The rest of the travel story
Hey everyone,
The reason for the long delay between the last two blogs are that I was in the Philippines at an amazing conference and that i simply couldn´t spend a minute writing a blog (especially since I arrived 3 days late).
Last time I wrote I was stuck at Gatwick trying to decide if i should go in the morning to Abu Dhabi and be stuck there for a day or if I should wait one more day at Gatwick and take it all in one go. Well, in the morning I simply couldn´t stand it no more and I went to the ticketing desk and said that I wanted to go to Abu Dhabi this day instead of tomorrow. Obviously due to te fact that there is a service company doing their ticketing the person at the desk had no idea what had gone on before and started saying that I really couldn´t just pick a date to leave if my tickets were for tomorrow I had to leave tomorrow, I really didn´t have time nor patience at that time to update her fully so I just told her to call Kevin and ask if Mr. Kristjansson could leave today even though his tickets are published for tomorrow. She looked at me partially stunned, obviously not used to have people that knows who her superior is but she picked up the phone and called, maybe because she was so surprised or possibly because I looked quite grim after 3 days stay at the airport. Well, Kevin obviously told her to issue new tickets for me and everything looked ok, but ofcourse, as we have seen throughout this account lady luck was not yet satisfied and decided to put in another hurtle. For one reason or another she couldn´t issue new ticket on my name, the computer system simply didn´t feel like it... then she tried what we all do when computer systems fail us, she tried pressing the keys harder and harder and to her great surprise that didn´t work either. In the end Kevin came over there, told me to go to check-in and when I was at the desk I was to tell the girl to call him, that I did and he probably told her what to do, at least I got to check in. Then I noticed a notice at the check-in desk saying that if a passanger felt that his right had in anyway been violated he should ask for a printout of the passanger rights at the check-in desk or at the gate. I decided that it would be a nice reading during my flight so I asked the girl about a copy of passengers rights, she looked at me quite puzzled, the passengers rights?? she asked me... but I didn´t do anything and the flight is on time she said surprised, well, my flight is 3 days late I answered. She didn´t have a copy (surprise, surprise) and she had to call Alex, the bitchy girl who told me they had closed the gate 2 days before, she asked to speak to me on the phone, and told me that Ethiad was not responsible for the things I had gone thorugh, "well, if that´s true you won´t mind me reading my rights, I simply need something to read in the flight, so I don´t get bored" she said that, yes it was my right but that she didn´t understand why I would want to read it, Ethiad was not responsible. I still insisted on getting a copy and she told me that it might take 10-15 minutes to get it, clearly hoping that I wouldn´t bother to wait. I said that was great and tat I looked forward meeting her. She hung up without even saying goodbye :)
Well, I got my copy in which she had highlighted the parts where it said under what circumstances Ethiad was not responsible, I thanked her for her personal interet in my case but told her that it was not her job to put highlighted parts into my reading materials. For some reason that really got to her and she started a long speach where she talked about liability and that they did nothing wrong, she got so upset that I started laughing at her, and told her that she didn´t need to worry I was not thinking about suing her, but her company, this stunned her enough so I could get away and on to my flight.
