Techie was stung by a wasp, held overnight by Chinese police, then trapped in a 13-hour meeting Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column that shares your tech support stories. This week we're taking a detour into tech sales, courtesy of a reader we'll Regomize as "Carson," whose employer sent him to China without first securing a visa. The adventure began when a colleague called with a …
Worked for an American software company who had a dev site in India. Our new, 6ft 4in, US VP of Development crammed himself into cattle class for the 8hr flight to India. Unfortunately, on landing, he was told he had the wrong visa, so he had to recram himself back into cattle class for another 8 hrs of torture. After that, he let corporate organise all his travel.
Having a visa issue in reverse, I was flying with some colleagues for a short work trip to the continent which was only going to be 3 days. One of those colleagues is not British but Indian and had to get a visa owing to his nationality. He was initially told by the consulate that he was ineligible for the short stay Schengen visa. Totally bemused as to why he informed the boss that he couldn’t go on the trip. Then he was told a day later that he was fine and to go back to the consulate. No explanation was ever offered for the reason he was initially declined nor why he was then cleared. We had visited two clients who were close to each other and had hospitality from both. The second one had taken us to very good restaurant in the city and I said I’d happily eat there again. We got to the airport at 6pm for an 8:30pm flight and then at 7pm a slow moving thunderstorm hit the airport. Our aircraft circled around for about an hour before diverting to another city a long way away. We had visited various of the airport food outlets and not found anything very appealing nor appetising.
Whilst this was happening another thunderstorm had rolled in on the heels of the last one and the airport closed again. Contacted the boss who said come in at 10:30 tomorrow and get some sleep when you get back. Eventually we each bought something that would keep us going and waited for the flight to land. I checked and our plane had not moved which was a worry, given it was now 10pm. I said to my two other colleagues that if I’d known this would happen I’d have gone back into the city and to that restaurant. At least I’d have had a decent meal out of the night when one of the others said that would be well over the expenses limit. I said I’d happily pay myself rather than eat a dried out pizza. Eventually the plane did start to move but it was much later and eventually landed with us at 12:45am. We didn’t take off until 1:30am and arrived back at Gatwick around 2:30am. Even though I knew that the company would cover the cost of a cab, I did not fancy a long cab ride home. So instead I walked to one of the airport hotels got a room at my own expense and collapsed into bed. The others did take a cab each and owing to overnight roadworks and the closing of a section of the the M25 etc. didn’t get home until around 5am. I managed around 7hrs sleep before getting the train back to London, the others not so much given it took them both around an hour to get to work.
Back in the 1980’s, I was working in the UK manufacturing arm of a large US oilfield services company. My boss used to get annoyed when I always insisted on checking I had the correct documentation when travelling overseas. But I never had any immigration issues. He, on the other hand, once flew to one of the Middle Eastern countries and, on arrival, was escorted straight to a plane back to the UK because of a missing visa.
Mind you, that wasn’t his greatest faux pas. On one trip to Saudi Arabia (for a contract meeting) he was asked to take an urgently needed tool in his personal luggage. It was a free-fall plug (something dropped into oil well tubing to seal against a ring and allow applied pressure activate a valve). When asked to declare anything in his luggage on arrival, he blurted out the common name for the tool. It’s aerodynamically shaped, pointed at the front with four small fins at the back - hence its common name: a bomb. He never did say quite what happened after that, but he returned to the UK a few days later and never allowed back into that region.
A friend was asked at a Spanish-Moroccan border customs if she had any "chocolate" with her. Being a sweet tooth she said she did, only the find herself locked in a small room, surrounded by four female police officers, and stripped down to underwear, while they insisted she'd confess where she hid her stash of drugs. Why the hell did the police think everyone should be aware of local slang for hashish is anyone's guess.
A British ex-colleague of mine was driving through the Channel Tunnel some 20 years ago. On leaving the UK, the customs officer pointed to a guitar case on his passenger seat and asked "You got a guitar in there?" to which my colleague responded "I sure hope so, officer; I can't play the machine gun very well."
On arrival in France he was pulled aside at le douane and, while his car was taken apart into its constituent parts, shown into a room where everyone was wearing latex gloves.
Choose the moments when you try to be funny with care, folks.
Similar story...
A colleague (well, worked in the same building for a while anyway) was an electrical engineer returning to the UK. He was fond of a sherbert or two and may well have indulged... He had some resistance boxes, in varying states of repair, in his luggage - so knobs, wires, colourful components everywhere. British Customs asked "what's this then?" he replied "don't touch that!" and humourously ducked down below table level.
His journey home was delayed somewhat and, oddly, every time he went through customs on the way back to the UK, he was subject to very detailed checks of his person, luggage & vehicles. Can't imagine why!
I used to have the opposite. We had some business with a customer in the Netherlands, and so I used to drive across from England to there via the Channel Tunnel.
So I'm there in my UK car (an estate, with just me in it) and it was fairly routine to get stopped at least once on the way back through.
One particular time though I was pulled over by a patrol on the autoroute in France near Dunkirk, then stopped by the French customs again at the border, and finally a third time by the UK ones just afterwards. I took it calmly (as I was quite used to it, and had nothing to hide or declare despite my obviously fitting into some sort of profile) and after the second French stop I didn't bother to pack anything away. Said to the UK guys with a smile "help yourself, it's all open and unpacked" and explained that this was the third search within about half an hour.
I guess something got written down somewhere, as after that it was a very rare case that I got stopped by either side during the several other times I took that trip.
I was in England when it opened May 6th, 1994 and distinctly remember Auntie Beeb telling me it was called the Chunnel.
I wonder if ... Ha! Read this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/6/newsid_2511000/2511653.stm
Wonder of wonders, sometime one can still find stuff one is looking for online! Don't tell go ogle, or they'll undoubtedly fix it ...
Haven't heard it called that in years. It's an old nickname that never really stuck and has very much died out in the last couple of decades.
<pedant>And as to a claim, I said I drove from England to the Netherlands (through France and Belgium) via the tunnel. As in I drove down to the terminal, onto the train there, sat in the car whilst it went across, then drove off again and onwards on the continent. At no point did I say I drove through the tunnel... </pedant>
Haha, not IT related but I had a similar situation with Tayside Police when I was a poor student running around on my brother's Yamaha FS1E moped after my own bike broke expensively. I was 21, with a full bike license (and a full beard) so didn't have L-plates on the bike. This drew them like a moth to a flame, thinking they had an easy ticket to write. That was until I removed my crash helmet, revealing the beard and the fact I wasn't a spotty 16 year old who'd been careless about his L-plates.
