Pollywogs!

So…I made it.

No free fucking wifi in any of the airports we went through : PAY at State College, PAY at Dulles, PAY at LAX…what the hell, is it 1996? Bandwidth costs like 0.001 cent per MB, and the equiment for the WiFi equipment is 1) cheap and 2) reliable. Bull shit. So, no blog from the airports…

I’m writing this from the Rydges Hotel in Auckland NZ. New Zealand has a little ‘tropical’ look to it…there are a lot of exotic trees mostly, and morning glorys seem to run rampant, in a very attractive way. The people have a charming and quirky ‘not-quite-british’ accent that sounds very friendly without the british formality. The hotel is nice, the first room they showed us was a suite, but I’m not shacking up with my parents. This double-sized bedroom is very clean and tastefully done, the comforter doesn’t make me dizzy looking at it (as American hotels love to use amazingly brash comforter paterns!). They have a little snack drawer and a minifridge stocked with beer and whatnot, $6NZ each (about $3US). Room service for a burger and fries is $15 (about $8 US). The prices are very reasonable for how posh it is. Maybe no one told them how badly you get raped in the US…

Speaking of getting raped in the US…its painfully obvious that US airlines blow goats. United is bankrupt (somehow) and the meal from WDC to LAX cost $5 in economy. Everything, except for soda, cost money. In Quantas, from LAX to Auckland, NOTHING cost money. Headsets, sleep socks, a sleep mask, a wide (like fucking Pay-per-view on steriods (I watched 40 Year Old Virgin again :)) range of movies, BEER, wine, dinner, snacks, coffee, tea, breakfast…all free. That flight wasn’t terribly more expensive than the one across the US…what are US companies doing wrong that foreign companies are doing right?

My flight across the country, I sat next to a producer of documentaries (among other things), Maria Berry with Wild Eyes Productions. It was a facinating way to spend the time, she had interviewed the leader of Hamas and the current president of Boliva (among others), seen and done many interesting things. She was coming back from WDC after sucessfully selling two new documentaries (Inside al Qaeda and Inside the Taliban, if I remember correctly!) to the National Geographic Channel. On my other side was a large Russian business man who didn’t wear deoderant…

My flight across the Pacific, I sat next to an engineer who works for SolidEdge, I guess represents the company in New Zealand. He was older and a native to New Zealand, pretty interesting to talk too.

I’m pretty beat. Spending 12 hours in economy blows. Trying to sleep, even with some Ativan in your system, is nearly impossible. I’m thinking I got a good six hours of heavy napping in. Everytime I’d get comfy, something would start hurting, feet, legs, head, back…sigh…

Getting into and out of countries is absurdly easy (at least as an obviously white male). I think they’re relaxing a lot of the draconian things they were doing. I didn’t see anyone getting a full body cavity search!

Well, I’m off. I haven’t brushed my teeth, done much of anything for over 24 hours. I have two days of downtime here (its Sat, 9AM…Sunday is a major holiday here, nothing going on till Monday morning!!!!).

My final blog entry. (I can’t tell if I am jinxing myself or not)

(aka Wed. afternoon open thread)

Kelley is on strict orders to wait at least 3 months to re-marry.

Nice that Immix uses GSM phones, and the V180 is a quadband. I’ll be able to get a prepaid card at a 7/11 in NZ and have basic communications.

We finally have a hard copy of an abridged version of our manual. It has taken so freaking long. (Imagine me speaking very slowly, deliberately, and with a feverish gleam in my eye while you read that last sentence…) No wiring chart, no schematics, no operating instructions beyond the PLC, no schedules, no FAQ…(sob)…Staples printed it, they did a reasonable job for $30 a piece I guess…

I need to find a converter in the airport, at least changing the plug. I’ll be traveling about 24 hours, 19 in the air, through State College to Washington, DC, to LAX, to Aukland, to Christchurch…and on the way back I get to do it by myself as my parents are having a one week layover in Hawaii…you know that show Amazing Race? It sums up everything I hate about traveling. If there is one thing I hate worse than horses, its probably traveling. Something about not knowing exactly where to go, what to do, how you are going to do it…makes my stomach do somersaults…I feel like I’m going to be playing the Amazing Race…

Its hard trying to shut down a business for two or three weeks. Its amazing how many loose ends you collect, how much you have to remember…its also sorta liberating, making a short list of ‘things I have to worry about when I get back’. Knowing I don’t have to think about them for two weeks at least is great…

I guess I’ve run out of nervous energy. Heading home soon to pack. Like I told Kel, the most dangerous place and time to fly is takeoffs and landings, especially with smaller airplanes and airports. Meh, knock on wood, let the good spirits out :) (and here I thought touch wood was just a dirty phrase that I found amusing as a teenager…)

Excuse me there for a second, the power went out, had to troubleshoot some shit…turns out my m0n0wall box (looks like something you’d find here) had a keyboard come loose, and I didn’t tell it ‘halt on no errors’ (meaning, fuck the keyboard), so I sat here on my thumb wondering why my internet didn’t work.

Ok thats it thats all he wrote!