About the flight I can not say anything since I fell asleep before take-off and didn´t wake up untill landing in Abu Dhabi. In Abu Dhabi airport i went to the bank to change money but there was no one in the bank so I walked to the informatin desk to ask why the bank wasn´t open, but the person there insisted that te bank was indeed open and that I should just knock on the glass, when I got back to the bank there were group of 4 Scottish people there (you can always smell them) they looked as confused as I was, international airport and the bank closed. So we stood there knocking on the glass with no success, after around 20 minutes a girl,not a year older than 17 came there looking at us like we were a group of maniacs knocking on the window of her empty booth. Well, after after getting my United Arab Emirates (UAE) money I went outside to scout the situation, after 15 minutes of walking and talking I found out I had three ways of getting into town (city) first one was which all the tourists took, the airport taxi, highly organized, english speaking, fast but expensive, the second choice was city taxis that actually are not allowed there so they would drive past in rows and if somebody flagged them down they would stop and pick you up unless a cop (there were alot of them) would start walking towards them, then they would speed away. The thirth option was individuals tanding outside the airport asking you if you needed a taxi and they would take you in their own cars. I am a very stubborn person so ofcourse I didn´t want to pay the highest price as the tourists so I decided to talk to one of these guys offerering their service on the pavement, I found this guy, quite a good english speaker and told him that I wanted to go to Abu Dhabi and how much it would be. 30 Dirhams (UAE currency) he said, that´s half of the airport taxis fare so I considered my self quite lucky and that I had made a good deal, the guy took my bag and started carrying it away from all the cars. I asked him where he was going and he pointed to the end of the car line, as we reached the end of the carline outside of te airport he continued walking and I became quite nervous and asked him again where we were going, over there he said, pointing towards a dark parking lot, had I not been robbed 4 times I would probably have walked with him, and I would say that there is 80% likelyhood that he had his car parked there and that he was going to drive me to Abu Dhabi but these 20% made me nervous, walking into a dark parking space with some guy, and when he asked me if I was alone, I freaked out, said that, no I had 3 guys coming in an hour nd that I hould wait for them, grabbed my bag from him and half walked half ran back to the airport. There I found one of the local taxis, their ride is 40 Dirhams which is quite god as well, I jumped in and the guy took of quite fast to avoid the cops, but as we drove towards Abu Dhabi I found out that he didn´t understand a single word in English, not Hotel, hostel, central nor anything else I tried, he kept insisting on getting a written address (or that´s what I think he was asking for) but i didn´t have any, and just wanted to get to the centre, so after intense 10 minutes of actionary/pictionary i decided to let it go and just see where he would drive me. He stopped in front of this huge hotel, and I just got out since this seemed to be fairly central, judgung by the ammount of lights, traffic and people (I might still have been in the suburbs, who knows). At the hotel I asked a very nice english speaking guy where I could get a hostel, he didn´t know but pointed me to a cheaper hotel, they were full so I just walked around Abu Dhabi for hours admiring this amazing city. In the end I sat down in an internet café and checket hostels.com (very good website, when in need of hostels around the world), but this time it failed me, apparently there are no hostels in Abu Dhabi, the only hostels in UAE are based in Dubai. So as i sat tere contemplating on what to do, I started to chat to the manager of this internet place, he was this really friendly guy and we spent a long time teaching each other words in Icelandic and arabic and getting facts about the countries, then he denied taking any money for my time and called me a taxi to get back to the airport (it was the only solution). So once more I would spend my night at an airport, the airport in Abu Dhabi is a bit special, yes, it is open 24 hours a day, but nothing is happening there during the night, still they have the same ammount of peple working day and night, so as I sat down there starting to read and listen to music i had around 20 people just staring at me for the whole night, it was quite disturbing but at the same time fun (since I like attention). Mid day the following day I got to check in and finally get into the real airport where the shops and bars are, after walking a quick round I settled down at the only bar there (that´s not surprising for an Icelander) and at that bar I met two great people, Caroline and Michelle. Caroline is 21 year old English girl that for the last three years has been traveling around the world, at each place working as bartender and stuff to get money to go to her nexxt destination, now she was going to Nepal, she had so many great stories and I loved listening to her. Michelle (I think it was Michelle, but I am horrible with names) was around 45 years old, working in Kabul training lawyers and judges in the fight against organized drug dealers, sounds like a fairytale but it´s true. before that she had been working in kosovo, she was the real deal, she had even had a rocket shot at her, amazing woman. So my night was spent in a really cool conversations with this amazing people. So I flew to Manila and again I slept the whole way (you get tired of this airport living), in Manila I went throught the slowest immigration process ever, there were around 15 lines there, but they just didn´t move at all. When I finally got through I started looking for some AIESEC people but no one was there, so I bought my self a phone card and called one of the OC girl (organizing commitee). She told me that they had all left Manila, and that I would have to get my self over to the island of the onference my self, that was fine so i took a taxi to the other terminal where i was told I could buy tickets, but there I got two bad news, first of all, there was no flight in that day (they had been earlier) to Bohol (where I needed to go) and that the morning flight was booked so I had to book a afternoon flight. The