myShoggoth

Winding Line through London Heathrow

I'm writing this at London's Heathrow airport, a little over two hours before the flight is due to leave, and I've got a rant building up.

We've made it through security, and here's what we had to do to get there:

1. Take the Heathrow Express train from Paddington Station to the airport.  This went very smoothly and I highly recommend it.
2. Get off the train and look for information on our flight.  We were there three hours and ten minutes early.  They assign check-in zones to each flight, which is the first insanity.  If you're at the airport too early, they haven't assigned a zone yet and you can't check in yet.
3. Go through the line to get our VAT (Value Added Tax) refund.  Short line, long wait.
4. Head down to our 'zone' once it was assigned (D), find the right place to get into line to check in, and have two (2) guys standing there to tell us to go use their convenient self service kiosks that were back where we had come from (the border of zones C and D).
5. Get into a short line at the kiosks (but longer that it would have been if the two (2) guys hadn't directed us away from the checkin stands) and punch some numbers into the kiosk, get boarding passes printed.  Worth noting that these kiosks were manned by approximately one BA employee per 3-4 kiosks.  However, since we had bags to check...
6. Find the entrance to the line for the "Fast Bag Check" line (very long, not fast), which was also guarded by two (2) people who had to check our tickets and I assume provide assistance of some sort (in fact all they successfully did was annoy me).
7. Get to the end of the Fast Bag Check [sic] line, there was the normal guy at the head of the queue to point you to the next available counter.  Get to the counter, hand over passports and ticket, get bags checked by counter attendant.
   
   So far we've interacted with 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 people (that's 7 for those of you who wondered when all that math stuff would be useful in real life) in a process that used to take maybe 3 (one to help direct people, one to point people at the next counter, one to man the counter).
   
   The Fast Bag Check [sic] line did not move any faster than the checkin queues of old, nor was it smaller.  This seems more like a make-work scheme for BA than any way to make the checkin process more pleasant and efficient.  In cases where the kiosk system is done well in the States I've seen that process go down to two personel.  Plus they don't have to assign checkin areas, something I've seen around Europe.
   
   Now for the security fun...
8. Get into the security line, where they ask you if you have the gels, liquids, etc. in a winding line that was basically empty.  Get passport/boarding pass checked at a counter, which then lets you through to... another winding line.  Note that no one had opened the tape things in the winding line to let people walk straight through easily since the number of people going through was so low.  That would probably require thinking a little bit about passenger convenience.
9. Go through security, fairly typical.
10. Arrive on the other side a little more than two hours ahead of flight time, look for which gate the flight will be out of and... it isn't set yet.  In fact, it won't be set for quite a while, so now we need to keep our eyes on the time to make sure we notice the gate assignment and head out there at the right time.

The Winding Line -> Choke Point -> Winding Line thing has happened a few times in Europe so far.  It is like people are going out of there way to create jobs through stupid inefficiency.  This was particularly bad in Italy, and in that case I truly believe it was just an attempt to keep more people uselessly employed.

British Airways obviously has put no thought into how to make the checkin process truly more efficient and pleasant for their passengers.  In fact I saw a man who was a 'premier' member or Europe Club or some kind of rewarded frequent traveller ask what he was supposed to do (that's not a good sign by itself) and was told to go through the same annoying thing we did, and we're in Cattle Class Plus.

I've heard complaints by friends and family during this trip about how Britain is stagnant, caught up in its own rules, and comfortable with mediocrity.  The only exceptions I've seen are from immigrants, and at this point I think they're the country's only serious hope at remaining competitive.

It is worth noting that once we got onto the airplane (after more silliness at the gate) everything was great.  British Air does a very good job at that point, it was a very pleasant flight and the staff in the air were great.  Getting to that point is an amazing display of strange corporate decisions, though.

End of the trip

We're on the final non-travel day of our vacation, hanging around London (currently Camden Gardens area doing light shopping).  Yeah, the shopping in Paris was much better.  Every time we do these trips it strikes me that for pure shopping they're less and less relevant.  I can do more and better shopping on the Internet, be more organized, and less impulsive.

I'm trying to organize my thoughts around my wardrobe with that in mind.  Shopping for clothes on the net is still a little iffy, but I haven't tried it for a while so maybe things have improved.  There's also a problem with shooting a moving target if I actually start losing weight again.

Lastly, it seems that while everyone was very nice and helpful in both Italy and France, it got much cooler (and not just weather-wise) as soon as we hit the UK.  We haven't been able to decide whether it was really that people are less friendly here or that, being able to understand the language, it was easier know when they were acting poorly.  It also may just have been the areas we're going in the different places.

Tomorrow we spend a long day travelling back to Seattle.  We've had a great time on this vacation, but it will be good to be home.

At the French Laundry

Okay, at a French Laundry, specifically one near the Eiffel Tower.

I have used that joke 3-4 times in the last half hour and I'm still not sick of it.