I was stopped by traffic cars and Pandas no less than 6 times in a week before I made the suggestion that they might like to pass the word around amongst their colleagues that there was, in fact, a legit full license holder riding around who preferred not wasting their time or his own being stopped. Interestingly, it worked and I wasn't bothered again. It wouldn't be an issue nowadays, there's not that level of police presence on the roads.
I was tasked to go to Israel at very short notice to bring a prototype wireless access point over to Haifa for the engineers to run tests on. It was a proper prototype -- a circuit board or two and lots of wires. To carry it plus tools and things I emptied a small tool case I use for carrying a radio control transmitted and accessories in. So here I am, at El Al security, with a metal case full of bits of stuff with wires attached -- read and blue ones included. The poor little case was never the same after that flight.
To give credit where its due, El Al's security is a notch above the typical TSA check. (its piled on top of normal security -- you think you're boarding at a particular gate but it leads to "the room".) I got asked all sorts of searching questions, including the "Can't this work be done in Israel?". Of course it could. Its just that the technology I was carrying -- the real reason for my trip -- started out life as a small startup in Israel that got sold to a company in the US , who licensed it to various other companies, one of which I worked for that was subsequently sold to MegaCorp who promptly wanted to use this to check against their home-made version. (Try explaining what an IP Firewall was to a......oh well, never mind......)
"Try explaining what an IP Firewall was to a..."ile they
I used to hand-carry prototype Ccisco routers around the world. Unpainted, still with de-burring marks on their shiny metal boxes pocked with strange patterns of nut-rivits in odd places.
Most of the time I just handed them the beginning of our standard sales patter until their eyes glazed over and they waved me on. A couple of times they took it apart looking for drugs. Several times I was taken into a backroom while they made some phone calls. I had guns drawn on me, and (worse!) nervous kids unsnapped their holsters and hovered a trembling hand over their weapon. Three times I was turned around at the border ... I was young and single, quite used to world travel, and well paid.
Yes, I got hazard pay occasionally. You can guess the border crossings. You can add stupid to young and single ... hindsight's 20/20.
In answer to the "can't this be made in CountryX"[0] I always answered truthfully "Yes, but it is being invented in in Santa Clara County, California", which usually got me waved through.
[0] You wouldn't believe how many countries have this enlightened sense of self-importance! Get off your high-horse you fucking idiots! You have cash-flow for a reason, USE IT! Exchanging cash for a wanted good or service is a GOOD thing ... that's what money was invented for. And yes, I know, the idiot trump is one of the worst offenders ...
Ah yes, El Al security is something else.
The only ones I've known where despite having all the paperwork and documents for the trip there, including pre-filled Mokdan forms, you still end up basically having to convince them that they actually want to allow you anywhere near the plane, let alone onto it and to take you to Israel.
This being after 9/11, but before all the more recent troubles. Must have flown over to Tel Aviv at least 40 times over the years from London, and it was only towards the end that they stopped giving quite such a third degree interrogation when they realised that if I was going to be a problem, I would have been by now (or wouldn't have kept going back, as the work at Intel demanded).
A big contrast with Virgin (who flew the route for a short time) where it was treated like any other destination.
"Yes, this - all day long! NEVER make a joke about such things whilst in transit"
An acquaintance (sadly no longer with us) worked at Gatwick airport a good few years ago now and told me that anyone, and he stressed the word anyone, who made the bomb 'joke' at the absolute minimum missed their flight.and usually spent an uncomfortable night in a very small room.
Many years ago (early 90's), I dated a border guard. She said the official party line was "We have no sense of humour and must take everything as stated".
If you said bomb, even jokingly, you got to go to the small room with the men with rubber gloves who would give you an examination you would never forget, and you would absolutely miss your flight.
"Bomb" is a threat they can't afford *not* to take seriously. Every. Single. Time. But taking it seriously is expensive and a hassle for all concerned. Plus there's the risk of a boy-who-cried-wolf effect: if too many passengers joke about it, staff might start assuming it's a joke and miss the real one.
All that gives them a powerful motive to make joking about it as unpleasant as legally possible.
I can't remember the exact name, but one of the Viet Nam war era spies used to simply run off copies of classified documents for the Soviets on the copier.
When they asked why he was making so many copies, he actually said "oh I'm making copies for the Russians, hahaha"
And that's why you take that shit seriously.
A BOM is an inventory of the parts in an assembly. Decompressing it to show all levels is called exploding the BOM. We had users calling in and having their IT tickets transcribed by customer services reps. More than once I've seen tickets come in entitled 'Bomb explosion'.
To expand your definition ... BOM == Bill of Materials.
This is standard jargon, the problem is using an abbreviation in a conversation with someone who does not understand the jargon.
Always expand abbreviations when talking with people outside your area of knowledge until you are sure they understand/use the same jargon.
Particularly a problem when the same abbreviation can have different meanings in different industries etc.
Have had interesting conversations when you realise that you are talking about different things, hence the lesson learned about abbreviations.
In 2015 two Greek businessmen were heard talking about having a bomb in their suitcase in Terminal 3 in Copenhagen Airport.
They did not make their flight...
Terminal 3 was evacuated and closed off causing major trouble for both air and land traffic. The two men were arrested, convicted and ended up spending a month in a Danish prison.
> He was driving through the chunnel? Are you absolutely certain of that?
You drive to Dover and drive the car onto the car-transporter train, which takes you to France while you stay seated in your car, and you drive off again at the other end. This is commonly referred to as "driving through the Chunnel".
Similar tale of an idiot and his mouth.
A colleague of mine at the time - a medical practitioner - flew back to London from Jo'burg via Paris at the time of the Falklands conflict.
At Paris airport he was asked what he had to declare...
"An Exocet missle."
Nuff said.