second bad news was that the flight on the 29th was fully booked so I had to book it a day earlier, the 28th. With those tickets in my pocket I found my self a Taxi and told him to go to Malate pension house. He nodded and drove off, but as I tried to speak to him, I came to realize that he understood no english so I just waited to see where he was going to drive me, he stopped in front of a church. I just took my stuff and walked out, not bothereing to try to explain to him where I actually wanted to go. I started to ask local people and after around 20 minutes I was in the lobby of this pension house (hotel/hostel). I got my room and the first thing I noticed was a large ammount of ants crawling everywhere, to top I noticed a cockroach sprinting accross the room under my bed, nothing like a cockroach to make you feel good in a room. So I took a weird shower in cold ater which barely ran out of the tubes and then went for a walk around Manila, what an amazing city it is, so full of life and people, I absolutely loved it, I travele around in these long type of jeeps where 16-20 people could sit in the back and people just jumped on and of on every intersection. In the night I checket out the nightlife which was quite fun, Philippines girls are verybeautifull and being white there makes you very attractive but I decided to go home quite early since I had not slept in a bed for such a long time and I slept for a good 10 hours. The next day I took a flight to Bohol, in that airport i met this Philippino fisherman which had travelled all around the world, he told me so man cool stories of things he had experienced, quite a reamarkable life he had had. In Bohol i thought someone would pick me up, since I had sent an e-mail the day before telling them when I was to arrive, but when got there, there was no AIESEC people there. I looked for a payphone and when I finally found one he didn´t work, o after asking an amployee for confirmatin I found out this was an aiport without phone and internet, but hey, who needs that when you can send a letter?
I fought my way through a group of taxi drivers which were on the verge of panic attack over the white boy with no transportation. I ran (they were litteraly chasing me) over to this Japanese restaurant. I got to call from there, a waitress let me use her cell phone, but just to top it nobody answered. I started negotiating with a taxi driver over him driving me to a internet place and then to the conference place when I saw a van clearly marked AIESEC driving into the parking lot, I was so glad and walked over to him, he on the other hand had no idea who Kristjansson was or that he was to pick up some delegate, he was here to pick up some OC girls from the ticket office, so finally I got lucky in my unluckyness. When the girls came out of the ticket office we went to the conference site and what a site!!! big congrats for the OC for organizing and booking this place, it was so amazing, this rsort with many small houses facing the sea, an absolute paradise. The conference was great and I met so many great people and learned so many cool stuff that I can´t wait implementing in Indonesia, being part of AP will rock... or like we say... AP hot to go, H-O-T-T-O-G-O a úúú hot to go, a úúú hot to go!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can´t wait getting to Indonesia and working with the people there and with this awsome AP people, so full of vision and passion. Any way, the trip back was cool, have been talking to 6-7 people at the airports, spent 4 hours with an Indian girl here in Standsted, a really nice girl that I will without doubt keep in touch with. I came here at 10:30 and my flight is at 21:00 so that´s a very brief wait on my standards. Looking forward to getting home, finishing my work there and then... Indonesia in the end of May!!!
Freedom of speach
So, I am being pressed to change some parts of my travel story, some individuals or organizations are unhappy about my opinion in them and want me to change my blog.
I am being pressured by my own president, it feels so great when your "leader" stands by you.
The funny thing is that I am willing to forfeit my right of opinion and freedom of speach if the person involved just asks me to do it, instead they have went around my back and choose to let other people pressure me and threaten me. I just want your opinion, so please leave a comment on whether I should change it or not.
Gatwick- part two
For those who haven´t read the first part kind of have to scroll down and read that. As for those who did read the first part, wow, you really were patient or you had nothing to do :)
So, now it´s 3 am and once again find my self in the sofa which has become strangely familiar, I guess I will miss it after I leave. And when will I leave and end this interesting experiment on living in Brittish airports (I wonder what Martha Steward would say about my set up here). The answer, I don´t know, I have stopped assuming things and will simply see what happens, I might take a plane tomorrow to Abu Dhabi, that would happen at 9 o´clock, but then I will have to spend a day in the airport there (or more accurately 28 hours, which are peanuts for me now). If I do not then I will spend a day here (or actually not here, I´ll come back to that in a bit) and take a plane in the morning of 23rd the problem then is a tight connection flight to Manila in the night. So my plan now is to check out if they let me aboard in the morning, and play it from there, at least I would be half the way then. I just finished a long chat with Mike my friend that lives in the UK (Manchester) and is partially from the US and his mind is partially Afghan, so a bit of a messup like I am. Anyways he offered me to come to his place, and I thought... wow, I´m not going to Manchester, that´s out of the question, but then he told me that the train takes only 2 hours (2 hours and 6 minutes to be exact) and suddenly it became much closer. Had I known that I would had gone there right after the first fuckup, but then again I woudn´t have had this experience and you guys wouldn´t have had the long long blog, which I know entertained some Maltese girls that either fist fight or laugh at blogs describing other people misery, or both :)
My dear friends Fjóla and Davíð (luv you guys) were so shocked by the fact of me eating at McDonalds that they sent me some money so I had an actual dinner, and ohh my god, it felt sooooooooo gooooood, I am still very full, feel like I don´t have to eat for the next week, and no McDonalds for the next month.
