Category: travel

Posted on

Back!

We made it home yesterday! Wacky observations will follow, along with a pair of huge photosets on Flickr!

Meanwhile, we need to unpack, get food, and debate whether to spend $24.95 on the PPV of New Zealand v. France in the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals at noon (even though the All Blacks will have to wear their road gray unis).

(Update: the game’s at 3pm, not noon. And we’re buying in, so we can see some French guys get pasted by some big Maoris.)

(Update 2: Victory! France’s inaptly named Serge Bentsen just got knocked the f*** out around the 4:30 mark, trying to slow down an All Black rush! Vive Le Smush!)

(Update 3: All Black & Bleu! France beats NZ, 20-18!)

Posted on

The Phantom Carrier

Monday morning, I headed over to the conference center to make sure our boxes of magazines had arrived. They hadn’t. Since the conference was set to begin on Tuesday, I thought it would be a good time to visit the show’s courier service to find out where our 34 boxes of magazines were.

I was told that half of them, the boxes we shipped directly from our office, were either at “the warehouse” or on their way to the show floor. But they couldn’t be delivered to our booth unless we paid the indeterminate handling fee.

The courier rep had no answer about the 17 boxes of September issues that the printer shipped directly to the show. Oh, he had information on the printer’s name, and the shipper, but the location of the boxes wasn’t so clear. “They may have been returned to customs,” I was told. “You probably should’ve used the official shipper for the conference and not a phantom carrier.”

“A phantom carrier? You mean, UPS is a phantom carrier?”

He gave me a wan smile. By this morning, the boxes from our office (sent via phantom carrier FedEx) had arrived, but the September issues hadn’t. I was livid and decided to put it straight to the rep: “Is there some amount of money that you need to help locate and deliver our boxes?”

Wan smile again: “No, I’m afraid it’s out of our hands.”

I was pissed, and returned to our booth. Over the course of the day, I discovered

  1. two other magazines — one U.S., one UK — also never received their shipments,
  2. an exhibitor from Germany learned that their package was damaged and had to be destroyed, but only learned this after they called to find out where their boxes were,
  3. an exhibitor from the U.S. never received a box because it had mints inside, and Customs was sending it back, and
  4. another U.S. exhibitor’s 10′ booth shipment (two boxes) showed up a day early to the conference, so it was sent back to customs and one of the boxes was re-routed to Lagos, Nigeria.

There are a bunch of ticked-off exhibitors, including one who arranged to have food service, only to discover that this didn’t include forks, knives, or napkins, for which there would be a surchage.

So, in general, we’re a surly lot. The locals are scamming away, the conference hall layout is insane, and the distance of the center from the city means that we have to travel by metro with Italians during rush hour.

Posted on

No sleep ’til Milan

Someday, I’m gonna be able to sleep on a transatlantic flight. That didn’t happen on this trip, so here’s how the last day-plus went as we got from NJ to Milan:

Friday, 5:15pm – board plane for alleged 5:50pm departure; in fact, because of Friday evening air traffic and crappy NE corridor weather, the flight is delayed

Friday, 7:15pm – Saturday, 8:30pm – listen to all sorts of crazy music, finish Spook Country, read new issue of Reason, watch Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (second time, just as entertaining as the first), watch the first episode of New York (second time, just as illuminating as the first), fail to sleep.

Saturday, 8:30am – land in Milan (6 hours ahead), where Amy & I go through the easiest passport control ever

8:35am-10am – get luggage, take cab ride from Malpensa airport to the city (one of my coworkers was on our flight), marvel over how much of the 45-minute trip resembles a drive down Rt. 46 back in NJ, check into hotel

10:15am-3:15pm – sleep, then wake up worrying that we’ve thrown off our sleep-patterns for the entire trip

3:15pm-8pm – clean up, meander down to Duomo, get overpriced dinner, keep meandering, try to figure out why orthodox Jews are out before sunset, take lots of pix

8pm-9:45pm – internet, TV (including Scotland vs. Italy Rugby World Cup match, made interesting by the fact that neither of us know anything about rugby), and a little reading

9:45pm – take some Nyquil, as we’re both still nagged by colds

Sunday, 9am – wake up after eleven hours of sleep, stop worrying about sleep-patterns for trip

It’s rainy and cool, but I’m sure we’ll do plenty more meandering today.

