Saturday, October 01, 2005

Tidbits

Friday afternoon in the back of a Super Shuttle crawling towards JFK and being navigated by possibly the most incompetent driver I've ever had the misfortune of hiring, I acquired a few useful nuggets of information from an American woman who has been living in Sweden for the past 5 years:

1.) If your Super Shuttle van is half an hour late, you can call the company to get authorization to hire a car service and be reimbursed for it.

2.) There's quite a demand for native English speakers in Sweden to do voice over work, which is her line of work.

3.) Icelandic Air sometimes offers free day-long layovers in Reykjavik for its passengers flying into Europe, which reminded me that I still have a $300 credit on Aer Lingus that has to be used by Feburary of next year.

Since I'm using up all my vacation days this year for my current trip to the Bay Area (I'm spending next week here in SF/Sacramento) and for Christmas when my sister and her family come to my parents' place in CT, I can't go anywhere for the rest of the year. Next year I'm planning to visit China for 3 weeks mainly to check out Tibet, which means I won't have any vacation days left to go anywhere else. Hmmm, decisions decisions. Maybe I should spend Christmas in Iceland instead of Connecticut? The Phallological Museum anyone?

BTW, JetBlue rocks. I was in such a cranky mood when I got on the plane because of the retarded shuttle driver, but watching The Daily Show on DirectTV totally pacified me. I didn't even mind the plane waiting on the runway for take off for more than 30 minutes. It was also a direct flight, which shaved at least 3 hours off the trip. In addition, I was seated next to the hottest girl on the plane. Too bad she was sleeping for most of the trip (her head drifted onto my shoulder a couple of times and I totally did not mind at all, haha) and watched The Fresh Prince of Bel Air near the end. I guess DirectTV can be a double-edged sword. The Indian dude sitting to the right of me was a total partier. Here's his exchange with the flight attendant:

Attendant: What would you like to drink sir? We have soda and juice.
Indian dude: Do you have any of the hard stuff?
A: Sure. What would you like?
ID: Give me a Scotch and a bottle of beer.
A: Sure. Which one do you want first?
ID [laughing]: Bring them on both.
A: Sorry sir, I can't do that. Which one would you like first?
ID: Ok, I will take the Scotch first then.

After he finished the Scotch, he ordered two more. Luckily, he didn't get plastered or obnoxious and seemed like a jolly good fellow. I like happy drunks anyways.