Weird News Thread Part III

if you think about it it doesn't make a minute's difference. you still need to wait in the same line.

i don't mind tipping. but when you compare the work a waiter does for 10 bucks to what that bellboy did for 4 he had no reason to be upset with me imo.

I don't need to think about.....I've experienced it firsthand numerous times -- in fact, every time I fly -- and it's usually much faster in the skycap line. So yeah, it does make more than a few minutes difference in my experience.

well, if there's a different skycap line... the only time i had my bags taken by one he just deposited them in an area where i had to go get them myself when my turn at the counter came. i considered it the biggest ripoff i had every experienced in an airport and i once bought a book from a hare krishna just so he would leave me alone.

in any case, these days with print-at-home tickets, self check-in and suitcases with wheels airports have become fairly painless.

Strange. That's absolutely a different experience than I've ever had in any skycap line at any airport in the U.S. I've ever traveled through.

like i said, this was not even a skycap "line". it was a good long time ago too. and it was in newark which has to be (or was at that time) probably the worst airport i've ever been through and that includes khartoum.

i've never minded tipping in the states per se, since i was a waiter for a long time i both appreciated it then and understand it now. in france too waiters get a %... it's just that it's calculated out of the addition by the restaurant instead of being added at the discretion of the customer.

in a larger sense i find something, if not devious at least unpalatable about so many things in general being "add-ons" in the states. at the airport: you want faster check-in, you pay for preferential service. in the plane, everything except an inedible sandwich and tap water costs money... (and at deux magots prices). service at restaurants? over and above.

sales tax? over and above. of course sales tax is even higher in france, but at least it's up front.

tipping can be confusing too. tourists ask questions that seem silly to americans but are understandable really. you tip a cabbie. should you tip a bus driver? in a restaurant you tip... but at mcdonald's? no? then why do you tip at starbucks?

and that led me to find something else wierdnewsy : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/starbucks-faces-lawsuit-o_n_833748.html

which is another element of the american way of life others find bewildering: the categorical imperative to sue someone whenever anything goes wrong... and its cynical auxiliary of suing not on grounds of responsibility but of profitability.

Been to JFK international. Still nowhere near as bad as Miami's.

hmmm... yes, notwithstanding the old TWA terminal, JFK isn't very nice. first of all it's got that PA grot. second, it leaves too much place for the motorcar, which is ironic. but when i used to go transat fairly often newark was still the worst, with connexions between terminals by buses that never seemed to work on any schedule, they just waited until they were full to about 150% of capacity and then drove off.

sales tax in the states isn't exactly "hidden", all the locals know just what to expect, but it would be clearer for others if all prices on the shelves included it, and there's no technical reason not to. it's just psychological.

airports in general are never nice. how can they be? though i will give honorable mention to CDG, cincinnati and SFO.

dublin? pleasant? this is another dublin that the dublin in ireland i take it? not dublin DUB dublin?

for arriving it's great, you're outta there in a hurry i'll grant. but for departures... between 90 minutes in DUB and 90 minutes in the dentist chair my mind's made up. never mind the novocaine doc, i'm a man, i can take it.

the problem being that there are 20,000 of those spetsnaz guys already living in the US, just biding their time until obama says the word for them to crush our (well, your) freedoms under heel.

Holy mother of hell, Miami is for shit. The one thing they do have right, though, is the immigration line.