. All opinions are my own.
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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 travel swiss business first carbon
Related posts: Cryptonomicon; Quite motivational; Young Achievers; In the US you an pack meat in carbon monoxide to keep it red longer?; Your first computer?; Interesting morning chatting; Advertising inside the firewall; Hey, the Macintosh bloggers rock more than the Linux bloggers; How to lay people off; Cryptonomicon
posted at: 14:10 | path: /travel | permanent link to this entry
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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 jetbus airport shuttle rant
Related posts: Speakers return home from LCA; Random travel tip: DFW / Dallas Fort Worth; Does this stuff happen to other people?; Heathrow
posted at: 16:32 | path: /travel/australia/sydney | permanent link to this entry
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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 review
Related posts: More reviews; Book reviews; Working on review comments for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 tonight; Slow git review uploads?; Review; Status of the book
posted at: 14:25 | path: /travel/usa/california/sunnyvale | permanent link to this entry
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When I was looking for a hotel to stay at for SIGCOMM 2008, I had trouble finding one in downtown Seattle which wasn't insanely expensive. In the end I picked Hotel Max because it was only moderately expensive, instead of insane like the Grant Hyatt. The hotel is interesting because apparently it was quite run down until a few years ago when it was done up. Now every room has its own unique art, and the halls and lobby are filled with different bits of art as well. Very hip.
The room itself is quite small by American standards, which means its about the same size as the room that I stayed in while staying in London a few years ago. The shower and bathroom are literally cupboards off a corridor, but the bed is a full size queen. I'm not surprised about that given the yelp.com reviews.
Given all I do in hotels is sleep and work on my laptop, I like this place. If I had the kids with me I would go insane however. Also be careful to get a room that faces Stewart Street. Mine faces an alley and I can hear the binging noise from the streetcar until about 10pm, and the air conditioning plant from the building next door for a while after that. I still slept ok though, so I guess people turned all that stuff off at some point during the night.
Update: I was wrong. The binging isn't the street car, its instead the beeping thingie that all underground carparks seem to have here to warn pedestrians that there is a car about to enter the sidewalk. Its very annoying.
Tags for this post: travel usa washington seattle hotel
Related posts: Ice hotels again; I think I've worked out the problem with the hotel network; On hotel Internet that sucks; Beware the concierge at the Rendezvous Hotel!; Extended Stay Hotels -- shame on you; Ice hotel; Back in Phoenix; Boston; When I go to Vegas, I should stay here; Arrived in Dallas
posted at: 16:25 | path: /travel/usa/washington/seattle | permanent link to this entry
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I give you the can bottle, which is clearly the best shape for a coke can, ever.
Update: I noticed the image was broken on this post, so I found another.
Tags for this post: travel japan coke can
posted at: 19:45 | path: /travel/japan | permanent link to this entry
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Panos (a dude I work with) and I got to Tokyo ok last night. The flight left SFO at about 1pm and got into Narita airport at about 4pm. By the time we'd done immigration and collected our bags we only had about a ten minute wait for the limousine bus to the hotel.
We're staying in Shibuya, which seems to be a bit of a shopping district. We managed to do the pointing a menu food ordering thing for dinner last night, and then I went to bed.
Initial impressions of Tokyo:
- Its very clean and amazingly well organised. People naturally line up, and customer service is much better than it is in the US.
- Its not as crowded as I expected.
- English is very common, but don't expect people on the streets to actually speak it.
Tags for this post: travel japan shibuya tokyo
Related posts: Tokyo tomorrow
posted at: 19:27 | path: /travel/japan | permanent link to this entry
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Tomorrow I'm jumping on a JAL flight to Tokyo. I will be in Tokyo for a week, mostly for work meetings. I'm hoping to fit some sightseeing in on the weekend. Let me know if you have any recommendations.
Tags for this post: travel japan tokyo
Related posts: Shibuya, Tokyo
posted at: 16:17 | path: /travel/japan | permanent link to this entry
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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 cold war nuclear bunker radiation
Related posts: The Greenbrier bunker opens for tours!; Essex secret bunker; On a bunker kick; Google maps used to map US casualties from Iraq; Random linkage; Starfish Prime; A little story from my sickness; Random fact for the day; Nuclear accidents; Natural nuclear reactors; Mars: A Survival Guide; Nuclear car!; Nuclear rifle and almost-suitcase nuke; There is nothing of honour here
posted at: 20:29 | path: /travel/usa/virginia | permanent link to this entry
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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 tax permanent resident
Related posts: Is my cat deductible?; On the flood levy; US tax withholding for W-8BEN
posted at: 10:20 | path: /travel/usa | permanent link to this entry
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I must say that I like Boston. It feels a lot like Sydney, and I hope that Boston is the city that Sydney is in another 200 years. Boston has plenty of history (it seems that America happened here, and the rest of the continent came along for the ride), isn't too built up (not all sky scrapers), has great public transport, and friendly people. Its too cold though -- it snowed a little on my walk to the office this morning.
Tags for this post: travel usa massachusetts boston snow
Related posts: Mental note: Don't ride unicycle in the snow without chains
posted at: 09:58 | path: /travel/usa/massachusetts/boston | permanent link to this entry
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I arrived in Dallas yesterday. This part of the trip is to attend LISA 2007, spend some time on the Google booth, and present a poster about the initial research in my new-improved-previous-topic-abandoned PhD. I'm staying in the same hotel as the conference, the Grand Hyatt.
Staying at the Grand Hyatt has led me to make a conclusion -- people mistake expensive for up-scale. I look at the hotel, and its pretty lame: parking is $18 a day, internet is $10 a day, printing is $1 a page, and all the food options are expensive. I can only assume that either they're not interested in business travellers, or that they're hoping people will confuse being gouged for being upper class.
Oh, and the room is noisy and poorly laid out. I much preferred The Hampton Inn I stayed at in Atlanta to be honest. Now there was a hotel that understood business travellers.
Tags for this post: travel usa texas dallas hotel expensive
Related posts: Ice hotels again; I think I've worked out the problem with the hotel network; On hotel Internet that sucks; Beware the concierge at the Rendezvous Hotel!; Hotel Max; Extended Stay Hotels -- shame on you; Ice hotel; Back in Phoenix; Boston; When I go to Vegas, I should stay here
posted at: 07:46 | path: /travel/usa/texas/dallas | permanent link to this entry
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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 apartment
posted at: 05:08 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview | permanent link to this entry
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They're the ones wearing hats.
Despite it being noon, the various American kids at the playground all lacked sun protection. In fact, they pretty much all lacked practical clothing, it was all way too dressy. Americans don't seem to have figured out skin cancer at all in fact, every weekend there are bikini clad young ladies sunning themselves around the pool, the schools don't require kids to wear sun protection, and it's pretty common to see outside workers not wearing any sun protection either. How odd.
Tags for this post: travel usa skin cancer sun protection
Related posts: Damn Interesting; Random idea
posted at: 16:20 | path: /travel/usa | permanent link to this entry
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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 virgin atlantic
Related posts: On customer service
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 politics
Related posts: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress; Daughter of the Empire; Servant of the Empire; Mistress of the Empire; I am sometimes amazed by the childlike political discourse in the US; Asimov's Aurora; Bio of a Space Tyrant: Politician; Two things; Proposition 82; Asimov's Chimera
posted at: 07:08 | path: /travel/ireland/dublin | permanent link to this entry
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