The climate to travel

Would I have caused it ?

Does my weekly commute also contribute to this global-warming phenomenon ?

If so, then I will now do something very un-PC: I'm going to Enjoy a wee moment sitting in the sun on Quayside or Millenium-bridge to enjoy the weather.

I sometimes sit there till the sun sets...
Possibly reading or tweaking on my lappy for an article, a report or a bloggie, sometimes just feeling lucky while I still can.




Click on the "My View" link to the right, and see if you can spot me ...

Have a Good Day!

chocolate and jets

Chocolate, because everyone came back from Easter with a craving for more choccies. If you want to benefit from quality-chocolate regularly, join Hotelchocolat.co.uk. They have chocolate in many styles and flavours and will take your money to put gifts together for every occasion you fancy.





Or just ask someone who commutes to Belgium to bring you some supplies. It can be Intense and Sensational.







And Jets. My commute to work is hugely inconvenienced by the new flight-schedules introduced by my current carrier. NetJets.com would solve a lot of the hassle.

Jokes and sponsors

This should become the meta-page for jokes and funny-links. Jokes will attract traffic, which will make the sponsoros happy.

Chris started it: he sent me a mail recently requesting to put jokes on the blog. I'll gladly oblidge. His first suggestion was very appropriate for Newcastle: it was a beer joke.

But as this blog is either about Travel (fun) or about my professional life (should also have a large fun-component), I'll try to limit the jokes to topics related to Travel.

More Jokes and Suggestion welcome.





Beer turns you into a Woman!

Last month, scientists released the results of a recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer. Men should take a concerned look at their beer
consumption.

The theory is that beer contains female hormones (hops contain phytoestrogens) and that by drinking enough beer, men turn into women.

To test the theory, 100 men drank 8 pints of beer each within a 1 hour period. It was then observed that 100% of the test subjects:

1) Argued over nothing.
2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong.
3) Gained weight.
4) Talked excessively without making sense.
5) Became overly emotional.
6) Couldn't drive.
7) Failed to think rationally
8) Had to sit down while urinating.

No further testing was considered necessary.

Note by PdV: did they do a comparison-test by having 100 other men drink water ? or red wine ?


The next two jokes are shamelessly stolen from Mr Cockrane.

The Parrot
A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity. John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary.
Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.

John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the Bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The Parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behaviour." John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behaviour, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

Maxims for the Internet Age

Home is where you hang your @

The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail

Speak softly and carry a cellular phone

Too many clicks spoil the browse

The geek shall inherit the earth

What boots up must come down

Virtual reality is its own reward

A user and his leisure time are soon parted

There's no place like http://www.home.com

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks

Dunes, Wind, Sand, Beaches

The past weekend was spent on a family reunion and a visit to my roots.

We hit the area before the Easter holiday rush had started, and it was lovely, quiet, and very relaxing. Get an impression of the scenery Here

A recommended Break or Holiday destination. But to really benefit from it: Avoid the peak-times.

Plans and more Links

The Plan for next three months is now approved, and all bookings are confirmed.

Work-wise, this week is a Quiet-ish. Waiting for rollout of a new version, but that seems to stall a bit.

That gives me time to do some research for an upcoming paper in Edinburgh for the Miracle Scotland Database Forum.





And Luckily, I have Chris sitting opposite and we can exchange jokes. Chris just "queried" the blog. We can link to one-another. His links are Here.

Huh ? Wow!

And we also had good laughs at these guys.

I should also really be doing my expenses. Sigh.

Bookings, Savings...

Our travel agent sends out an email for each itinarary or each booking.

Normally, I just open the "travel" folder in the mail, and from the mail-subjects I know when and where to go.

The mail doesnt contain the exact intinarary, however. It contains a weblink to the page with the complete details. The mail alone is therefore not enough. That is normally only a minor problem: just connect to the internet, type the relevant data in www.viewtrip.com, and presto.

Not so for April, May and June.

For starters, I seem to have very little mails for the coming weeks. Did I forget to request the bookings ? Bank-holiday-confusion again ?