A workmate of mine at a previous job was invited (with his girlfriend) at quite short notice to go on holiday in the Caribbean with some loaded inlaws of his girlfriend. He hadn’t been able to get on the same flight as her due to the lack of seats, so was arriving a day later. Flight was delayed, was boiling hot, he said he had a particularly uncomfortable seat and his in flight entertainment was buggered. He arrived at the island airport and had to go through Immigration which he expected to be a breeze. He was asked at the desk where he was staying and he admitted he didn’t know, and just said someone’s house. He was at that point taken to a small room and asked a load more questions. So they asked when had he booked his ticket and he said a few days ago. How had he paid for it and he said partly on his credit card and his girlfriend had chipped in the rest. He then had a flash of good fortune in that he remembered that part of the trip would be on a yacht and told the interviewer this. When asked for the name of the boat or where it was moored, he then admitted that he didn’t know any of that either.
The interviewer said that if my mate looked at it from his point of view this was a little bit strange, if not downright suspicious. That he had a ticket booked less than a week before, which he hadn’t entirely paid for, to come on to an island where he didn’t know where he was staying, not even the town, nor the name of or where this yacht was. He said he then had visions of them either saying he was going to be on the next flight back to Blighty or hearing the snapping on of rubber gloves. Mate said at this point he was close to losing it and said to the bloke if they did refuse him entry into the country and repatriate him, then could he at least talk to his girlfriend first and explain. Asked where his girlfriend was he said she was waiting outside the airport for him. He said that it was her inlaws that they would be staying with and she would be able to provide details. It was all arranged at the last minute when another couple had been unable to come, and he really wasn’t sure what he had done wrong.
Interviewer told him to come with him whilst they found his girlfriend to verify everything. They did and she corroborated his story, immigration bloke said next time he should say at the start that his girlfriend was waiting outside and had all the information. He was allowed to collect his luggage and have his passport stamped and leave.
He said he was so relieved when he finally got outside in the sunshine, the holiday was apparently excellent after all of that
Honest question: Is it immigration if you're only visiting temporarily for work? I thought immigration involved taking up residence in the destination? (But I may be wrong. As I said, honest question.)
Anyway, my real response is to share the story of a fellow student back when I was in college, who I'll Regomize as Phil. Like many of us at the time, Phil took occasional semesters off to get work experience in the industry. The industry, in particular, being computing, and his co-op assignments would take him far from our northeastern US campus to sunny Pasadena, CA, home of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Clear across the country, but fortunately (as will become apparent) still domestic travel, so no customs or visas required.
What will also become apparent is that two things about Phil will be important to the rest of the story: First, although he is a US citizen born and raised in New York, Phil's family is from Jordan, and Phil himself is unmistakably Middle Eastern, ethnically. Second, Phil has a certain type of vision impairment (I don't know the name of the condition) that cannot be addressed with corrective lenses, where he can only perceive details if something is no more than a few inches away. To read printed text, for example, he holds the paper up in front of his face, so close his nose is literally touching it — it's the only way he can make out the words. (I don't believe he's legally blind, but his condition does prohibit him from operating motor vehicles, for one.)
All that established, let's look back into the past, to the mid-1990s. At the end of one 7-month co-op stint at JPL, Phil arrives at LAX airport for his flight back home to the east coast. At the security checkpoint, he sends his carry-on through the baggage scanner and walks through the metal detector. After clearing the portal without incident, he's pulled aside by airport security (the TSA didn't exist yet) who tell him they just need to perform a hand inspection of his bag and ask him a few questions.
This is where Phil's face droops, as he begins (somehow for the first time) to think about what exactly they're going to discover in his luggage. So, standing at the counter and leaning down like one of those drinking bird toys so he can see what's going on, Phil watches as an increasingly confounded security officer extracts the following items from his bag: A laptop computer. A travel alarm clock. An entire box of like 8 or 16 AA batteries. A telephone handset. (WHYYY?) An entire SPOOL of hookup wire. A folded map of greater Los Angeles. And a foil-wrapped brick of something that turned out to be some sort of homemade snack bars, and only LOOKED like plastic explosives in the context of everything else in the bag.
Fortunately Phil has the least threatening personality of anyone you've ever met, so the true explanation was also the most believable one: "Not a terrorist, officers, just a nerd." (And an idiot.) After some long and uncomfortable explanations, Phil was allowed to proceed to his flight. The security team probably got a good chuckle out of it, even. But as Phil himself has said, had this happened after 9/11 we would probably never have seen or heard from him again.
I once flew from Madrid to London for a job interview. The outgoing flight had a delayed departure, we sat on the tarmac for the better part of an hour with no air conditioning and outside temperatures of 30C+.
Finally we took off and after 10 minutes the pilot announced a technical issue and that we would have to dump fuel and return to Madrid. We were met by fire engines on landing but nothing untoward happened. The issue was fixed - a faulty sensor on the cargo door.
Meanwhile I contacted the company that was interviewing me to advise of the delays and my interview was rescheduled for early in the afternoon and my return flight was also changed from early to late evening.
Arrived at Gatwick took the train to London and all I had to do was hop on one underground train to get to the office, but fate had another surprise in store for me. The line was closed because somebody had jumped onto the tracks at one of the stations
I eventually got to the interview - on time I might add and thought nothing else could go wrong.
My return flight was from Heathrow, when I got to the airport it had shut down because someone dressed in black with a rucksack had climbed over the perimeter fence and disappeared into the airport grounds.
No flight would leave until the police found him, which took several hours
I got home at 2am exhausted and I didn't get the job
Having travelled a lot for work, I've come across almost every excuse in the book for delayed and/or cancelled flights.
Probably my favourite was being on a plane at Heathrow, pushed back from the stand and engines started up. The crew did the usual safety demonstration, however upon conclusion of it, they noticed there were no safety cards in the back pockets of any of the seats. It's a legal requirement to have those, so they had no choice but to taxi back to the stand and switch off, before waiting for over an hour for a pack of the cards to be delivered to the plane - meanwhile we just sat there like lemons waiting.
Apparently the plane had just come out from routine maintenance. As part of this, they empty the plane of all items so they can perform a weight check on the plane - presumably to ensure everything has been put back correctly and nobody has left a spanner somewhere they shouldn't etc. Following the weight check, they forgot to put the safety cards back on board before the plane was dropped off at the stand ready for use.
I did still fly nearly 2 1/2 hours later than planned (further delays to obtain a new take-off slot), but it's definitely one of the more bizarre delays I've experienced.
