16 April 2007
Quote:
"KASSIE"
We went to a sandwich shop for lunch on Thursday and at the till you had to say your name to be noted on the pick-up receipt. I stupidly said my real name, and even spelled it, but that was what my server made of it. We were pissing ourselves for days, and Craig is still laughing now! We've decided to change my name to Kassie for good.
Lost in America (part 1)
What an exhausting trip this has been -- and still is! The last 5 days have been like a fucking youth camp! Utter debauchery!
On Wednesday John and I left on our trip to Denver with Lufthansa. I realised that contrary to what I had believed the flight from Europe takes 11 hours! I had been thinking that because it's only "half way" across America it should be faster than the trip to Seattle, but of course the flight route is closer to the equator, so it is much longer than the short-cut route across Greenland. John was right about the in-flight entertainment, too - they have no individual TV screens, and only showed 2 flights: "The Holiday" which I watched, and the disgusting Penguin Feet animation which I didn't. It is actually pretty badly made, too, and the music is shite. The 2 overexcited ladies next to us however loved it and virtually howled with laughter. When they overheard me and John slagging off the movie they looked really upset. In front of us sat a real fat bastard. He was three times as fat as John, and ugly, too. He slammed his seat back and kept blocking the sight to the TV screens with his arms -- very annoying. Every time he moved in his seat we were worried it would break and crush us. The food was OK, even though they saved "chicken or pasta" twice. They always serve "chicken or pasta" on flights, and they always ask like that: Chicken or pasta? Like that means anything! "Pasta" could be "chicken pasta" as far as I am concerned.
Pete picked us up at Denver
airport and drove us to our hotel which was "in walking distance" to the
office. Gosh, everything is so WIDE there! They have so much space, it all
looks like wasteland, and I kept trying to find the "town", but there are
just lots of very wide, very long roads and huge, distant houses -- I just
couldn't find any town "center". You really need a car, or you cannot get
anywhere. And even with a car you cannot find anything because the
orientation is really difficult and they have no road signs. They do have
a great mountain view of the Rockies though. And prairie dogs, which are
so funny. They are those that stand up on the outlook all the time, and I
saw hundreds and hundreds along the road. John didn't manage to spot one
and kept denying their existence.
We went for a quick tour of the office and I said hello to Maureen. John
and I both got the impression that the people in the office didn't really
know why we were there, and we were joking that maybe they didn't even
know that the project would be handed over. As it later turned out we
weren't so far off the mark with that assumption...
Pete had invited John (I
don't think his invitation included me at the time) to have "a couple of
pints with some English lads", but we were too tired so John and I jut
went across the road to have dinner and a tequila in a Mexican family
restaurant. The next morning Pete picked us up at 7:45 -- he had to be in
the office at 8 for a call with Marc, so we had to come early, too. He
didn't really give us an option.
I had drawn up a rough schedule of training sessions that would keep us
busy for 2 days, with generous gaps in between the sessions. However
Maureen informed me straight away that they didn't really have much time
because they had "work to do". Yes, sure! I'll just pop over on a 15 hour
flight for fun! I moaned to John who immediately told Pete who sent poor
Maureen a bad email, and suddenly I had 4 hours of sessions scheduled in.
It wasn't really Maureen's fault -- the problem is that the 2 linguists
don't want to do the job! There are loads of political issues, and they
are pissed off and worried about their greencard applications etc. Not MY
fault either! I was just there to hand over the project. The analysts task
on that project are not even rocket science, we just need somebody to
support the translators. Rumour had it that Boulder was supposed to take
over the project from Monday! At the end of the week everybody was pissed
off, it was very stressful because there was so much pressure: They were
pissed off with the whole situation, Craig was pissed off because nobody
told him what was actually happening, John was pissed off because he
suddenly was asked to do a DTP training just because Emma wasn't
confirming that Alison would transfer, Emma was obviously pissed off with
something as well because her emails were getting right bitchy...
Thursday night it was the unspoken agreement that everybody would go out and get pissed. Paul took John, Craig, me, and Cetin and Mehmed to his favourite pub, and forced several pints on us before we ended up in a rather nice Italian restaurant. We must have been quite gone by then already because we made the poor waitress bring us one bottle of wine after the other to taste and never liked it! John ended up ordering a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape that cost 90 dollars or something! Paul was paying for everything! At the end of the night, a couple of whiskeys and shnappses later, John and I staggered back the two blocks to our hotel whilst the others actually DROVE home. It's outrageous! Because you have to drive to get to the pub everybody finds it acceptable to drive pissed. But ordering a taxi is also not an option because they never come! Paul tried for 2 hours, but nobody turned up. They are just not bothered! I wonder how they make any money? It is bizarre...
The whole Colorado region was in great excitement because a huge snow storm had been forecast for Friday and Saturday. They get a lot of snow there, but as good as no rain. Fortunately the snow was supposed to be gone by Sunday when I was flying out to Canada. On Friday however there was no sign of snow, only very small and few flakes flying around and the weather people claimed the snow had "missed us" and moved on to the South instead. Meanwhile in the South East of the country they had tornado warnings, and a storm was brewing on the East coast which was supposed to make its way up North. That was worrying because I was flying through that region on Sunday night.
The same pub-crawl procedure
as on Thursday would have to be repeated on Friday night, only on a
greater scale. Pete and Derek were joining us, and we went pub crawling in
downtown Denver. Because it was a "boys' night out" we couldn't have any
food (?). I didn't mind because I was still feeling quite hung-over and
sick in the stomach anyway. I started with the "April Special" which
turned out to be pure Tequila. Fair enough. After that the drinking slowly
stopped making me sick...
