Holiday...

Back in the saddle, as they say, after a rather pleasant, albeit, rather warm trip to Dubai.  For any interested we stayed in the Royal Mirage Dubai Residence and Spa which was rather nice.  Fantastic boutique hotel section of a larger complex, great food, amazing service, lovel pool.  It was, however, really far far far too hot.  Which would explain the deal we got on the holiday.  The worst being the day we arrived and the day before we left when they peaked at 45C and 75% humidity.

Dubai itself is an interesting case, take, for example, Ski Dubai, a massive indoor ski resort.  They are also talking about an underwater hotel and they are currently building the world's tallest building - they won't say how tall yet, just in case they need to add another 50 floors during consctruction.  It will be over 700M.

We had dinner with Iman, a friend of M's from her MBA.  That was quite interesting; very interesting to see how the native Dubai locals live.  There aren't that many of them; over 80% of the population is made up of guest workers!  She had something of a rant about lazy local men and how incompetent they are.  All very interesting coming from a relatively strict Muslim woman.

Anyway, I've done my first cut of the several hundred emails, and I've prioritised the most urgent fires to fight.  Same old, same old; trouble in Taiwan, political problems in the US between managers, a fight in Sweden...  *sigh* In my next career I think I'll work for the UN...

 

Simpler? My Arse...

How to lose friends and influence customers...  BA appear to be having a slight problem with the concept of customers:
British Airways - New simpler baggage policies

On the face of it, as they spin this on the website and on the emails they sent to the rest of us Exec Club members, this looks fine.  The devil, as they say, is in the detail.  For 90% of the travel that I do this will actually be an improvement.  I have a single carry on case that fits in the overhead locker, and I can lift 20kgs over my head.  The challenge is for the odd long trip where I'll check hold bags.  The simple fact of the matter is that 23kgs isn't a huge amount for a hold bag, especially if you have 3 pairs of my size 12 shoes in the bag - I'm not kidding but they alone can weigh in at 6kgs, add some books and you're in trouble. 

Again, for the average economy passenger, this would not be a problem - in economy, frankly, you live with it.  If, however, you're a premium passenger (World Traveller+, Club or First) you are going to be pretty miffed at paying up to 10 times what those in the back are paying and getting treated the same.  Besides, nobody at the front of the plane has a problem checking in anyway, so the delays are minimal due to baggage.

Finally, typcially, you change onto another plane or airline at some point in a long journey.  Some airlines don't let you check 2 bags withour charging excess - so I can see this being deeply unpopular with the rest of the One World Alliance.

While it is true that some of this, the 23kg limit, is being impossed by BAA and isn't actually all that unreasonable - the limit on 2 pieces of baggage is, especially for your top paying customers.

This is going to be a chatter for problems at check in and for the flight crew dealling with really pissed off important passengers, and, I suspect there's going to be a lot of people walking to Virgin and others, especially now some of the US carriers are upgrading their Transatlantic products.

And, another thing, a note to Mr Timms, the CSD on my return flight.  Do not, please, in future, start arguing with customers about the inflight entertainment system falling apart.  It is common, and yes, there are unavailable/worn/stretched movies on every single one of the flights I've taken with BA over the last 3 years; yes, the inseat power was broken in the same seats in World Trav+ on 4 consequetive Seattle flights last year; yes, I have heard that BA are going over to Video on Demand and, believe it or not, I do know a fair amount about aircraft engineering...

At least he had the decency to look embarrassed after his, "but you still keep coming back sir!" remark when I pointed out that BA are the only direct airline to Seattle and have something of a captive market on that route.

Yes, I will continue to use BA - but clowns like this and the clowns who have come up with the new baggage policy make it hard sometimes.

*sigh*

An annoying end to the holiday, at least we were in Club (bought and paid for on airmiles) and not in the child zone at the back of the aircraft - thank heavens for noise cancelling headphones...

Go West!

I have been told I should have a job offer by next week. I had better finish the Visa Application.