Our vacation is going great even though it is more than halfway done.  We just spent a week in Tuscany with a native tour guide and now are on our own in Paris.  Tomorrow we train it up to London and spend a few more days there to finish out.

Boy did I need this vacation.

I'll write up more details later, doing so on a shared laptop while drying clothes is a good way to get my arm punched.

Ow.

Japan Vacation, Day 5

Woke up with my cold feeling better at least than the night before.  Packed, checked out, stored my luggage with the hotel, then we bought tickets for the train to Narita Airport later that day and went to breakfast.  Yakisoba was sounding really good, so we had to wait until 11am for the lunch place to open.

The big question was what to do, one option was Tokyo Tower, another was to go to the Japanese war dead shrine (to see the interesting account of WWII etc.)  Instead we settled on going shopping for my wife, who couldn't come on the trip and maybe I'd be able to find something for her that would help make her feel better about it.

First thought was Shibuya, but on further consideration (on the train, after the fare had been paid) my brother thought that Shinjuku would be much better.  So we got off there instead, and went to a handle Fare Adjustment machine to add an extra 20 Yen to my ticket.  Have I mentioned that I love the mass transit system in Tokyo? Best I've ever ridden, and I've hit quite a few major international cities at this point.

There are a couple of major department stores adjacent to the train station, and when I say mayor I mean HUGE, at least one order of magnitude larger than the American equivalent.  The target was a camera store that took up 4.5 floors of a large building (across the road from a dedicated camera store which was in a similarly huge building and no doubt took up the whole thing).

I didn't actually expect to find anything appropriate, one great idea my brother had was to look for one of the ultra ultra thin and small digital cameras that were brand new, the appeal being ultra portability with a very usable and powerful camera.

Those were really quite nice, but what caught my eye instead was a very small and portable video camera/still camera.  We don't have a video camera, and I doubt my wife is interested in video (yet) but it is a nice complement to what she already has and I can just see the adorable videos of the cat now.

I played around with it and was very impressed by the technology and form factor.  It wasn't too hard to change the menus in the store display version to English, the display is gorgeous and navigating previous recording and pictures was very easy. USB 2.0 Hi Speed, SD to save the data, just great stuff (by Sanyo I think, I won't even open the bag I bought it in unless customs requires it, that's half the fun for my wife with gifts).

It was on sale, plus I signed up for a Points Card (apparently very very big in Japan), and then did an immediate second purchase to spend those points on a 1g SD Card.  Wife might be minorly impressed by the deal skills, especially cross language, the credit belonging to my brother although I could follow most of the conversation.

The big thing I found from this vacation:  My Japanese skills aren't as bad as I expected, a lot came back as we went along, and I could do a few basic things without too many issues.  I could read many more signs and understand it when I was spoken to as long as it was a reasonable context.

I suspect if I wanted to do much outside of Tokyo I'd have to brush up more and have materials, and
given this experience I have a better idea of what kinds of Japanese I'd concentrate on for another trip.

Oh yes, in the airport I managed to lose my ticket (it fell out of my pocket) after getting to the gate.  I had  bought internet access (500 Yen) and was talking to a few people on Messenger and downloading/uploading  work email when I noticed I didn't have it.  Retracing my steps was painless and effective, the only real annoyance was having to repack/unpack all my computer gear.

Right now I'm on the plane a little south of the Bering Sea.  I guess we have a very nice tailwind now so the flight should take 7:46 this direction as opposed to 9:30 or so on the way out.  My cold is switching forms to a cough instead of mostly a sore throat.  I'm not looking forward to suffering through a cold and jet lag at the same time, hopefully I'll have recovered by Monday for work.

One thing I've pondered on and off all trip is what we could do in Messenger to make it more useful and relevant for the Japanese market.  We're doing some work already, but I'm sure there's more, and some of that may work well in other markets as well.  Haven't come up with anything Earth shattering yet.

Japan Vacation, Day 4

Went to an 'American' restaurant for breakfast, nothing special although the waitresses were in interesting
outfits.

Today we went on a trip to Yokohama, road a large ferris wheel (biggest one in the world?  Japan?  Unclear,
not sure if there's a strict distinction made here), went to the top of the tallest building in Japan which naturally has the world's fastest elevators.

At this point all I know is that I have a sore throat and my feet are killing me, everything else is background. Looks like my cold will be at its worst just as I have a long flight back home.  Super.

For dinner....

SUSHI GA DAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII SUKI!

Japan Vacation, Day 3

Went to sushi for late breakfast (okay maybe more like lunch), very tasty.  From there we went to the Imperial Palace Gardens and walked around, pretty.

Next my brother wanted to show me one of the more recent strange Japanese fads, the "Maid Cafe".  I guess the basic idea is that you have hostesses who are very cute (cute is very, very important for the Japanese.  Everything is cute.  Cute cute cute cute cute.) and dressed up as maids and are very nice.  For a extra charge they will sit down and talk to you at length, play cards games with you, etc.