I had one on an internal flight in the States - one tyre was slightly deflated and after a long debate it was decided it couldn't just be pumped up. As there were two planes flying the route we deplaned from that one and got on the other plane as they'd figured by the time that was due to leave they'd have sorted the puncture. We then sat there for nearly an hour while the paperwork was sorted, as the pilot pointed out, if we took off without the correct paperwork for the aircraft we'd be liable to be shot down (and this was before 9/11)!
Another time on the same route the airport tried to stop us leaving until they'd put more cargo on the plane as there was space in the hold, which the captain, quite rightly, refused as he was already up to the weight limit. A 30 minute stand-off ensued before they let us go, probably because they needed the stand for another aircraft.
This was all before locked cockpit doors so the skipper was able to tell us directly what was going on.
We are waiting for our supply of small, lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort and convenience. Until then, there will be a short delay. The likelihood is that other civilizations will arise, and there will one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins. Until then there will be a short delay.
I was once flying from London to Madrid for a business trip, with my boss and another colleague. We were going there to talk to a partner firm, with which we were working to develop an aircraft anti-icing system.
After a first delay of about an hour (thankfully whilst we were still in the terminal and in range of the bar!), we boarded. Flight took off normally, crossed the channel, and as we reached the spanish coast. The pilot came on "Sorry folks, unfortunately we have developed an issue with the engine anti-icing system. It does not endanger the aircraft, but if we land in Spain, we wont be able to take off again. So we need to turn around and head back to London. We apologise for the inconvenience."
Yep, back to london. Wait for a new aircraft, and fly all the way back to Spain. The irony of it being the system we were working on developing (but not for that aircraft!) failing and causing us the inconvenience was not lost on any of us...
s, they empty the plane of all items so they can perform a weight check on the plane - presumably to ensure everything has been put back correctly and nobody has left a spanner somewhere they shouldn't etc
A spanner wouldn't be picked up. But there is a requirement for the plane to be weighed at certain times - I don't know about commercial traffic, but for light aircraft I think there's a time element (every x years) plus any time there's been work that might change it. It's not just weight, but also balance - where the centre of gravity (CoG) is.
Empty weight determines how much you can load before hitting the overall weight limit. CoG also tells you where the weight can be put. Aircraft have an envelope of weight and CoG that they must stay within. CoG too far aft and control gets more twitchy - in extreme, uncontrollable. CoG too far forward and control authority of the elevator can be insufficient to keep the nose up - especially at low speed which can spoil the next landing when you land with the nose too low and break the nosegear off (if you are lucky.) Too much weight and you struggle to generate enough lift to get off the ground and stay off - which spoils the takeoff when you end up in the field at the end of the runway (see also above about insufficient elevator authority if CoG too far forward.) For larger high speed aircraft, CoG limits get more restricted at high speed, and also when the speed of sound reduces with increased altitude (and lower air pressure.)
It gets (or got) even more interesting for the likes of Concord where the weight & CoG envelopes were quite different for sub and super sonic flight. They had the ability to pump fuel between forward and aft tanks to shift the CoG according to requirements.
Ah, the joys of doing vector additions (adding all the weights, such as passengers and fuel) graphically for each phase of flight to pass the exams. After you've done that, you just tap the numbers into a program and it does the work for you and plots the weight & balance for the flight.
@dog really:
Going on forty years ago, I arrived at the Dubuque, Iowa, airport for a flight on Midway Air to Midway Airport in Chicago. I was interested to see that they weighed my luggage. I was also interested when they asked my weight (~85 kg then) before assigning my seat. The gate staff must have done their calculations properly, for the plane took off without difficulty. Unfortunately, a crack in an engine manifold caused a brief, quickly extinguished fire, and we circled back around to land.
I've always been very careful to make sure i have the correct paperwork - fortunately when I was travelling a lot to the States you didn't need a visa even for business and I never had a problem at the airports; we did, however, meet an awkward immigration agent trying to get back into the US from Canada! There were four of us (three Brits, one German) working on a global implementation project in Detroit, we'd taken a weekend trip to Niagara and Toronto and crossing the bridge back into the States we did the right thing and stopped. The agent then tried to get us to admit we were "working" in the US, he finally asked who was paying our wages and we pointed out it was the European companies as that's who we were representing in the meetings so he let us go - it could have been very embarrassing.
More recently my then boss was wanting me to take a short-notice trip to Thailand, whilst I didn't actually refuse I pointed out that due to a medical condition they'd have to fly me business class and that because of medication I'd need a certificate from, IIRC, their Department of the Interior after I'd got the paperwork from my Doctor supporting the need for strong painkillers*. She gave up! There was no way I was travelling to a country with one of the harshest drug regimes in the world while carrying controlled substances without every single box ticked.
*I'd had to do get similar paperwork for Australia but the customs officer was only interested in steroids, which I didn't have, so didn't even look at it,
"I'd had to do get similar paperwork for Australia but the customs officer was only interested in steroids, which I didn't have, so didn't even look at it,"
Yah, but it's having the paperwork that made you calm. If you hadn't had it, you might have been nervous, and that in turn might well have caught her attention.
I did similarly once, for a trip to the UK (from Canada). I was due to start a new job shortly after my return, but at the time of travel, I was still unemployed. So I asked my boss-to-be for a letter stating that I'd been hired, with a start date of such-and-such. UK Customs didn't ask about my employment status, but knowing I had a good answer, with documentation to back it up, made me a lot more relaxed than I'd have been otherwise.
"The agent then tried to get us to admit we were "working" in the US, he finally asked who was paying our wages and we pointed out it was the European companies"
US Customs takes an expansive view of what constitutes "working". If it looks like work, it might not matter who's paying you, or indeed whether you're being paid at all.
A friend of mine once got hassled at the border on the way to help a friend of his clean up her place after a natural disaster. It was strictly a favour -- no money involved -- but still, it was work an American could have been paid for, and so they didn't want a Canadian doing it, even for free. (I can't recall whether they finally relented and let him in.)
Not the same magnitude but my first and only trip of this type was for technical demo in southern Germany, which meant flying out to Basel in early winter then catching a train to my destination. There was very heavy snow at Basel so we were redirected to Zurich, but then they cleared the runway and we turned back, arriving long after the last train had left. Found a taxi with a very helpful fellow traveller who spoke good French, but the driver didn't want to use his metered car so we ended up travelling for several hours up the motorway in his personal car, which had what looked suspiciously like a bullet hole in the front window that the freezing winter air blasted through.