I have been talking to so many weird people here, but they are kind of to small to mention, but amongst them is the Scotch man that stands up every 10 minutes and does something that appears to be Mullers excerices, without the naked part fortunantly (I think Muller excercises are an Icelandic phenomena), ahh... one guy worth mentioning, there waas a guy jerking off in the bathroom... and not in a private stall, no sir, right in the main room where the standing things are. He stopped quite quickly after I came in, but thise 3-4 movement I saw were quite enough, and then the fumble to try to get his "guy" into the pants while he was so full of blood and energy proved to be quite entertaining. But guys just remember this, if you have an urge to release some pressure in an international airport, go into one of the private booths!!!
I seem to be fresh out of thoughts, so I´ll let it stand at this, never use Expedia, never jerk of in the toilet, never leave the country without your visa card, never forget your Football manager 2006 CD at home (when I realized tat it was the first time in this trip that I almost started crying), never assume that Manchester is far away and never throw a glass of water on a strong boxer (this one is for Malta).
Gatwick blog
Here is what I have written on my laptop since I got stuck here, it should explain everything:
When I am writing this it is 5 am, and I am sitting in Gatwick airport having been awake the whole night. I will now shortly summarise quite an eventful last 18 hours or so.
For those that do not know why on earth I am in London now I will begin from the beginning. I am on my way to APXPRO in the Philippines which is an AIESEC conference for those unfortunate enough not to know AIESEC and our wonderful conferences.
The plan was like this fly on Sunday afternoon to London, go and pick up my tickets in central London, spend a night at Gatwick (I quite enjoy spending nights at airports, you meet such an interesting people), fly to the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi) on Monday morning, arrive in the evening, fly to Manila, the capital of the Philippines in the night, arrive there in the middle of the Tuesday, take a flight there to the island where the conference take place and arrive there Tuesday night. This is a long, long trip and things started going wrong even before I left from home.
First of all the flights to UAE and Philippines were not possible through e-tickets, so paper tickets needed to be sent to an UK address, I got permission to use the AIESEC UK, address and my tickets were sent there, but then the problem was, I was arriving on Sunday evening when nobody would be at the office, and I would be going so early in the morning that nobody would be there yet. So I sent the girl that had received my tickets an email 4 days before but she didn’t answer, so 2 hours before my departure from Iceland I had no idea how to reach my tickets, second problem was that because of an absolutely hectic week I forgot to pick up my new VISA card and therefore I didn’t have a VISA card, I had some money but just enough for everything to run as planned, as if that was not enough of uncertainties I had not been able to book the flight within the Philippines because of an internet problem at home.
Well, hour before I left from home I called the AIESEC office in the UK and a really nice guy answered, he said he knew about the tickets and that he would take them to Scott (president of AIESEC UK) which was facilitating some sort of a seminar at LSE (London School of Economics).
I breathed easier, got Scott’s cell phone number and started packing (you guys know me, no need to start packing until hour before departure). So at 14:00 on Sunday my journey began, and it didn’t get a flying start, as you might know I screwed up my legs in sports 2 weeks ago, the pain was reducing but the last two days it had been coming back strong and I could barely walk to the car, I was already starting to look forward to walking around airports with my luggage.