But it gets worse:
I click on all the links, nothing makes sense. From some trips I dont seem to return, or leave. How do I get from Helsinki to Leeds ?

Help - When/where am I supposed to go ?

I puzzle through all the mails, I start making notes, and end up composing a calendar in my own spreadsheet. For starters, I only got half the number of expected mails. And most of the mails have a title that is off by 1 week from the
actual reservation inside (click, surprise: other dates pop-up..???).


Confusion.

Travel-agency is understaffed and overworked, so phone-hell awaits. When I finally get to a person (a very friendly one, but audibly busy), she explains: It is not the fault of the agent (do I care?) It is the consequence of a demand by my employers' bookkeepers. They have tried to get cheaper deals on "combined bookings" (I care even less, but I can sense trouble).

But the combined-bookings have failed in one of the systems, and had to be re-done (Now I care - I feel sorry for her, she had to do all this work, and she has explained this Many, Many, Many times).

As a result, in my emails, I only get to see half the data. It is a known problem, and she will send me new, complete, mails for every itinarary by COB (now I care: we are moving towards resolution).

At my insistant request, she did verify (and sort-of-convinced me) that my bookings were all (re-)done as planned and requested (I care a lot!). I should be ok for seats. It is just the email-notification that hasnt come through yet.

Moral of the Rant: Penny wise and pound foolish !

This has kept several people quite busy for several hours each:

- The bookkeeper to come up with the idea (he probably had to get it reviewed, risk-analyzed, and approved by various manager too. They all mean well, they are just pointed towards the wrong problems. Consider applying that brainpower to knitting tea-cosies for charity. It might cause less damage).

- The ladies at the agent who had to do and re-do my bookings.

- The IT-jockeys at the travelagent who build and later fixed the systems, not to mention the semi-automatic mails.

- Myself, in major panic for two hours, afraid to be marooned in an inhospitable climate.

- The ladies at the agent, again, when they had to explain it all to me (and 420 others?), and who then had to double check everything to get me (only half) convinced that it is all OK now. Maybe others would be more trusting, I'm just a suspicious bugger.

- Most Important: My friendly assistant who though the whole plan was done and dusted, but who will now recieve 13+ more semi-automatic emails to file away. I've already tried to explain it in an email, but I can sense a follow up by phone, and a box of choccies (hm, that box of choccies would have been done anyway).

I'm still awaiting the mails with new confirmations though.


On a more positive note: It was a Beautiful Day today.

Trains - Need a newspaper

Yiihaaa. This cowboy is riding again. Trains, that is.

(insert picture of romantic Western Train ... nah, too lazy)

Sunny. Crisp weather. Smell of spring.
The gentle clickety-rolling of wheels on the pavement.
The comfortable feeling of my Trusted Tumi-trolley handle in my hand,
the gentle hugging of the laptop-backpack on my right shoulder.
The familiar noises and smells of the messy real-world-crowd of train stations.

The only discomfort is the visibility of the mobile-screen: I like to know who's calling before answering. Mental note: increase brightness - screw battery-life.

The Train-parts of the journeys may be less glamourous, but trains and stations feels less sterile then planes and airports. This is much more "real world". And the seats are more comfortable then on planes. More breathing space, more fresh (?) air. There are less queueing moments (even at Eurostar), and more thinking/working opportunities (especially at Eurostar).

Note when I finally got to internet: If trains get cancelled, you can generally take the next one. My flight got cancelled, and I ended up in the wrong city. Oh well: nice trainride ahead tomorrow. More time to think.

I'm Grateful for the thinking-time. Short hops, or Cattle-class long-hauls flight are not a good place to think, as I could find out again last week. And I have a lot of stuff from the last weeks to catch up on, and a lot of notes that still need action, despite two days of pretending-to-work-from-home-ptr.

Minor Niggle: This afternoon, I forgot to bring a newspaper.
Not to read.
I'm reading/writing on my lappy most of the time.
I need the paper to kick off my shoes and put my feet on the opposite seat.
True Cowboy Style.