with only 15 minutes to spare.
The only part of this whole thing which makes me happy? This is the first time I have had to use PayPal's dispute resolution system as I am not a big PayPal user. It was pain free, and gave me the outcome I wanted. That's interesting given that I hear so many bad things from other PayPal users.
Tags for this post: travel( ) australia( ) sydney( )
posted at: 16:32 | path: /travel/australia/sydney | permanent link to this entry
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Tue, 30 Jun 2009
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When leaving the US, I stayed in the Wild Palms Hotel. I selected it for three reasons: I'd stayed there before; it is part of the Joie De Vivre chain which I have had good experiences with before; and it was very cheap on Expedia ($77 compared to an average rate in the area of about $150). I learnt some interesting things I thought I'd share:
- The hotel is ok, just make sure you get an upstairs room. I was woken by mating elephants at 5am two days running because the floors are so thin. Be the mating elephant, not the victim of it! Once I moved to an upstairs room this probably went away.
- The executive rooms aren't worth it. I got moved into one of these because of the noise problems. Its advantages was it was away form the road, had a bathrobe (really), and a LCD TV. I don't watch TV much, so the extra cost if I was paying isn't worth it.
- The cleaning service kept "short sheeting" the bed. By short sheeting I mean pulled the sheets up to make the top of the bed look impressive, but leaving the bottom couple of inches of the mattress uncovered. Lots of hotels do this, and I find it crazily annoying.
- The air conditioner was insanely loud. It was 38 when I was staying there, and every time the air conditioner kicked in I would be woken up by it.
- Its a lot further south than I realized. It took about 20 minutes to get to work if you took El Camino. Depending on traffic its probably much faster to go all the way to the 101 and then take that. The Lawrence Expressway looks like the best way to get to the 101 from the hotel.
So, overall this hotel was "ok", apart from some minor annoyances. I'll keep staying there so long as they're cheap. If they're not running a special, then you're much better off staying further north.
Tags for this post: travel( ) usa( ) california( ) sunnyvale( )
posted at: 14:25 | path: /travel/usa/california/sunnyvale | permanent link to this entry
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Tue, 19 Aug 2008
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Tue, 20 May 2008
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Sun, 18 May 2008
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Sat, 26 Jan 2008
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Thu, 03 Jan 2008
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Its clear from my past posts that I am interested in cold war bunkers.
I just watched "Lost Worlds: US Nuclear Bunkers". That's re-ignited my interest in US nuclear bunkers (as well as cold war history in general). I like the idea of the Lorton Bunker (under a correctional facility 20 miles form Washington DC, and abandoned in only 2001), and I've talked about the Greenbrier bunker before.
It's a pity its four hours drive from Arlington, VA:
View Larger Map
The Greenbrier was secret for 30 years, and kept constantly stocked will all the supplies needed for three weeks of sealed living for 1,100 people. Finally it was leaked by one article in the Washington Post. After the article, the site had to be decommissioned.
Next, they talked about the Palm Beach Florida bunker built for JFK. Tours of that bunker are cheap too -- only $10 each. This bunker is only a decontamination shower, and a single room, but I guess you wouldn't complain if you'd just been nuked.
Finally, there is Cheyenne Mountainwhich used to offer tours, but apparently doesn't any more.
Tags for this post: travel( ) usa( ) virginia( )
posted at: 20:29 | path: /travel/usa/virginia | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 27 Dec 2007
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To quote from this blog post (its a bit odd that its a PDF, but whatever):
... the new expatriate regime (Exit Tax
Provision) requires expatriates to recognise gain on their assets, and imposes a
new tax on gifts and bequests by expatriates to Americans, This new provision
(styled Section 877A) is an addition to (and not a replacement of) the current
expatriation tax rules of Section 877. Under the Exit Tax Provision, certain
individuals who renounce their U.S. citizenship or U.S. long-term residents
who relinquish their U.S. residence status (collectively covered expatriates)
must recognise gain, or otherwise be taxed, on all their assets on the date they
expatriate. In addition, gifts or bequests they make to U.S. citizens or residents
after expatriation will be subject to tax at onerous estate/gift tax rates.
In other words, if you're a US resident and you leave the US permanently, then they deem all of your world wide assets sold, and then tax you on the gain. This includes retirement funds, as well as savings. Congress is proposing this as a way of funding tax relief for serving members of the US military.
Its not law yet, but still something I should pay attention to.
Tags for this post: travel( ) usa( )
posted at: 10:20 | path: /travel/usa | permanent link to this entry
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Mon, 19 Nov 2007
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Sun, 18 Nov 2007
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Sun, 11 Nov 2007
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Mon, 05 Nov 2007
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Sun, 21 Oct 2007
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Sat, 20 Oct 2007
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Sun, 30 Sep 2007
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Its 5am my time, and I've been awake since 3am. Not from choice though -- its the downstairs neighbours waking us up yet again. They're shift workers you see, and must either sleep with construction hearing protection on, or be deaf. Either way, they seem to think its ok to stand outside our apartment at shout at each other at 2am, or slam doors at all hours, or listen to music so loud it vibrates stuff in our apartment basically all night.
We've asked them nicely to turn it down (we used to get on quite well with them at first). We've asked the complex to please do something. We even rung the complex security folk when its happening, and asked for some peace. Its really done nothing to help -- they perhaps turn the music down for 30 minutes until security leaves, and then turn it right back on again.
So, we've run out of ideas, apart from ending the lease early (which will cost an unknown amount of money), and moving somewhere else. We're so serious about doing that that I have started looking around Craigslist already.
