Travel China and Beyond

Travel Problems — Airline issues

So, this past week I was supposed to fly (with my family) from New York (JFK airport)  — to London Heathrow — to Sofia Bulgaria.  Usually that is a relatively uneventful flight with one connection which was supposed to be a relatively comfortable 1hr 50 minute layover…..Little that we knew.  We arrived at JFK (on another flight) 3 hours before the flight to London.  We had plenty of time so I decided that we can spend a good portion of the time in the Admiral’s Club.  At the appropriate time (35 minutes before the 6:10 pm flight) we showed up at the gate to find that the aircraft was being serviced, then the “service” became repair —> and soon enough we were told that the aircraft was not operational until repaired.  Of course we immediately started seeing a BIG issue looming — we were about to miss our connecting flight from London to Sofia.

The big deal about that is the fact that there is only ONE (direct) flight from London to Sofia per day (early morning one).  So I rushed to the Admiral’s club to see what our options are.  After checking with the helpful agents there we determined that we are essentially not in luck.  No way to switch to another flight as American Airlines will not pull our luggage from the aircraft as it was already loaded on our flight.

There were 3 other flights leaving from JFK to London between 6:10 and 9:20, but we were not going to get on either one of them — for one reason only — the check in luggage can not be taken off the plane we were supposed to be on.

So we had to look into all sort of options but unless our flight was cancelled and luggage unloaded we were not supposed to do anything but WAIT.    Very frustrating…The other flights had open seats and we could have even made our connecting flight have we been able to get our luggage and get on the 6:30pm flight…. I do not understand why the luggage rules are so inflexible!

Now, we had to wait till 10:30pm and finally boarded around 11:00 pm and the plane took off at 11:30 pm — 5+ hours late.  So we missed the connecting flight, were able to get our self on a Lufthansa flight and will let you know what the next ordeals were —- can you spell “missing luggage”….?  More to follow…

Starbucks and the Forbidden City — Take II

Well, just when we thought that the noise around Starbucks’ presence in the Forbidden City is going down, the “unthinkable” happened — the famous coffee shop is out… Earlier in the year (in January I posted about the controversy that was brewing up in Chinese papers and TV — here is the posting

Accoding to Seattle Times, Starbucks is closing its outlet in the Forbidden City. “So what?” you may say — well, I think it is a big deal — put enough noise and nationalistic spin on an issue and you may achieve what you were seeking… Question is what is next? Get a tea house in its place? May be it will be more appropriate, but then will that match the original courtyard? No! Nothing will match the original courtyard. It is gone. So, if you wanted to have your picture taken with the Starbucks logo in the Imperial Palace, too bad - you missed your chance.

If you would like to read some more on the impacts of cultural differences around the world you may want to check out this book: Understanding the Cultural Landscape

Are you willing to give VoIP and Skype a try…

Have you tried Skype yet? If you have not than may be you have been in a corner of the world, where the Web does not reach or you are completely oblivious to all the noise VoIP has created over the last several years. At any rate, I thought I should provide some (at least minimal) information on using VoIP in China for those of you who may be planning a trip or relocation to this country.

Over the last 2 years I have used both Vonage (yes, I brought my Vonage Linksys router with 2 phone ports from the States when I moved to Beijing), and Skype. I used that service for almost 2 years until I started testing Skype (testing is a bit of an overstatement I started trying it) and was happy to find its quality good. (I will write about some of the problems I had to resolve to make Vonage work in a separate posting)

Having used Skype with my laptops (both Apple iBook, Dell Latitude, and HP laptop) I decided to take the plunge and buy a Skype phone. The product I purchased is shown here: As you can tell it is a Linksys basestation and cordless phone.  At any rate, the product works fine — I have been using it for 4 days now.  So, if you want to get on with the “program” and start using this new technology, give it a try — you can always go back to the traditional wireline phone….Let me know if you have questions