The first one we tried to get to is the most popular and famous, and it had at least a two hour wait.  Pass.  We walked around a bit more and found another named the Cure Maid Cafe (?!) which had probably a shorter wait but still quite long.  The very very very cute maids weren't really all that cute (I think the girls at the coffee shop we went to were much cuter) so we took a pass and walked around some more.

This was in Akihabara, which is known for electronics shops, arcades, and so on.  Apparently there is a video game which involves typing Romanji accurately and fast, and we were going to show off my brother and I at this game since we both type very fast.  But we couldn't find it.

We went to a huge electronics store, I looked over a lot of camera equipment hoping to find something for my wife that she couldn't find elsewhere, but this is the age of Internet shopping and that's just not really possible. I looked over some 'fashion straps' for the Pentax brand but they didn't have the shade of blue she likes, so I passed.  Very tempted to buy a new lens but probably a bad idea, and again Internet shopping.  Could find it cheaper and more conveniently elsewhere.

Also saw a lot of other tech, including computers (one had Outlook Express up and running on a big LCD screen), HD TVs, and saw a little of Toshiba's HD DVD demos.  I find it really interesting to see how the Japanese are pushing the limits on some of the tech, with ultra small, lightweight laptops and very cool and useful mobile phones that can do so much.

By this time my feet hurt quite a bit from all the walking around so we headed back to the hotel, stopping
at a convenience shop (they really are convenient, they're all over the place) to pick up some tuna onigiri and
drinks.

For dinner we went to ramen again, and in fact the same place as the first day, but had a different style (salt
ramen instead of miso ramen), very tasty.

Headed back to the hotel to rest our feet and hang out, then went to bed.

Japan Vacation, Day 2

Spent the day wandering around the hotel complex a bit and reading more of the recent Economist issue, occasionally heading back up to the room to watch TV or just rest. Finally got ahold of my brother around 2pm or so, we went out for Yakisoba for a late lunch, then back to the hotel so he and his girlfriend could catch a nap and recover more from the drinking.  I think I weathered it better, but he also had at least 2-3 more drinks than I did over the night.

Back out later (8 or 9) for Shabu Shabu in Shinjuku.  Very tasty, we stuffed outselves silly and then rolled back to the hotel.  Got online in his hotel room to say good morning to the wife and then came back here to write this and go to bed soon.  Getting close to midnight here.

For whatever reason my room can't get internet access but his can, probably due to us being in different parts of the hotel that were built at different times.  His is essentially a cable modem, seems like a strange way to provide it but I guess it works.

The room is pretty small but fine for what I need.  There's a closet with a combo lock, TV, bed, desk, and tiny bathroom.

Yes, Japanese toliets are high tech.

Japan Vacation, Day 1

I'm blogging my vacation mostly so my wife, who couldn't come along, can share the experience.

Plane trip was uneventful, the seat next to me had a middle aged Japanese woman in it for about as long as was required, before she fled to find another seat.  More room for me, and I used it.  Got a special meal (Asian Vegetarian, although I am neither) and that worked out quite well, both meals were pretty tasty.  Long flight, glad I brough both batteries for the Tablet PC and a stack of Economists.

Arrived with no real problems, my brother met me at the airport and we took the train into Tokyo.  We had ramen at a place in Shinagawa, very very tasty.  We then headed to Roppongi to the Train Bar and spent from around 8pm to 4am drinking.  A lot.  I don't drink much anymore, so this was going from basically 0 to marathon pace instantly after having been up from too little sleep and a plane trip.

All in all I had been up about 28 hours by the time my head actually hit the pillow in the hotel, so I did my long past drinking days proud.  Woke up at 8:30ish still pretty drunk, drank more water and tried to get back to sleep but wasn't too successful.

Chicago Ahoy

For an extended weekend we're in Chicago to see friends.  So far we've seen the Art Museum, wandered around a bit, and are now eating sandwiches and drinking coffee at Cafe Ballou, which is also providing the free wifi I'm using to make this post.  Good coffee, nice sandwich.

We're basically out here for two reasons, the first is to go to RandyCon, which is hosted by someone (Randy, natch) my wife and I have known from over a decade ago, and second (which is somewhat mixed in the first) is to see other people we know in the area.  Some of our friends are going to RandyCon themselves, others aren't.  In fact, the plan is that tonight while my wife goes to the con I'll be heading to play a home poker game with other friends I've known for quite a while.

Should be fun, with the additional bonus that I can watch the Superbowl with friends.  Left to my own devices I'd probably have it on in the background at home, barely pay attention, while playing computer games or some other thing.

To Colorado

Yesterday was nice and relaxing, which will help since today involves travel.  We went on a vacation last year after I had surgery, but I don't think we did so nearly as soon after and it was still quite uncomfortable.  Even then we got ahold of the airport/airlines and arranged a wheelchair to get me to/from the gate, and this will be no different.

We're headed off to visit my parents for Christmas, maybe see some of my friends from when I was growing up in Fort Collins depending on how mobile I am, and generally enjoy the holidays with family thang.

Oop, breakfast is ready.