Perhaps the floor between apartments is too thin, because the bathroom fans this neighbour leaves on for literally days at a time also vibrates things in the apartment, but either way I think Central Park has pretty much failed to provide us with a livable apartment. We don't want a lot, just some peace after 10pm like the complex rules say we should get.
Grumpy.
Tags for this post: travel( ) usa( ) california( ) mountainview( )
posted at: 05:08 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview | permanent link to this entry
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Sat, 09 Jun 2007
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Wed, 09 May 2007
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Welcome to Mikal's badly organised travel tips. On the trip to Dublin I
flew Virgin Atlantic premium economy. That's kind of like anyone else's
business class, given the classes on Virgin are economy, premium
economy, and upper class. It's much cheaper than anyone else's business
class fare to Heathrow though. I thought that premium economy was pretty
good... The seats are old and both of the ones I sat in were subtly
broken, but the seat spacing is excellent, the seat is wider than
normal, and reclines just that little extra.
The extra money was worth it given I got off the plane and walked
straight into a meeting in Dublin, and on the return flight I got a heap
of work done. Premium economy even offers power for laptops, although my
corporate-issue iGo doesn't work with the new Lenovo x60, and Virgin
didn't have a tip for the x60 in their collection. That's a pretty
common compliant with the newer Intel Core2 laptops though -- they draw
too much power for older universal power supplies. I got around the
power problem with two "eight hour" batteries for the x60. The quotes
are because I actually get more like four or five hours off these
batteries rather than the claimed eight hours.
(Oh, by the way, the x60 rocks. Small. Light. Insanely fast with it's
dual processors. I sent some time running a script which did a lot of
processing and IO though, and the machine got too hot to sit on my lap!)
I've now flown premium economy on the upper and lower deck of the 747,
and the upper deck is clearly better. On the top deck you get a deck
shared only with premium and upper class (Virgin's first class), a
reading station with newspapers and magazines, a slightly quieter ride,
and you don't have people walking past to economy making snob comments.
On the down side, you do end up with a much smaller overhead bin.
Basically no one's bag fitted in it. There is a big coat locker though,
so it's not like your bag is far away.
If you have a window seat, then you also get a small vertical locker
next to you, which is a nice place to put your laptop and ipod during
takeoff and landing.
On the lower deck you get all the economy people walking past, and in
fact they seem to wander into the premium section of the plane during
the flight. Often they would just stand there looking at me work, which
was a bit rude. You also share a bathroom with the rest of the economy
cabin, unlike upstairs. That leads to congestion. Worst of all, the
premium section is on either side of the forward galley. That means
constant staff movement next to you, light, and noise. Luckily for me I
was flying while trying to stay awake, I would have found this really
annoying otherwise.
You do get a big overhead bin though.
So, premium economy good, although the seats could do with some basic
maintenance. I'd pick it over standard economy any day.
Other random notes: Virgin staff are nice, there is video on demand in
all seats (which means of the airlines I have flown Qantas, New Zealand
and Virgin have this -- unlike United). In fact, Virgin was really good
all round.
Tags for this post: travel( ) airlines( )
posted at: 12:14 | path: /travel/airlines | permanent link to this entry
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I occasionally wonder to myself why I don't blog more these days, and I
think the answer is that I'm not convinced that other people would be
interested in what happens to me from day to day. For example, when
writing the books, all that is really involved is a massive amount of
time in front of a computer. The finished product is cool, but the
process of producing it is actually quite boring.
(Although I feel that I will one day write up my universal theory of
project management... The short summary is something like: "project
management is about removing obstacles to delivery of the project -- not
deadlines, hassling, gantt charts, or general futzing". Or something
like that.)
The Dublin trip is similar. I had a good time, although am very tired. I
flew Virgin Atlantic premium economy from San Francisco to Heathrow, and
then BMI to Dublin. Virgin is great, BMI suck even more than I could
have imagined. For example -- they advertise that they have the best
on time record of any LHR flying airline, but they were late every
time on my trip. Oh, and one of the planes had a power generation engine
which didn't work, so we had to deplane in the dark. Oh, and no food. So
much suck.
(Oh, and who knew that the EU had instituted US style 3 ounce / 100
millilitre zip lock bag policies? I didn't.)
BMI also seem to have a policy of hiring midgets as flight attendants.
They were all young women of about five foot tall. I guess that's
convenient in a short aircraft, but where does one find a large stock of
midgets to hire from?
The hotel in Dublin was fantastic. It's called the Berkeley Court, and
there is no point in saying much more about it because it's being torn
down to build office buildings and apartments. How crap. I can't imagine
owning one of the lovely Victorian terraces across the street either
during or after the construction of yet another identical looking office
building.
Dublin seems to be all about economic growth at the moment. There are
plenty of identical looking office buildings around -- some of them even
built on top of sites of historical artifacts like Viking settlements.
Apparently they didn't even stop to dig up the old things before
concreting over them.
I liked Dublin though.
It was also odd to see Sinn Fein posters all over the place. I find the
transition from the political wing of the IRA to being a main stream
political party to be quite strange. (That sentence used to be more
harsh, but I edited it down).
Another odd thing was to discover the stereotypes are true (to a certain
extent). There are plenty of drunk folk on the streets on weekends from
about lunch onwards.
I got lots of tourist stuff done in Dublin, but didn't see much of the
countryside. Perhaps next time. I did see the National Museum (bog
people!), the Chester Beattie National Library (ancient religious
texts!), Dublin Castle (Sinead O'Conner in concert preparations!),
Malahide Castle, the south wall, and other stuff I don't remember at the
moment.
So there you go. I figure no one finds these posts interesting, so I
will continue to write them solely when it amuses me.
Tags for this post: travel( ) ireland( ) dublin( )
posted at: 07:08 | path: /travel/ireland/dublin | permanent link to this entry
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