Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Home, Thoughs on Airports
I'm home! I mean actual home, not Newport News home. There was no post last night because after I had dinner with my parents, I sacked out at 9 pm and slept for twelve hours. Knowing me, I'm not prepared to say this has any bearing at all on my jet lag.
It must be the most thankless job in the world to run an airport. It must be sort of like being a domestic servant - if you do your job well then nobody notices, but if you screw it up then all of a sudden people are screaming at you. I mean shamelessly, unreservedly screaming at you. Think of how hard it must be to coordinate thousands of flights each day, to make sure all those flights have the support they need to run on schedule, to make sure the hundreds of thousands of people on those flights know where they're supposed to be and when, that they have the right transportation and wheelchair and toddler assistance, to make sure those hundreds of thousands of people are distributed evenly throughout the airport and not stacked all at a few gates, and to make sure on top of all that that nobody does anything illegal or dangerous. No smuggling, no terrorism, no craziness, no importation of hoof and mouth disease, no theft. No pressure!
This is what you start thinking about when you spend more than 48 total hours in a week at airports / on airplanes.
So there were maybe two hundred people crowded around this tiny carousel at National airport yesterday after my last flight, and of course fifty of those people absolutely had to be right at the spot where the bags come out. This meant a lot of suited jerks pushing through each other and nearly clobbering each other in their attempts to manhandle their golf club cases off the carousel. This one huge guy decided he was too important to wait so he shouts "SCUSE ME SCUSE ME SCUSE ME SCUSE ME" and literally shoves his way to the front, towing behind his four year old daughter who, just so you know, was dressed like Snow White. Not that he had seen his bag or anything, he just wanted to be in front. So then one of the guys he'd shoved actually sees his bag and tries to do the same shoving-scuse-me move to get it, but accidentally gives the other guy's tiny little daughter a bump in the process. The other guy gets furious and starts yelling about how he was going to knock the other guy out for daring to touch his little girl ... I just moved well away from that nonsense and waited for the TSA people to rush out with their tasers, but they never came.
Welcome home!
I also wanted to mention, since I'm talking about airports, that if you find yourself in Hong Kong or Beijing airports and you want some gum or toothpaste or something before your twelve hour flight, you should probably get it beforehand. At the airport they don't sell things you might need on airplanes. They definitely have a lot of luxury stores. You can shop for $800 sunglasses or $2000 purses no problem, but if you want a neck pillow or earplugs you're out of luck. Just so you know.
Anyway, now I'm home and well-rested. Glad to see my parents and my sister. I guess tomorrow I'm headed back to work, just like this all never happened.
It must be the most thankless job in the world to run an airport. It must be sort of like being a domestic servant - if you do your job well then nobody notices, but if you screw it up then all of a sudden people are screaming at you. I mean shamelessly, unreservedly screaming at you. Think of how hard it must be to coordinate thousands of flights each day, to make sure all those flights have the support they need to run on schedule, to make sure the hundreds of thousands of people on those flights know where they're supposed to be and when, that they have the right transportation and wheelchair and toddler assistance, to make sure those hundreds of thousands of people are distributed evenly throughout the airport and not stacked all at a few gates, and to make sure on top of all that that nobody does anything illegal or dangerous. No smuggling, no terrorism, no craziness, no importation of hoof and mouth disease, no theft. No pressure!
This is what you start thinking about when you spend more than 48 total hours in a week at airports / on airplanes.
So there were maybe two hundred people crowded around this tiny carousel at National airport yesterday after my last flight, and of course fifty of those people absolutely had to be right at the spot where the bags come out. This meant a lot of suited jerks pushing through each other and nearly clobbering each other in their attempts to manhandle their golf club cases off the carousel. This one huge guy decided he was too important to wait so he shouts "SCUSE ME SCUSE ME SCUSE ME SCUSE ME" and literally shoves his way to the front, towing behind his four year old daughter who, just so you know, was dressed like Snow White. Not that he had seen his bag or anything, he just wanted to be in front. So then one of the guys he'd shoved actually sees his bag and tries to do the same shoving-scuse-me move to get it, but accidentally gives the other guy's tiny little daughter a bump in the process. The other guy gets furious and starts yelling about how he was going to knock the other guy out for daring to touch his little girl ... I just moved well away from that nonsense and waited for the TSA people to rush out with their tasers, but they never came.
Welcome home!
I also wanted to mention, since I'm talking about airports, that if you find yourself in Hong Kong or Beijing airports and you want some gum or toothpaste or something before your twelve hour flight, you should probably get it beforehand. At the airport they don't sell things you might need on airplanes. They definitely have a lot of luxury stores. You can shop for $800 sunglasses or $2000 purses no problem, but if you want a neck pillow or earplugs you're out of luck. Just so you know.
Anyway, now I'm home and well-rested. Glad to see my parents and my sister. I guess tomorrow I'm headed back to work, just like this all never happened.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Daniel Bowring
- Daniel is a grad student at UVA, working on his PhD at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, VA. His girlfriend lives in California. Daniel's work will take him to China this month, hence this web-log.