The flight to London was extremely uneventful and no need to waste words on that, but when I landed walked (or as close to walking as I could) through the airport, luggage claim and went straight to information desk where I asked what would be the easiest way to get to LSE, the lady at the information desk, which had a horribly British face (no offence British girls), had no idea where that was, great information service, so I tried to call Scott, I got no answer and after several calls with 5 minutes intervals I decided to go to central London and work my way from there. I took the Standsted Express to Liverpool street and in he station I reached Scott, I don’t know if I called him in the middle of some act or what but he was very irritated and it was quite clear that he didn’t want to talk to me. I got straight to the point and asked if he was at LSE or where he was so I could come and pick up my tickets. What tickets he asked, well my flight tickets to the UAE and the Philippines I answered hoping that this was a sample of the British black humour, but not reality. He said he didn’t have any tickets and no one had talked to him about it, he gave me the number of another guy who he thought I might had talked to about the tickets that day. With that our short conversation ended and I was standing in the middle of the station starting to wonder what the heck I had got my self into this time.
I just want to stress that I really do like Scott and I believe he is one of the best AIESECers in the world right now, and he is a very intelligent and nice person, I must have caught him at a bad moment, but if Scott ever gets into some trouble in Iceland I promise him that I will treat him a bit better and with a little more interest than what I got from him that evening.
Well, I called this other guy, Mark or Mike, and he answered me and that was not the right person, so I got another number of a guy called Henry which was at the office this day. Henry had his voicemail on so I didn’t reach him and anyway my phone had only one bar of battery left.
I was still quite calm, I am not the type that stresses my self over some minor issues and I am used to getting my way around in different situations, so after a minute of thought and analyzing the situation I knew I needed to get to an internet, find the number of my travel agency, call them, tell them I don’t have my tickets and see if they couldn’t fix it with the airport. So I exit the station and walk to this juice bar and ask the guy where the next internet café would be. He shakes his head and tells me that there are no internet cafes in this neighbourhood but that I can go on-line at the next McDonalds. So the search for the yellow M began and no surprise it was not far away, even though my legs which at this time were screaming with pain felt it quite long enough. At McDonalds my luck continued, the internet was not working and there was no open McDonalds in a walking distance an employer told me (one observation, all of the employers, including the supervisor were Indians, I felt like being back in India). Still, no panic, I had my self a dinner and continued my walk where I met this very cute Russian girl which was also lost, I managed to help her with some coins for a payphone and she helped me by pointing in a direction where she had accessed the internet at some bar called Viper. After this cultural co-operation of two lost people in London I continued walking after her direction, maybe because of her limited vocabulary in English or because of my blindness I got lost and after 30 minutes of walk I found my self in some sort of an industrial neighbourhood where there were no people walking around and the street was not exactly the brightest one you could find. Since I am regularly robbed I became quite nervous but to my relive I saw a little supermarket open up the street, in there two Indians were working (at that point of time I had seen more Indians than Brits in London) and one of them was kin enough to call his friend who ran an internet café across the street that had closed at 17:00, he agreed to open for me, and even though the thought of walking into a locked building with two strangers was not a very exciting one, I had no choice and I followed them into a room where I could access the internet, get the number of Expedia where no one answered. Another point of luck in my trip, I went out again and hailed a cab, I told him a short version of my story and that I wanted to get to Gatwick airport, after him looking at me as a madman and telling me that I was really in a deep mess (I love the support and reinsurance you get from them) he dove me to some train station where I could take an express to Gatwick. As I entered the station they called in the speakers that the Gatwick express was on platform 14, I ran over there and jumped in, thinking that it was about to leave. But, no, it wasn’t and so I sat there waiting for 20 minutes not daring to leave and buy a ticket if it would depart. Thank god, the ticket guy was quite understanding and I just paid him the price. As I got to Gatwick around 23:00 everything was closing so I got my self comfortable (I am lying in two leather chairs, quite comfy actually) and plugged my laptop in the wall and for the last six hours I have been watching Reservoir Dogs (a must see for those who haven’t seen it at least 30 times) Coldplay life and Dave Matthews band life, and playing an intense game of eye contacts with a girl named Sofie who is sitting in front of me (if learn how to put photos in here I will add a photo of her). So at 6:30 I will be going to the office of the airline trying to get into the plane without the paper ticket they said they needed. That is it for now, I will write another up-date from Abu Dhabi (if I get there, that is) and I will put this on the blog as soon as I can get this computer on the internet.
