The flight home.
As was to be expected, my bags were too heavy (Air Canada used to give you a 32kg limit, now it's a 23kg limit, and the ability to pay for up to 32kg). To make it even better, security scanned both my bags but didn't properly tag one of them.
Okay... that last statement needs a bit of an explanation. India takes baggage screening differently than we do here. Instead of bringing the bag to the check in desk, and handing it over, you have to take it to a security scanner. They run the bag through an X-ray machine with you standing there. If you pass the screening, they wrap a chord around the bag, which supposedly prevents the bag from being opened and shows that you got through security. With some bags they put a sticker over the zipper to prevent you from opening it without breaking the seal on the bag. That's what they did to my suitcase, but the Air Canada people wanted the band around the bag too. So off I went to get the bag rescanned (security wouldn't let me hop the line to fix their mistake either... they told me that they didn't care that they missed banding the bag, they said it was my fault for not demanding the bag be banded earlier), and then back to the check in desk, where they gave me my boarding card and sent me through to immigration. (while checking out my hand baggage they failed to find the waiter's corkscrew that someone from Argentina gave me at the conference... the Swiss also missed it).
The family in front of me had the typical traveling baby. The child was temperamental, and didn't want to be there. The kid would cry, the father would pick the child up, and magically the crying would stop. If the child was put down the crying would start again. 45 minutes later, I was less than impressed that the family was getting on my flight.
Despite having a direct flight to Delhi, I couldn't get one back. Apparently, after an initial surge of interest, Air Canada realised that it couldn't fill an Airbus A340 to Delhi with the high fuel costs, so they've got the flight going to Zurich, so that they can combine the passenger load with the Zurich Toronto run. This results in a longer flight time, plus a 3 hour layover in Zurich (which is not a low cost place if you want to buy a bite to eat). I had some fiends before the flight started, and made some more in Zurich. Single serving friends are always nice to have. We had to leave the plane in Zurich and take all our carry-on off the plane with us... then they scanned my bag and missed the corkscrew again. In all honesty, with the amount of stuff in my bag the fact that they didn't see a corkscrew on the X-ray machine wasn't that surprising.
Neither leg of the flight was particularly full (although Zurich to Toronto was a bit busier), so I was able to occupy two seats (window and aisle) in an emergency exit row where the arm rest was movable. It was easily one of the most comfortable flights that I have been on as a result. By the end of the flight, I was feeling better than I thought that I would have.
Now come the more difficulty thing to do. I have a couple of thousand photos to sort through. I don't think that I'll be doing that in the next few weeks, as the priorities will be getting the office stuff under control, packing and then moving. I'll probably get my desktop computer working again some time soon, and will probably look at getting a decent sized LCD monitor so that I can start the photo review process. I'll get some photos up here, and in my gallery too. But I was thinking about trying to do an album of sorts so that I can actually have a paper based set of memories so that when people want to see the photos I don't have to start up a computer.
The next challenge for me is the move. I'll do some house photos for before and after so you might see some ranting about that type of stuff coming up here in the next little while.
dilip
Okay... that last statement needs a bit of an explanation. India takes baggage screening differently than we do here. Instead of bringing the bag to the check in desk, and handing it over, you have to take it to a security scanner. They run the bag through an X-ray machine with you standing there. If you pass the screening, they wrap a chord around the bag, which supposedly prevents the bag from being opened and shows that you got through security. With some bags they put a sticker over the zipper to prevent you from opening it without breaking the seal on the bag. That's what they did to my suitcase, but the Air Canada people wanted the band around the bag too. So off I went to get the bag rescanned (security wouldn't let me hop the line to fix their mistake either... they told me that they didn't care that they missed banding the bag, they said it was my fault for not demanding the bag be banded earlier), and then back to the check in desk, where they gave me my boarding card and sent me through to immigration. (while checking out my hand baggage they failed to find the waiter's corkscrew that someone from Argentina gave me at the conference... the Swiss also missed it).
The family in front of me had the typical traveling baby. The child was temperamental, and didn't want to be there. The kid would cry, the father would pick the child up, and magically the crying would stop. If the child was put down the crying would start again. 45 minutes later, I was less than impressed that the family was getting on my flight.
Despite having a direct flight to Delhi, I couldn't get one back. Apparently, after an initial surge of interest, Air Canada realised that it couldn't fill an Airbus A340 to Delhi with the high fuel costs, so they've got the flight going to Zurich, so that they can combine the passenger load with the Zurich Toronto run. This results in a longer flight time, plus a 3 hour layover in Zurich (which is not a low cost place if you want to buy a bite to eat). I had some fiends before the flight started, and made some more in Zurich. Single serving friends are always nice to have. We had to leave the plane in Zurich and take all our carry-on off the plane with us... then they scanned my bag and missed the corkscrew again. In all honesty, with the amount of stuff in my bag the fact that they didn't see a corkscrew on the X-ray machine wasn't that surprising.
Neither leg of the flight was particularly full (although Zurich to Toronto was a bit busier), so I was able to occupy two seats (window and aisle) in an emergency exit row where the arm rest was movable. It was easily one of the most comfortable flights that I have been on as a result. By the end of the flight, I was feeling better than I thought that I would have.
Now come the more difficulty thing to do. I have a couple of thousand photos to sort through. I don't think that I'll be doing that in the next few weeks, as the priorities will be getting the office stuff under control, packing and then moving. I'll probably get my desktop computer working again some time soon, and will probably look at getting a decent sized LCD monitor so that I can start the photo review process. I'll get some photos up here, and in my gallery too. But I was thinking about trying to do an album of sorts so that I can actually have a paper based set of memories so that when people want to see the photos I don't have to start up a computer.
The next challenge for me is the move. I'll do some house photos for before and after so you might see some ranting about that type of stuff coming up here in the next little while.
dilip
posted by Dilip Andrade at
4:33 p.m.
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