We finally arrived (I had to get to a cashpoint first to get a whole lot of cash for the driver) and I got a few hours sleep before I had to be out deploying our product on site with the customer. It didn't work and I spent most of the day on the phone to the home office trying to troubleshoot what was going on. We did not make the sale.
Pardon me for having difficulty suspending disbelief.
Emergencies are along the lines of "charges set, detonator dead, all mining ops shut down until we have BOOM" or "presses stopped, NYTimes not being printed until (the one guy who understands their print network) can be found" or a simple "Network down, everybody's twiddling their thumbs and getting paid until it's fixed".
But a SALES meeting? C'mon, pull the other one.
Unless it's an action from a meeting you've run which was given to them, at which point it requires infinite patience and prodding to get anything out of them.
And usually then it's only of tangential relevance to what they were actually asked to do or supply.
It's not happened to me, but I would never accept blithe assurances from management that "It'll all be fine," and that I'd be met at my destination by someone who would give me the appropriate documents.
Managers tend to be poor at dealing with, or caring about, what they feel are unimportant details. They're mentally flying at 30,000 feet, looking down at "the big picture."
Call me "not a team player"*, but the Devil is in the details, and if I don't have what I need in my hands, I am not stepping into that departure jetway.
*Derogatory phrase used by managers for, "someone who does not unquestioningly obey my orders".
Absolutely. I did a little bit of travelling around once upon a time. Not a huge amount and mainly US or Northern Europe but if the powers that be had said I needed to go to China (or anywhere else with significant paperwork/visa/whatever requirements) there is no way I’d have been boarding any planes until I knew I had the appropriate bits of paper in my possession.
I was well enough paid for what I did and happy with it but not well enough paid to take on that kind of grief.
Virgin Atlantic flight from Orlando to Heathrow.
Thunderstorms closed the runway at Orlando as we were due to take off that evening. Two hours later we are now in a queue of 15 aircraft on the taxiway, taking off through gaps in the storm. We were almost at the head of the queue when the aircraft picked up a fault and we had to return to the terminal. Control tower turned us around, only to then block off our return path by putting a Spirit plane sideways across the return taxiway! Cue another half hour sat there waiting for it to move out of the way, then we returned to the terminal. Aircraft was fixed and ready to go, but needed refueling. Refueling then had to stop as the thunderstorm rolled back in....by that point the crew were getting near hours and the flight was cancelled.
Cue total chaos in the airport due to cancellations, although Virgin managed to secure hotel rooms for everyone in a very run-down Marriott and I managed to get an Uber there. My room looked like something used for witness protection duties, or perhaps somewhere used by Ted Bundy to dismember his victims. Given by this point it was 2am and I'd been awake for almost 24 hours I didn't care and just slept. Upon checking maps the next morning to find out where the hell I was, I found that I was within a 10 minute walk of the hotel I'd been living out of for the past fortnight.
Thankfully Virgin's organisation was excellent, and after the crew had completed their rest hours we re-boarded the plane and flew home in far calmer weather.
Not a flight, but enough taxi-way shenanigans..
We were exhibiting an aircraft at an airshow. Our exhibition spot was at what was normally the GAT (General Aviation Terminal), a large piece of tarmac next to a taxiway parallel to the main active runway, surrounded in all other directions by hangars and other buildings.
Our aircraft started out ca. 2 km down the runway. We had no tug, and the drivetrain was not supposed to run so Pushing was modus operandi. Our path took us down the taxi-way parallell to the main runway, and we were following an A380 that was going to be exhibited righr next to us, on the tarmac connecting the taxiway with the GAT..
Then full stop. ..in baking sun and +30°C...
After ca. 30 minutes we find out what causes the holdup.
The US airforce has its main exhibit on the GAT, and they have decided that NOW is the time to play Aircraft Mikado. So.. the rest of the exebition gets to stand and watch while uncle Sams's best push Bones, Hercules, AWACS, tankers and other big toys back and forth trying to get everything just right in the eyes of whatever Admiral is in charge of the spectacle.
After four and a half hour broiling with nothing to drink, we finally convince the show directors that something can be done, and we proceed to push our aircraft underneath the wing and angine #1 of the A380 so that we can proceed to our slot. When we finally got to our destination and could leave for drinks, the Airforce was still busy rearanging the deck-chairs.
..I do hope that the A380 was stocked with cool drinks and cute flight attendants, sincde they got to wait until everything was done...
-Fun times
I had a stopover in JFK late on a November evening, and bad weather and cancellations meant the next flight back the UK was not due for about 20 hours, so lots of time to kill.
In the early hours (05:00-ish) having exhausted all the options in the terminal building I decided to explore the Big Apple. I took the subway for Manhattan, and at that time of the morning the carriages were almost empty. A large drunk bloke with a bicycle got on at a station in the Bronx and promptly fell asleep. A couple more passengers got on at the next station, and at the following stop one of the new arrivals left taking the drunk lad's bike! Fortunately the victim of the theft was still asleep when I alighted.
Flying from SFO to Boston Logan we hit a storm cell that closed Boston airspace. After a while circling we diverted to Hartford Connecticut to refuel, but by the time that was completed the storm had moved closer, and Hartford wasn't allowing takeoffs. We were told that we would deplane, and be put on a coach for Boston. Since that would mean arriving at 2am when the rental car counters would be closed and I'd be stranded at Logan I declined the invitation, booked an airport hotel at Hartford and rearranged my rental car for local pickup the following morning. I got a good night's sleep and was only an hour late for my meeting.
I submitted my expenses claim, wondering what the reaction would be, but needn't have worried. My new boss complimented me on my common sense, and signed off the form without an issue.
Back in to 90s I used to fly regularly for work. Back then I had a modular laptop from a company in North London called AJP. You could get additional external batteries for the model I had, these were about 5cm x 5cm x 30cm with 2 brass hex posts that screwed into the back of the laptop, a 10cm lead that plugged into the laptop power port and a charging port. I don't know what battery technology they used but they were completely sealed and quite heavy, maybe close to 1kg each. As the standard life for the built in battery was about 3-4 hours if you were lucky, these external batteries provided another 4-5 hours each. I had 3 of these additional batteries.
