Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Some love for the airline industry

Not to all of it, mind you. I do still have the fresh memory of being thrown under the bus by American a few months back...but Southwest Airlines deserves a bit of friendly affection, in my humble opinion.

Amar surprised me for our 2nd anniversary and booked a trip to one of my favorite places in the world: Yosemite. Actually, we stayed a little South of the park, down in Mammoth Lakes, also beautiful! More on that, with pictures, later this week.

But back to the travel - we had to fly through Las Vegas and then to Reno to get there, and the first leg of the trip was pretty smooth. No delays, no crazy passengers, no missing bags. All in all, a good experience.

The return trip, however, was not as smooth. For some weather-related reasons, all of Las Vegas was shut down in regards to air travel. So our flight out of Reno was delayed, but we didn't know this until we boarded the plane.

Now, I'm not a super-frequent flyer, but I know that when the Captain comes out to make an announcement while you're still at the gate, something is up.

And something was indeed up.

He calmly, intelligently, rationally and compassionately explained to us that we would not be leaving anytime soon, and that we needed to deplane. On any other airline, they would have 1) just kept delaying the flight and refusing to tell you why, all while forcing you to stay seated in a grimy waiting area or 2) done something else equally awful.

Anyhow, they kindly asked us to head back out to the gate and to stay close, since we could literally need to board the plane at any moment.

About an hour later, while I was happily re-reading some Harry Potter (catching up on book 6 before the [now delayed!] movie comes out next year), when they asked us to line up again, based on the honor system (since they already had our boarding passes). We lined up, in order, and waited. We waited for about 5 minutes before they came back on the loud speaker to announce yet another delay.

About 30 minutes later, they came back on the PA system and said, "Folks, we've been cleared for takeoff. If you can board this plane in 15 minutes, we'll be good to go." And then it happened: that sense of camaraderie among the group. We banded together, boarded quickly (since we all had something at stake) and made it to the friendly skies over Las Vegas all in about 20 minutes.

Kudos, Southwest. You handled that well. At no point did I feel like a cow in a herd of nameless cattle. At no point were any of the flight attendants gruff or impatient with us, even when a rather large, rather tipsy many pointed at us and yelled "THEY TOOK MY SEAT"*. You kindly handed him his seat belt extender and asked him to find another seat. And you didn't even charge me for a blanket (take that, JetBlue!).


*It was on the honor system, buddy. If you had a business select number, but you chose to down another glass of wine rather than board with the business select folks, you missed your chance. The honor system was for boarding order only, not for seat saving. This is not the 4th grade, and I didn't hear anyone chanting "same seats, same places, same people, same faces" like we used to do in elementary school. So I hope you enjoyed your flight at the "back of the bus" as you like to call it. We certainly enjoyed ours at the front!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

New specs

I got glasses for the first time in 4th grade.

Due to the benevolence of my parents, I quickly upgraded to contacts in 6th grade and have been wearing them ever since.

My "backup" glasses have been the same since about Jr. High, and as you can imagine, were just a little bit out of date. Out of style, most definitely, but also very lacking in actually helping me to see anything, since my prescription has changed about 10 times since then.

That all changed last weekend. Amar and I went to get some new glasses and they just came in yesterday.

If you'd like to see the latest self-portrait, click here.

Really, I'm just trying to phase them in a bit. Since I can actually use them to see things now, I might start wearing them out in public every now and then. Brace yourselves, and thanks in advance for your support!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Happy Anniversary



It's been a wonderful 2 years...

Monday, August 11, 2008

Shout-out to the Indians out there



So I was giving Amar a hard time the other day about the seeming absence of any Indian presence for any Olympic sports. I wasn't aware at the time, but the country had yet to win any gold medals in any individual sport. Ever.

My argument:
There are over 1 billion people in the entire country. Out of that huge number of potential athletes, there have got to be at least a few people that are outstanding in various sporting events.

Anyhow, it seemed like such a loss to me that India wasn't well represented athletically....until recently.

Abhinav Bindra just won India's first individual gold. Sure, it was in men's 10m air rifle, but a gold medal is a gold medal.

So congrats, India. I know the resident Indian in my house was mighty proud!