Books Wot I Read

Productive holiday on the book front:

Spin State - Chris Moriaty: Hmmm...  didn't work for me.  Some good SF and Chrome let down by what I call the "future is the same as now only with the tech I need for my story" syndrome, which just pisses me off.  Also, other peeves; a mining colony with the IRA, everbody using Imperial measures even the hyper clever AI and baseball as the main sport people talk about (even on the aforementioned Irish colony world).  Poor. 3/10

Cruicible and Crossfire - Nancy Kress:  Good fun, not a challenging read but an interesting way of looking at a relativisitic war.  Similar to Karen Traviss but worth a look. 6.5/10

The Time Traveller's Wife - only just got around to this.  Saw the denouement coming from a mile off, but generally not bad at all. 7/10

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco: I like reading Eco's stuff but I'm never entirely sure why.  This was interesting, but not one of his best.  It certainly didn't have the strength of plot or narrative of Name of the Rose or Foucault's Pendulum. Still interesting to read a perspective of Italy before and during WW2. 7/10

Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis: Interesting view of 1980s bond market from a Solomans trader.  Particularly interesting was the history of the Mortage Bond market which they pretty much created from scratch in the mid-80s.  Worth a read. 8/10

The Man from the Diogenes Club - Kim Newman: Really excellent collection of short stories and novellas in the general theme of The Avengers or Jason King.  Some great supernatural stories here, much better than a lot of Kim's other work. 9/10

I haven't finished Luna Park - Bret Easton Ellis yet.

Writing...

I have been playing with some writing for a while now.  I've had a trilogy in various states of repair for almost a decade but real life does keep getting in the way.  What I had was the last book written in first draft, which could be described as Victoria Steam Punk in a post-human universe; then I had the second book which exists as a novella which did get published in the small press in the late 90s (second book, big space opera), then the real problem was the first book which was near future techno thriller.

I got caught and basically stuck in 2002 trying to structure this last one.  On which the next 2 hang.  Finishing off them without having this right would be a pain and, while they stand alone, I'd like to get it all packaged together.

I worked out on the plane home how I think the structure should work.  The problem was I wanted to convey the story in ever narrower time segments to suggest a compression of events over a period of 10 years or so.

I think I cracked it on the flight home.  I'll come back to it soon and see.  If so, I might post some bits up on a separate journal, if people are interested.

Broadcast Troubles

Had a nightmare with the Media Centre while we were on holiday and again, last night, trying to fix it. It was having real trouble with certain channels, in particular the same batch from Crystal Palace on similar frequencies.

I'm wondering if there have been some problems there with their DVB-T broadcast recently. Anybody else having bad digital TV judder over the last week?

House Keeping Stuff

First cut of the emails complete. Nothing serious, but some gapping omissions which need to be chased.

Got somebody amazingly able at BA to help change an airmiles flight for October in SA. We're off to Ms dad's 80th birthday but had a return sector with an 8 hour stop in Jo'burg, now we're flying the day before and spending the night with Steven and Luka, Ms friends, Steven owns one of Jo'burgs premier nightclubs and has invited us as his VIP guests. That should be different. Whenever Steven is in London he takes M to concerts and then insists that I have to meet him to remind me just how gay he is. Should be cool.

I've also decided to get a back up to the Media Centre for TV purposes, especially, as I suspect, the transmitter at Crystal Palace is a problem at the moment. We have a Sky+ box installed at the flat which was left by the previous owner. I fired it up this morning and found it working but to get the Freeview channels I need a Smartcard. A helpful person at Sky sold me one for £20, I suspect I could have found a hack but I can't be arsed. So, from Friday we'll have a dual tuner Sky+ box with Freeview AND the Media Centre. In theory that means I can record up to 4 things I won't have time to watch at the same time.

Cool eh?

Oh, and in other news; GBH is being rerun! Yay! Fornicate! Fornicate!

Off Again...

Looks like I'll be in Seattle next week, Sunday night through Wednesday.

I'll confirm tomorrow.