One time I had to fly from Birmingham to Santiago de Chile via Amsterdam and Buenos Aires with KLM. As I planned to do some work on the flight, I had the 3 batteries in my laptop case with my laptop as hand luggage. At Schipol they had x-ray machines at the gates and my batteries looked very opaque on the screen when my bag went through. I spent about 25 minutes explaining what the batteries were and demonstrating how they worked. Eventually they let me board.
When we got to Buenos Aires we had to deplane for about an hour while they refuelled and for some reason all our hand baggage had to be scanned when we were getting off the plane. Another 20+ minutes explaining the batteries.
On the way back to UK a couple of weeks later I had no problems with the batteries because I decided to put them into my hold luggage and only rely on the internal battery if I wanted to work on the flight. The batteries never went abroad with me again.
I did have others run ins, like getting my oversize suitcase x-rayed as hold luggage at Birmingham and then having to open it up to show the security people that I didn't have a gun and some bullets in the case, it was a pistol grip screwdriver with a selection of 1/4 hex bits
AJP. - That name does ring a bell from the 90's.
I had a HP Tablet TC4200 (That fell off the back of a uncollected HP warranty claim), somehow I acquired a extended battery pack for it & after a few years of use, its capacity was depleted.
Fortunately I was on a contract & we were swapping out HP tablets with the same battery packs & I was able to substitute my depleted one for one with longer life.
In the 1990's I was doing some work for a company that was developing a radical satellite-based handheld phone that would work anywhere in the world [1] and had to go out, along with about 6 other people including my boss in that company, to Japan for a week-long progress meeting. The meeting went well; our hosts actually managed to make one of the most boring subjects in business interesting, and where also good enough not to show any annoyance with the fact that we had managed to schedule the meetings during japan's Golden Week (4 public holidays in a week, with most people taking the only working day off as annual leave).
When we got back to Tokyo Airport for the flight home, the first thing we discovered was a flight had been cancelled; apparently an engine had been badly damaged when something had got sucked in during the previous landing, and the airline (BA) was not going to be able to repair it until they had flown a new engine out. However, we had been allocated seats on the next flight, although that meant an additional 3 hour wait.
My boss did not like this one bit and, after muttering something alone the lines of "we'll see what we can do about this", disappeared for about 30 minutes. No-one had an idea where he had go to, but he returned with a a satisfied smile on his face and clutching tickets for a Virgin Airlines flight which was due to leave only 3 minutes after our original scheduled departure time. However, the flight was pretty full and they did not have an Business Class seats available, so my boss had decided to pay for First Class instead.
[1] This was before, but only just before, roaming agreements started to be established between mobile operators in different countries - it was the establishment of these agreements, coupled with the ability to spend US$5 *billion* in just a few years with nothing to show for it, that eventually sank the company
Background: 10-year wedding anniversary cruise from Miami, Florida, with three kids (ages 2, 4, 6) and the missus' parents. Got off the ship, took the shuttle bus to Miami International Airport, and checked in. Plenty of time -- grabbed some breakfast from the nearest Dunkin' stand.
First delay: Incoming aircraft delayed takeoff due to weather, or so they said. About every hour, the same story. Don't remember what we did for lunch. Or dinner. I do remember buying my wife a tee-shirt (which she still has). Thank goodness with had the kids' Kindle Fires for some entertainment, but that was short-lived, and I'm not even sure if there was free WiFi.
Plane arrives in the late evening, well after we should have landed and driven home. We board. The crew turns on the A/C, and visible fog starts coming out almost every vent. They let this go a bit, then herd us off.
After waiting a bit more for a supposed fix -- well after the kids' bedtime now -- the flight is canceled and everyone runs to the nearest service center a few gates down to reschedule. We got routed through Chicago O'Hare the next day, a hotel voucher, and meal tickets for Miami that were now worthless with everything having closed hours prior.
We got about 3 hours sleep. At some point, one of the kids tried jumping bed to bed and clocked their head real good on the wooden base. And did I mention mother-in-law was sporting E. coil thanks to a Mexican cocktail?!
Back at the airport the next day, we struggled to get decent seating near each other to Chicago. MIL was very weak and needed a wheelchair. We had a nice (but expensive) lunch during our layover, finally flew home, to find... that our two biggest suitcases were utterly destroyed, probably from the cargo hold being overpacked. They salvaged the contents and let us pick new cases to keep (high-quality, too!).
(The final insult: a smelly brown stain left on the passenger seat after we drove the in-laws home -- thanks, Mom (she apologized). Always have canned/bottled drinks in Mexico, people!)
All in all, the kids were amazingly patient through the whole thing, and even my work was understanding about the extra vacation hours, although my balance went negative.
(Separate post because it was getting long...)
Lessons learned: Our 20th anniversary vacation will not involve planes or cruise ships or Mexico, just a road trip to a nice long VRBO stay in Key West with one-day tourist stops on the way there and back. No passports, clean bottled water from a chain supermarket, and not getting trapped in an airport!
As for the kids... They now have iPads (some newer than others) and we're bringing a cellular hotspot from the library, and they LOVE to read, so plenty of books and streaming audiobooks to keep them entertained, because otherwise they might just KILL each other being the ages they are now (12, 14, 16 -- yikes!).
I was once in Singapore on business and another project team asked me, since I was in the neighbourhood, could I pop over to Inda to look at a few things. Sure says I. Well, the India project decided that since the Singapore project had already paid for a return ticket from Singapore to the East Coast of North America, they only really need to pay for a return trip from India to Singapore.
I left India at 12:09am and arrived back home 32 hours later on the same day I left. Flight path: India->Malaysia->Singapore (backage got lost on this leg...)->Hong Kong->Home.
This didn’t happen to me, but to a friend.
On his very first day at a motor racing company, a company-wide message went out asking if anyone happened to have their passport with them. Since it was his first day and HR had needed a copy, he was carrying his passport.
A short while later, he found himself in a taxi heading to Heathrow, carrying a replacement part for one of the race cars that had been involved in an accident earlier that morning. A return ticket to Dubai had already been arranged.
He flew to Dubai, handed over the part, spent a few hours in the airport, and then flew straight back to Heathrow.
Most people spend their first day filling out paperwork. He spent his delivering race car parts to Dubai.
My first 8 days at a new job in 1992.