Posted on

Radio Silence

I know it sounds like I’m always under a huge pile of work, dear readers, but this time I mean it. Last week’s conference overrode my other responsibilities, and now I have to finish a 156-page issue by Friday morning, so I can catch my flight to Milan in the afternoon to cover the CPhI/ICSE conference.

Yesterday, I finally believed that this was doable. Shortly after that, I got pasted with a cold.

Upshot: you likely won’t see any posts here till Friday morning’s Unrequired reading. Oh, and you’ll probably get to see a bunch of neat photos from Milan & environs next week.

Posted on

Strange Currency

Last night, early in my dream cycle, I dreamed that the U.S. had introduced the $8 bill back in 2003, but I’d done so much of my shopping online that I didn’t notice the new bill till now.

More irritatingly, in almost every dream I had for the rest of the night, people either goofed on me when I told them about this $8 dollar bill dream, or they too were using $8 bills to pay for things.

I think the presence of $2 coins here in Canada is messing with my head.

Since you put up with that, here’s another picture from Toronto.

Posted on

Wait till Monday

Ahoy, ahoy, dear readers! Sorry for the lack of updates, but Amy & I have been meandering around town, taking pictures, having fancy-pants dinners, and meeting up with friends and family, so there’s been no time to write anything. But it’s Labor Day weekend, so I doubt there are a lot of people who are compulsively checking out this site to find out about my vacation. If you are one of those people, shame on you! Go out and have a nice holiday!

Meanwhile, here’s an unrepresentative photo from our trip. Well, it’s representative of how lovely the skies have been, but we haven’t spent much time by the lake.

God Moves On the Water

We still have all of Saturday and much of Sunday here (visiting my cousins today, and a college friend and her family are coming over from Buffalo to see us tomorrow), and I already have more than a hundred pix waiting to get cleaned up and posted on Flickr, so if you check back next week, I bet you’ll find a whole lot of images.

Posted on

Laboriousness Day

Summer’s labor is over, dear readers! Now it’s vacation-time!

Amy & I are heading up to Toronto for a few days to visit friends and family, do some fine dining, and see the sights! We promise to take plenty of pix.

Unfortunately, I can’t convince her that we should follow Michael Cook’s footsteps and make a side-trip through the city’s drainage infrastructure.

Have a great holiday!

Posted on

Be mindful

Our friends John & Liz hosted a pool party yesterday, so Amy & I took her Mini for a spin up the NYThruway and had a lovely, relaxing time — surprising given the amount of small children present — meeting old friends and making new ones.

Oh, and we took pictures. I know you’ll be surprised to read that.

look up sometimes

Here’s my photoset from the day. Amy’s should be posted soon are over here!

Posted on

The final frontier

When asked what I drink, I usually respond, “Gin! Gin is my rocket fuel! Vodka, on the other hand, makes me explode on the launch pad.”

In that spirit, I’m pleased that Charles Krauthammer has joined me in celebrating astronauts who tip a few back before liftoff:

Have you ever been to the shuttle launch pad? Have you ever seen that beautiful and preposterous thing the astronauts ride? Imagine it’s you sitting on top of a 12-story winged tube bolted to a gigantic canister filled with 2 million liters of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Then picture your own buddies — the “closeout crew” — who met you at the pad, fastened your emergency chute, strapped you into your launch seat, sealed the hatch and waved smiling to you through the window. Having left you lashed to what is the largest bomb on planet Earth, they then proceed 200 feet down the elevator and drive not one, not two, but three miles away to watch as the button is pressed that lights the candle that ignites the fuel that blows you into space.

Three miles! That’s how far they calculate they must go to be beyond the radius of incineration should anything go awry on the launch pad on which, I remind you, these insanely brave people are sitting. Would you not want to be a bit soused?