As I write these words it is 20:30 the 20th of March, right now on local time I should be landing in the UAE, and in real time I should be in the air on the way to the Philippines. The big question then is, why ain’t I in the air, or well, maybe it is not such a big question after all the bad luck I have had around this trip. Soon after I finished writing the first part I went and refreshed my self and put my self in a good state which is always needed when you have to try to get people to bend some rules. Then I went up where all the check in action takes place and went to the Ethiad (my airline) ticket counter. They saw my tickets in the computer but said they couldn’t re-print them since I bought them through expedia.com (to hell with that crappy company, BEAWARE everybody, never ever buy anything through that company of evil!!!!). After being sent back and forth from incapable staff that never seemed to have the authority to do anything I got to speak to the executive manager on the phone while I had the station manager next to me. The station manager claimed that I had to buy new tickets and the liability was mine for not having the tickets. I claimed that under the new European laws on the right of airline passengers it was the liability of the issuer of the tickets that they reach the hands of the passenger, and that was the reason why everybody else used e-tickets.
Then when Expedia finally opened at 8:00 (my flight closed at 8:30) there started fierce negotiations where both sides insisted on that the other had the authority to issue new tickets for me (so Expedia said Ethiad had my money and should issue new tickets, and Expedia said Ethiad had to do it) finally a solution was reached at 8:45 and it looked that I could go, but no!! the damn plane had left the hatch and was on the runway, so sorry for me, no flight. Then another bizarre argument started, they said that since I “missed” the flight that was my responsibility and the tickets were lost and that I would not get a refund.
After threatening lawsuits on the airport (I got to speak to a PR person from the airport it self), Ethiad (for obstructing me on getting on board of a plane I had paid for and they had that knowledge and information in their systems) and Expedia for not fulfilling the agreement of the payment (which included the delivery of the tickets) they suddenly seemed to see that there was a way to change the tickets (I still have to pay a changing fee… well, you can´t win every battle), and then yet another luck came my way, there is no flight until 22nd or 23th… I will get to know tomorrow. So since of lack of money I cant even go into London again so I am living at the airport, it is actually an interesting study, living in an airport for 3 days… kind of mini experience of the movie Terminal. I went downstairs to my sofa and tried to get some sleep, 2 hours was all I got so the whole day I have been playing Risk and watching family guy. Except for two interesting people I just got to write about. As I was trying to sleep There was a guy behind me (our seats were back to back) and he started to sing, or singing is actually not the right word, started making sounds is a more accurate description. He started yelling “ohh, baby, I´ll be yours, I´ll be there for you girl, I love you so” this he repeated again and again, I thought he was singing to his girlfriend so I peaked through the seats as to see if this girl was worth waking me up for, and what did I see… A guy serenading his girlfriend, no, what I saw were two guys, except the girl would had been a professional body builder and ate steroids like Cheerio’s. I sat up to examin further because I thought he might be listening to a cd player, that would partly explain why he might be so horribly out of tune, but no, there he sat singing this to the air, while his friend turned on and of his phone with the irritating Ericson sound coming every 30 seconds… great… The other person I wanted to write about was a bit more, or actually a lot more pleasant, her name is Susan and she is around 65 years old, she and her husband were coming home from a cruise on the Nile, that is so incredibly cool, this is what I will be doing at 65, going to Egypt and just places I want to see. Susan comes from the island of Jersey, ringing any bells? No, not for me neither, she had to explain to me that Jersey is one of the Canal Islands, between France and England. Shame not to know that, I knew about the Canal Islands, even knew they were four, but that one was named Jersey… nope, not a clue. But she knew about Iceland and two years ago they red quite a lot about it when they were deciding between Jamaica and Iceland for their honeymoon, unfortunately they picked Jamaica, but she promised to consider Iceland again next year. That’s an update about this day, I will continue watching family guy and try to get some sleep this night, I have a meeting with Kevin (the Ethiad station manager) tomorrow at 11am and then I should get my flight times confirmed, I just hope I can go the 22. and not the 23rd, I just can’t stop thinking about all the things I am missing while I watch the time pass by slowly!!! I decided only to spend 15 pounds for those two days so it is one McDonalds each day (you don’t need more to eat when you sit on your ass the whole day) 4 pounds for internet so I can reply to the must urgent e-mails, and right now I bought a small beer, if I have ever deserved a beer in my life it is right now, so I end this update with a beer on one hand and under the theme song of Baywatch… I’ll be there, I’ll be there… I thought that was quite 90’s but apparently the people of London are still big fans.