Monday & Tuesday - Birmingham office
Wednesday - London office
Thursday -Birmingham office
Friday morning - London office
Friday afternoon - Heathrow
Friday evening - Hotel in Tallinn
Saturday, Sunday & Monday morning - Tallinn office
Monday afternoon/evening - back to UK
Tuesday - Birmingham office
At a previous employer, I got sent to Monte Carlo to help an old schoolfriend of my boss doing network cabling in his apartment. So flight down to Nice, and helicopter to Monte Carlo - only he didn't tell me it was "helicopter" when the email said he'd booked me on the bus. Oh yes, the cheapest flight possible, which means you get the gates furthest from ... well everything. Nice airport build is something like a mile long ! After a few phone calls, I find out that the "bus" is actually the "helicopter" and the heli terminal is ... back down to the other end of the terminal.
So I get to the heliport, and a taxi whisks me away, round the harbour where you realise that there are people with a LOT more money than I'll ever see. Only the taxi driver doesn't recognise the address - cue phone calls to my host so he can explain to the taxi driver how to get to the apartment.
Now, a few days in Monte on someone else's dime sound great doesn't it - until I point out that in the 3 or 4 days I was there, I didn't set foot outside the apartment until it was time to go home. Still, it was a nice view out across the bay.
But steep, I've seen steep places (e.g. Holmfirth), but wasn't prepared for this. Looking out the other side of the building, there was a school playground which was at ground (street) level at it's far end. Then you look down and remember that on this street we were 8 floors up !
I was in Hong Kong on other business when I was asked if I could "Hop over into China" to inspect some formwork which had been built in HK but shipped across the waters into China. This large formwork was in wood; complex in shape and structure as it was to be cast into concrete, then removed from within and reused multiple times.
I was told it was only a day-trip so I went with our local agent and the journey went smoothly until we found the formwork.... Or what we were told was the formwork; it had "A bit of a problem".
It had been 'sort-of' assembled with many of the right pieces...... not necessarily in the right order...... A three-dimensional jig-saw designed by Engineers then built by Picasso....
It turned out that instead of being shipped in one piece, the contractor had decided to save money at the dockside so they dismantled the assembly into small pieces and loaded the jumble onto 12 trucks to ship it overland.....
A long day, an unimpressive site-lunch. I could only face the (plain) rice on which I broke a tooth..... I went back three months later when it had been repaired by the original manufacturer. Took my own snack......
I used to work for a borehole syrveying company as their IT techie. This was late '70's when we havd to know everything because we had old DG Nova1200's and Nova 3's. Which incuded rewiring the backplane if needed. So, my toolkit included a wirewrap "gun" - which for those who have never seen one, can look a bit like a toy gun.
So, there I was on the way from Heathrow to Canada with my toolkit - handluggage, of course. I go through security and all of a sudden there's 4 men with very large automatic weapons pointed at me. A severely brown trouser moment. I had to carefully open the toolkit and demoonstrate what the wirewrap gun actually did. It was then taken off me and I was told I could have it back when we landed.
On the way home, that piece of kit went into my checked in suitcase!
Family think my past job was great as I have travelled to many countries on business and 'seen the world'. The truth is most were along the same lines. Early start, taxi to airport, long wait, fly in 'cattle class', taxi to factory, work, taxi to hotel, meal, prep for next day, sleep, repeat for 3 or 4 days, fly home. No time to sight see etc
This one stands out. South Korea for 2 weeks to provide specialist software training via a translator. Vollected at Seoul airport by taxi driver that didn't speak English, he drops me at the railway station where another man (no English) buys me a ticket and points me in the direction to the train, i am lucky to find an 'English' speaking traveller on the train to know when to get off, collected and put on a bus, driver told when I was to get off, finally picked up by a English speaker and taken to the hotel. All the time with a large suitcase and laptop bag. To cap it off, I caught a cold on the flight out resulting in loosing my voice after 4 days. The training was not ideal.
I agree with you, my experience was much the same. My stand out trip was Amsterdam for a trade show. I wasca last minute replacement. I helped set up the stand at an trade show. Once it set up, a had a few days playing the tourist (after checking there was no problems in the morning). Evenings were spent in the red light district - better than eating meals with sales men.
The next company i worked for had some foreign travel, but I never volunteered for it! A couple of colleagues were fighting over who was going to China, I just kept my head down!!
I did electronics/telecoms/software for F1 teams - the Acteltime lap timing system with speed traps and radio links back to the pits, first in-car telemetry link back to the pits, etc.
One fateful trip to help a team testing in Monza.
A horrible drive down overnight from the UK (a 2CV overtook me on a snowy motorway as it's thin wheels were much more suitable).
Get there just in time for the start of the test session at the track. Pizza was shipped in for the evening meal (luckily I had taken a few snacks for in the day time). Drove to the hotel late and slept immediately. Up for breakfast, checked out of the hotel (standard practice was booking hotels for only one night at a time) and then straight to the circuit.
By late afternoon the team had blown up all the available engines (common for early season testing and hence the one night at a time in a hotel rule) and so I drove back overnight again - 14 hours from Monza to Northampton including last on and first off the ferry, and most definately before they started timing you between Péage toll booths!
Another trip was to Jerez in Spain where I had returned to the hotel and the hosting F1 team had stayed at the track to sort out some mechanical issues. No-one in the hotel admitted to speaking English and I just had to point to the dinner menu and hope. To this day I don't know whether the starter was two eyes or balls in a broth!
Had a similar experience with a trip to the US to do two 2 day training for a few hundred people (large training room with other rooms linked in by video), followed by some client meetings.
I got a cold on the way out that meant I totally lost my voice by the end of the final client meeting.
I was having to write notes at the checkin desk as I literally had no working voice by then, and had the KLM cabin crew mock me all the way home - though in a nice with with a regular supply of"anaesthetic" drinks ;-)
The significant only times I've been pulled aside at airports were:
Heathrow (Returning).
Coming back from Amsterdam & being called over by a greenhorn Customs Inspector, asking if I had any "drugs" or "Porn" & would I care to amend my "Nothing to declare status & would I be worried if he started on a in-depth search". I responded I was only worried about missing my coach connection so go ahead. At this point his training supervisor said "I think you can let him go, you'll be wasting yours & his time".
Calgary (Outbound).
Being queried by a Indian lady about the suspect electronics in my cars remote start fob at security & running them constantly through the x-ray machine & asking me about it to which she got the same answer every time, until someone educated her.
