Category: Travel Page 7 of 29
Back in December of 2007, I posted about a proposed settlement for the Credit Card Foreign Transaction Fee class action suit. Â Members of the class had three options for recovery:
- take a straight $25 settlement if you traveled outside the US at least once in this period (and simply swear to that fact);
- get a somewhat larger settlement based on a declaration of how many total days you spent outside the US during that period (the settlement will be based on an estimated average figured out by the credit card companies and class action representatives); or
- provide a substantiated record of how much money you actually spent outside of the US during that period, and receive a refund of the fees actually charged.
Despite having have spent a substantial amount via credit cards in foreign currency over the years, I ended up just going for option 2. Â It just involved flipping through my passport and copying over the dates onto the claim form. Â As I noted in the comments to the original post, it had to be worth something, right? Â Well, almost 4 years later, I got my check.
$18.04.
I should have gone with Option A, eh?
(Also, if you submitted a claim? Â Watch your mail closely. Â It doesn’t look like a check at all. Â I nearly threw this one out.)
Talvin Singh, again:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ePlKJfWtaM[/youtube]
I came to Talvin Singh via Flight IC408.
It’s a staple, now.
I was terribly annoyed with Facebook, the other day, when it rejected my description for “Hometown” Â (Western Hemisphere, if you’re wondering). Â If I had to fill in one place, Fulda would compete for that spot:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69MFGMLIbKg[/youtube]
Really a wonderful little town. Â Went back in 2002. Â And will again.
As part of an oversight hearing in which the TSA was (quite properly) criticized for a wide array of wrong steps and misguided policies, Sen. Leahy (D-VT) revealed himself as someone who appreciates the right to take photos:
Leahy, an amateur photographer, also faulted TSA workers for telling travelers they can’t photograph checkpoints—including when they see a well-known senator being put through the process.
“I do provide amusement for people taking cell phone pictures of me until the TSA agent tells them there’s a law against taking photographs [of checkpoints]. Of course, there is no such law,” groused Leahy, who as Judiciary Committee chairman ought to know. “Maybe you’ll miss your plane because they’re annoyed that you want to protect your rights.”
Keep at it, Sen. Leahy.
This work, from Dominic Boudreault, is just phenomenal:
Go full screen, if you can.
(On Twitter, he notes that he used “a Canon 5D Mark II. Lenses were 14 2.8 II, 24 1.4 II, 135 2 and 70-200 2.8 II”).
Evening Landing at HKG (EWR-HKG flight)
Patrick Smith is – along with Glenn Greenwald – pretty much the only reason I visit Salon.com these days. And it’s for columns like this:
In a way, choosing a favorite airport is akin to choosing a favorite hospital: Conveniences and accouterments aside, nobody really wants to be there in the first place, and the easier and faster you can get the hell out, the better. Which brings us to HKG’s most impressive and appealing feature: its rail connection to the city. The sleek, high-speed Airport Express train is literally only steps from the arrival and departure halls.
Now, let’s put aside for a moment that I don’t agree with that at all. The first part, I mean. But the second, man, it just boggles me that Dulles is still years away from getting a rail link to Washington.* Â And I am *completely* onboard with his BOS disdain:
Compare the best of Asia with, for example, my hometown airport, Boston-Logan. My commute to the airport by public transportation takes almost an hour and requires two changes, including a ride on the Silver Line bus, which, in addition to being at the mercy of automobile traffic, requires, at one point, that the driver step out and manually switch power sources to the bus.
Seriously, I spent at least 20 minutes looking for the entrance to the Silver Line at Logan, once. Â The signs said it was right in front of me, but there were just a bunch of (@#@#)( buses there. Â Christ. Â But to keep on the hatin’ theme:
Or how about JFK, where for hundreds of millions of dollars they finally got the AirTrain completed — an inter-terminal rail loop that can’t take you beyond the Queens subway. Heck, it can take 45 minutes, up and down a byzantine array of escalators, elevators and passageways, just to get from one terminal to another, let alone all the way to Manhattan.
I’ve done the the JFK-LGA transfer I don’t know how many times. Â And every time, in a $50-70 taxi ride. Â And not infrequently seeing the people that I’d been standing at the curb with at JFK alighting with me at LGA. Â Train line, anyone? Â Never mind getting to Manhattan (I understand helicopters aren’t entirely unreasonable). Â But here, too, Patrick has a comparison:
The distance from Shanghai airport to the city is about 20 miles — roughly the mileage from JFK to midtown. Shanghai’s bullet train covers this distance in seven minutes.
This is why the Chinese are beating the US!  Well, okay, not really.  And I even had to take a cab from the end of the line to my hotel in Shanghai.  But that seemed like the right thing to say.  And maybe it’s even kind of true, in the end.  The US can’t manage basic train connections from its international airpots to its effective capitol cities (IAD-DC, JFK-NYC), and  you can roll (levitate!) from PVG to Shanghai in 7 minutes.
It’s not all international roses, for sure:
To be fair, not every Asian terminal is so astoundingly convenient. Seoul, Bangkok and Taipei top a list of those without high-speed rail options.
My memory of Seoul? Â Well, I was 17 and had hair halfway down my back. Â Customs was, uh, interested in me. Â But my recent experience with Taipei’s airport certainly tracks his:
To top it off, everybody at Taoyuan was unfailingly polite, from the immigration officer to the man at the currency booth.
And isn’t this how it should be? In the end, an airport is more than just a place to kill time, more than an annoying conduit between ground and sky. It’s an expression, a gesture, a statement. It’s a welcome to, and a farewell from, the place you’re visiting or coming home to. In much of the world — not only Asia but throughout Europe as well — they have figured this out.
I am absolutely and completely onboard with his “in the end” thought. Â The idea that a significant international airport should well represent the country it’s a gateway to is the thing that keeps me railing against JFK (seriously, *that* is the first thing that people see when they arrive in the US?) and LAX (Just shoot it. Â Please.) while I’m in awe of YVR (Vancouver). Â Airports are amazing spaces for humanity. Â The US needs to do a better job of respecting and supporting that.
*Funny part: when I landed at HKG, it was the end of the longest flight I’ve ever been on – almost 17 hours from Newark. Â I stumbled to the car service, never once looking up. Â And on the way out, I was ten kinds of late, so ran through the terminal without once looking up. Â Yep, I somehow managed to retain zero memories about the biggest indoor space in the world, with the exception of some escalator that ended up taking me where I didn’t need to be (compounding the lateness). Â Well done!
This is quite something to see:
I’d love to match it up to a timelapse of a comparable period in ship-based travel in the early 1900s. It’s amazing (and mostly wonderful) how much easier humans have made global travel.
(via Waldo)
It’s been incredibly windy and bone-chillingly cold in DC for the past week. Â The warm and rainy place I’d rather be, at the moment:
Restaurant in Chihshang, Taiwan