Author: Gil

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Ill-starred

Back in 2002, I got a fortune-cookie that read, “A reunion with an old acquaintance will turn out disastrous.” I saved it because it was so pessimistic. Also, I appreciated the fact that it was a fortune, and not an aphorism. A week or so later, I hooked up with an ex-girlfriend I hadn’t seen in almost a decade, and it didn’t turn out so bad.

According to the NYTimes, bad fortunes are making their way through the rotation. My official VM fortune to you: Avoid Chinese food for a while.

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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!)

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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.

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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.

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The most depressing job ever

One of the features in the October ish of my magazine is an interview with Dr. Robert Maguire, chief of operations for Wyeth’s R&D efforts. I finished laying out the section this morning, because I was waiting for the company to send over Dr. Maguire’s bio.

For any of you who think your job is a downer, Dr. Maguire’s first career should shut you up. Prior to working in the pharma industry, he was trained as a pediatric oncologist.

Try to imagine your spouse/partner working in that field, and then try to imagine asking, “How was work today?”

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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.