Quick update now that it is 8 in the morning, I haven’t had the meeting with Ethiad people yet but something funny just happened, after a night of horribly little sleep I fell asleep around 3 and woke up at 6 due to traffic of people, not human trafficking but you know what I mean. Well I put on Coldplay and their familiar sound made me quite sleepy so as I was in some sort of a middle stage of sleep and wake somebody touched my shoulders, then again and with the words, excuse me sir. I opened my eyes half confused and saw two police officers, not the friendly street police officers but the bullet proof vested airport type, one of them had a dog that enjoyed sniffing my luggage. I noticed they didn’t have but a small handgun gun so I looked around and saw an officer with a semi-automatic rifle standing around 5 meters away looking intensely at me.
”Sir, the reason why we woke you up is that I noticed you have been here two nights, what are you doing at the airport?” J
I explained in a quick fashion and found out that the officer had just been from Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, so we talked about Abu Dhabi, Iceland and after a brave attempt in writing my address he gave me a receipt for their visit… so that I could prove to any other dog sniffing, semi-automatic maniacs that I am ok. After this they went along and started harassing some black people, and I say this without the slightest prejudges but the fact of the matter is that they stopped by 5 people me and four black people so I must wonder if the airport is giving me some serious tan. Around 5 minutes later a guy in a neon-yellow security vest (with the word security written on the back) sat like two seats away from me, he still sits there, I wonder if his job is to watch me, that would be awesome, well, if e wants to play the waiting game I’m up for it my flight should leave in 24 or 48 hours, if I can see it correctly he is doing Sodoku or Soduko or how ever you say it, the number brain twisters. I have started to grow weirdly familiar with the speaker system and their announcements, last night a guy named Ruis was supposed to be picked up by a representative from a company called Thermomax, they called for 3 times for the representative of Thermomax for Mr. Ruis. I wonder what happened to the poor chap.
These kind of announcements come around 5 times a day, then they call up a lot of people flying to Dubai, it’s always Mr. ??? or Ms.??? Travelling to Dubai, please come to the information desk.
The most common announcements however are the routine ones, played of the tape (I wonder if I could get a copy) my favourite is: “due to security reasons, do not leave your luggage unattended, unattended luggage will be removed and may be destroyed.”
It actually turned out to be quite nice pickup line, I needed to go to the toilet and didn’t want to pack all my stuff which I had spread over my sofa so I asked Sofie if she could attend to my luggage so that it will not be removed and may be destroyed, put a little drama into the word destroyed and it works fine. Well, enough of pickup line lesson which today is dedicated to a crazy Maltese girl, Becky.
So, now I continue writing this bizarre update… lady uck has not exactly been on my side this trip, o no, o no… As I wrote above I had a meeting with the Ethiad people at 11 o’clock, it started great, the transit that takes you between the north and south terminal (it’s a little train) broke down while I was in it (it is starting to be scary how unlucky I have been) and we sat stuck in there for around 10-15 minutes so when I finally got to the south terminal I was way to late (around 11:30) and the guy was gone for a break!! Since I didn’t have anything else to do I decided to wait, and so I waited until 12:05 or there about. He told me he had good and bad news, I asked for the good ones first, I really needed something to sooth my mind. “Well you will have a ticket” he said, I mean common, is that good news, he had already told me that the day before, it was a very stupid good news and I hoped that the bad news would be equally trivial.
”The bad news,” he continued, “ are that there is no flight tomorrow to Manila so your flight is not until the 23rd” Come on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that means I don’t arrive in the Philippines until the 24th in the evening… then I have missed 2 and a half day and 2 evenings… just because the fucking AIESEC UK couldn’t get my fucking tickets to Scott and Scott was to damn important to look into it.
