Random Pensées

Lessons learned in transit today

Sure is beautiful here in Guatemala today. The kids are out in the pool, splashing their grandparents and enjoying themselves immensely. So I decided to make myself scarce for a moment to give them all some time alone and what better way to occupy myself than sharing some of my newly learned lessons.

*Waking children up at 4:00 a.m. to go to the airport is an exercise fraught with hazard.

*Thanks to the nice Transportation Security Agency lady I now know that when zipping the suitcase closed, do it in such a way that the zipper pulls are as far from the handle as you can possibly place them. This deters thieves in the baggage handling area from doing a quick unzip and stick hand in move. She explained that if they have to search for the zippers, they are more likely to just move on the next bag. Now that the bags have to be unlocked, this is just damn good advice. I think of it as a reward for being nice to people and chatting. I bet a lot of people don't chat with this lady and therefore don't get this safety tip.

*There was an adhesive fake fly on the urinal wall in JFK, Terminal 4. I read that a Dutch company (and I read this years ago but I think it was in the NY Times) figured out that if you put the fly there, guys will aim at it and thus the amount of spillage on the floor is reduced by some percentage. As I perversely refused to pee on the fly today, I learned that I would have hated to be the guy responsible for measuring the amount of urine on the floor of the un-flied urinal v. the flied urinal. Some jobs, I realized, I would not be happy having.

*Finally, it's really kind of fun typing on a Norwegian keyboard. It has all these cool letters built right in: Ø; Æ; and, Å. That said, the Norwegian spell check will not be very helpful in checking this post. Win some, lose some.