Some adult "lifestyle" toys, which I didn't want to pull out of my case for a few minutes for a Sikhs examination, as there was a parent & young child still repacking their bags, once they were out of sight & sound I started to explain & he decided he didn't want to know after all.
Bristol Airport (Outbound).
Asking to pull out the suspicious object in my bag that was picked up by X-Ray that said Master, which for a lifestyle joke I'd picked up a heavy replica British Railways cast metal door sign stating "Station Master"* I'd also picked up a "plate" version for a Domme friend stating "Station Mistress".
*Looks nice on my front door.
Despite hundreds of thousands of miles of flights, I've mostly managed to avoid the horror stories which plague these pages. My most entertaining delay was coming back from Botswana to South Africa. The charter flight back had vanished, and my wife and I were stuck in the tiny Botswanan airport. We had actually traversed Immigration by the time we found out our flight was cancelled, so we had to be readmitted to the country. Immigration Control was a tad on the lax side, so we kept wandering back out to the departure "lounge" to see whether a new plane had miraculously appeared. We didn't initially realize that, each time we did so, we were leaving Botswana and therefore in violation of our tourist visas. Eventually we were stopped and asked to stay in the main airport lobby. Finally, it became clear that no airplane was going to materialize, and we were sent by taxi to a five-star hotel, where we made moderate use of the minibar.
It should be noted as well that my wife was the terror of the Botswanan airport staff. She doesn't cope well with flight delays at the best of times, and we had a flight to Ethiopia the next day, so she was demanding frequent updates on our missing flight. Combined with the help of a fellow stranded traveler, I suspect that's why we landed the fancy accommodations.
The place I was contracting for was a joint venture between a Canadian commercial bank and a big US tech firm. Before leaving I asked if I needed any sort of work authorization and they said it was fine, I'd get all the paperwork when I arrived on site. I guess they forgot to mention that upon arriving in Toronto I should lie to customs and tell them I'm there on vacation, because when I told them I was there to work but didn't the proper paperwork yet I got shunted aside. I was able to call them and they talked to the customs officer and got things straightened out.
So the customs guy himself tells me to check the "not business purpose" or whatever it was checkbox on the form, to make it easy - based on the assurance it would be cleared up. He told me that I absolutely had to have the paperwork in order upon arriving next week or I would be sent back. I got the paperwork in order that week before I returned home, but I was annoyed they they expected me to lie, especially since they hadn't made that clear. I suppose I wouldn't have been too worried about in Canada (other than the possibility that if found out they could permanently bar me from working or even visiting there) but there's no way I'd be willing to do that in places that are less "nice" than Canada.
The following week I had my paperwork in hand and saw the same guy behind one of the desks so I made certain to get him. He remembered me and says "I take it from the smile on your face you have this straightened out?" Everything was in order and it was smooth sailing from then on.
Fortunately this gig was in 2000. I would not have wanted to fly across a border twice a week after 9/11, even to Canada!
Many years ago (early 90's) on a trip to HK my girlfriend (now wife) decided we quite fancied a day trip to China, sans-visa. We took the train to the land border and were directed into a small room with a few other waiting Chinese nationals and our passports disappeared for about 2 hours. Once I plucked up the courage to inquire at the window they were handed back without any complaint and had been stamped with the most splendidly intricate visa taking up the whole page! I hope I still have it somewhere.
My best story of a missed flight was turning up at LHR and handing over my passport. The check-in lady returned it to me and asked with an impressively straight-face if I had another passport. Opening it up to look at the photo page I realised it was my baby son's passport and no I didn't have another passport with me. Re-booked on the same flight the next day. Our second son was made that afternoon...
I was once booked into a hotel at a customer's site, where a head honcho for the customer had the same name as me. And was booked in to the same hotel. When I arrived at the hotel, they gave me a key, I left my stuff in the room, and then went to the site. At around midnight or so, work completed, we returned to the hotel in anticipation of returning on site at 6am to observe how things went after the changes we'd made the night before.
Had to wind down from the late night working with several drinks - I was young - and at something like 4am went up to the room to find that they key didn't work. Traipsed down to reception, they checked it / reset it (magnetic stripe), back up to the room, same thing. Back down again, got it figured out with reception who said that they'd moved me to a different room; evidently my namesake was asleep in the room that I'd been trying to enter. A couple of hours later and I'm back on site, still rather wobbly.
All things considered I'm glad that the screw up involved the key NOT working; I'm not sure if I ever met my namesake, but the trauma of doing so at 4am in the state that I was in would have taken a while to have turned into a funny story.
This may, or may not, have happened to a friend of mine:
In the dim and distant last century (Sep 1987),
it was felt that flying to Thailand from Oman would be cheaper then from UK.
So flights were arranged, leaving a suitable time for (redacted) to do the biz in Oman.
On arrival at immigration in sunny Muscat, what's that?
It's a VHS-C video camera, with tapes! Bugger, the tapes are not new + sealed.
"Those will have to be vetted by the Imams
IF you want to take them into country, (oo-err Mrs)
BUT they can be held in bond until you leave."
Thank you (deity of choice.)
To be continued:
Come the day to fly to Thailand, the job was as done as it could be, but "they" wanted me to stay on.
No, I'm going. Late flight, so we go to dinner at the swish restaurant in the airport. This is Muscat remember.
Get all the usual "Why don't you came and work for me" stuff. Nice dinner though.
Turns out, the tickets are for THE NEXT DAY!!! Double bugger.
Back to the hotel (only the 2nd best in Muscat, bummer.)
Next day in the exchange, so they were happier, but nowt to do.
Back to the airport that evening but no dinner this time. Double burger.
Needed a holiday after that.
As airport security x-ray machines are getting a lot of mentions in the comment section, I thought I'd recall one of my experiences at Manchester check-in.
I was carrying a full set of tools in a Peli case, which the check-in staff sent me to get screened at the oversize / special screening machine. Dumped the case onto the conveyor and waited whilst the security guy did his thing.
"Tools" he asked. Yep, I replied.
I could see the image on the display, so I casually asked how he knew what he was looking at. He replied "I've no idea, this is my first day on the job." Re-assuring it was not.
On another note, I found out that you can't fly gas soldering irons, even if totally empty of fuel. Officially, electric soldering irons require a note from the head of the respective airlines security team, although why I'm not sure. It's not like I'm going to scramble into the hold and find a UK AC outlet to plug it into.