Right now AIESEC UK, Expedia and Ethiad are not on my friendly list… An observation I made today while waiting for this man is that almost all airlines (including Ethiad) do not have a ground staff on the airports, the people that introduce them self to you as employers of Ethiad really are employers of large service units like Service Air, or Sky break, these companies train their employees to follow a standard textbook procedures which has resulted in the staff not knowing shit about the airline they “work” for, them not having the authority to do anything if people are not like customer A on page 4 in their manual. It is ridiculous that these service units, which were created to give passengers better service, are actually making things much more complicated. At least there should be a person at the place which has the authority to do something, and if that is not possible, at least have someone that has a clue about what he or she is doing. It would be like for the supermarkets (a job that most people look at as a job that needs no skills) only taught their employees to punch in the products and receive payment by card or money. What happens when someone wants to return something, what happens if a product is flawed, what happens if they ask for assistance to find something, what if they complain? Of course in the bigger supermarkets the employees do not have the authority to do all this, but at least they are told whom they should speak to in each of the above examples. The employees of these service units on the other hand do not have a slightest idea what the fuck they are doing or what they should do when a problem arises. Now I am not only talking about my example, there was a scene I witnessed while observing the people today that struck me as harsh and increased my dislike for these “service” units.
A field employee (just made that name up, she doesn’t work at a desk but walks around the check in area and helps people) brings this Ukrainian girl to the service desk and hands her over to a clerk, she asks the employee that brought her what was the Ukrainian girls problem, the field employee just makes a weird face shrugs her shoulders and walks away. The Ukraine girl was crying and asking “please, please, I need to get aboard” and the service clerk asks her about which plane, if she has tickets etc. and in short here is the deal, yesterday this girl missed her flight, she is studying in the UK but is from Ukraine, her mother was taken to a hospital 2 days ago and the girl had booked flight right away unfortunately se missed it and had to buy new tickets yesterday for the flight today, she stayed at the airport hotel (she could had stayed in the sofa next to me J) and when she arrived today, a hour before the flight she had to wait in the check in line for quite while, when she got there she was told that she needed printed tickets and she should get those from the service agent of her airline, then she had to find which of the service devils was working for her airline, when she got there the employee sent her away with a receipt of some sort, the girl went to the check in desk and surprise, surprise, this receipt was not what she was supposed to get and the check in desk was closing, apparently that ws the point where this poor girl started crying, she asked if they couldn’t let her in, she had bought the damn ticket the day before, but no, they sent her back to the service desk, she was accompanied by this field employee of which I told in the beginning of this little tail. When the girl had finished telling her story the clerk had no idea what to do, she started asking the other 3 clerks behind the desk, no one had an idea what they could do. “If the check in desk has closed then you have missed your flight, but you can buy ticket for tomorrow” the clerk suggested, this made the girl cry even more and she explained that she had no more money and that she needed to get to her mother as soon as possible, after a moment of confusion the clerk started making some phone calls and asking what she could do, after she finally acquired the knowledge she should have had from the beginning she did the first smart thing, she called the boarding gate, when she called they had just closed it, they gave her the number in the pilot pit and as she called there he told her that he would not wait (nota bene she did not explain to him the urgency, just said she had a late passenger wanting to get aboard). So they sent her away, without even a word of sympathy or a suggestion of a solution. So may all these “service” companies crash and burn. That’s it for now.
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Hey people, right now I should be in the air flying from United Arab Emerates to the Filippines, but I'm not, I'm stuck in London, when I get my laptop online I will publish the whole story.
How well do you know me?
So, I took the challange of my very good friend Rafael Despradel and created a quiz about my self (is that being self absorbed?) :)
So now people go to this link below and answer 10 questions about me, do you really know me???
Find out.
http://www01.quizyourfriends.com/yourquiz.php?quizname=060315223349-969519&&a=01
One more go
Once more I will make an attempt to write a blog, now in english so everybody can understand me, sorry guys, no spanish, Icelandic nor Indonesian blogs will appear, although once in a while you might see some frases etc.
I write this to keep my friends around the globe updated on what I am doing and where in the world I am located at each moment in time. There are several exciting things coming up in my life, in 3 days I will be leaving for APXPRO, in the Philippines, what an opportunity that is. I have to act like a little drama Oscar actress and thank AIESEC in Indonesia for this opportunity since I will be their delegate, and the Icelandic export council that pays the bill.
Speaking of AIESEC in Indonesia, that´s another very exciting chapter in my life that will start in late May, I will be moving to Indonesia for one year working in AIESEC Indonesia for a whole year.
I will be writing updates from there throughout the year, but that is it for now, I will try, with emphasis on try, to keep this updated regularly.