If Craig hadn't pointed it out I wouldn't even have noticed that I was the
only woman. I quite enjoy going out with men, they are less fussy. We went
to various pubs and bars, played pool and darts, and eventually ended up
in some Irish pub where smoking was allowed, which was essential for Paul,
so we stayed there for 8 or so rounds. We must have all been very pissed,
because I can only remember bits and pieces of the conversation which seem
very odd. I do remember discussing my "George obsession" with Pete and
saying "I can't tell you why! I can't tell you why!" a lot and feeling a
right lunatic. We also discussed religion and sex -- apparently everybody
would rather shag me than go to heaven (?) -- and it turned out that Pete
knows what Paul King is doing nowadays!!! It's a small world!
It still feels very odd to be doing that kind of thing with my absolute
superiors. The guys that have the power to sign off my extra-long
holidays!
I can't even remember how, but we somehow ended up in an Egyptian
fast-food restaurant and I was eating foul. Cetin had miraculously
appeared in the pub and was driving us all back to Boulder. I think John
was actually falling asleep at the restaurant table. When we finally made
it back to the hotel it was past 3AM, and the last thing I heard was John
confirming that Pete would pick us up the next day at 2PM to drive to a
hippy town in the mountains. You can't get rid of him! LOL
Craig came over to our hotel
the next day, too, and Pete drove us to Nederlands. It was very nice
because we got to see some of the scenery. The weather was absolutely
stunning - blue sky, sun, and warm. Denver has 300something days of
sunshine a year, more than San Francisco.
We had lunch in a hippy place and went for a very brief walk around the
town. Then Pete dropped us off back at the hotel only to come back to take
us out to dinner in Boulder 2 hours later again! I turned into another pub
crawl, but by then I was so sick of the taste of Bud Light (and still
hungover) that I basically didn't drink and stayed relatively sober. There
were more young people around, mainly students, and most of them very
drunk. I was surprised how much the scene resembled England: how little
the girls were wearing. In the end I said I would rather go back to the
hotel than to another bar, risking to be a spoil-sport. But if I hadn't
said anything, John -- who I new was knackered -- would never have been
able to admit he wanted to go back, too, and we would have had to go on
forever. Pete had to play football at 9 in the morning, so I guess he
didn't mind too much.
John took off in the morning, and I checked out of the hotel at 12:00 and waited in the lobby for Craig. It was past 3PM before he finally came because he first had to pick up his car from where he had left it the night before, but he wasn't able to get a taxi and resigned to call Paul for help. Paul, Craig and I then went downtown "historic" Louisville and had a pub lunch in the oldest place (110 years old). After that we drove to Paul's favourite pub. When we got out of the car in the parking lot Pete just happened to drive by. I was laughing because it was like "Hotel California" - you can never leave and are doomed to go out with the same people again, and again, and again. We had a couple of pints in the pub and played about 18 rounds of pool. Well, the others played and I randomly moved the balls around from time to time. Around 6PM we parted for another time and I went back to Craig's to kill the rest of the day.
I already knew that my flight was massively delayed due to the storm in the New York area. I was connecting at JFK and things were looking grim. When we checked again, the estimated departure time from Denver had moved from 12:55AM to 8:17AM! After an hour or so I finally managed to get through to my airline's help desk and spoke to a very kind and charming lady who unfortunately couldn't help me much. I would miss my connecting flight to Buffalo and there were no available seats from New York to Buffalo on any plane before Wednesday night! I wanted to take the first opportunity to get out of Denver to be at least in the "proximity" of Buffalo as soon as possible, so I didn't change or cancel my delayed flight hoping it would eventually still depart and not be cancelled in the last minute. Because all the Buffalo flights were full I re-booked my connecting flight to Rochester instead. It's a 2 hour drive away from Niagara Falls, so it might be better than nothing. Once at the airport I would try to still get a seat on a Buffalo flight.
It's really ridiculous -- I
seem to have bad luck with the weather a lot lately. I almost feel guilty
like I am pushing my luck and I deserve it because there's a lesson
there... but actually, I probably have "a lot" bad luck because I travel a
lot. There was no indication there winter would come back to the East
coast in late April, so I didn't book totally irresponsible flights. But
crazily enough -- I'm still loving it!
The latest shocking news is that there are 20ft of snow forecast for
Montreal! If that happens there is no way we can drive from Toronto to
Montreal and back on Thursday!
Craig and I went for dinner and then he drove me to the airport. He was flying out to Seattle the next day himself to meet MSDN with Emma. The nice man at the check-in confirmed that my flight was still scheduled to leave at 8AM and that because it was the actually delayed plane and not an "add-on" I should get a seat. He even knew my name and that I was going to Rochester. So I settled down for the night in the terminal. All the benches were taken so I just laid down on the floor. I must have gotten a few minutes of sleep because they had to wake me at 5AM because I was blocking the executive check-in line.
At 6AM nobody from the
airline showed up, and the flight departure got updated to 9AM, the
9:30AM. When finally somebody turned up they were able to re-book me back
on a Buffalo flight at 8PM, but said they couldn't guarantee that any of
the flight would actually depart. I decided I would still rather have an
un-guaranteed flight to Buffalo then an un-guaranteed flight to Rochester.
After I had gone through security the estimated departure time had moved
back to 10:30AM. It's like in a nightmare... At least there was a plane
parked, ready to go -- once that storm in New York subsided. Bloody city!
They always have terrible weather, why build such an important airport in
such a stupid pace? Thinking about it -- why build New York at all, it's
nothing but trouble! LOL
(to be continued...)
Why
can't they switch off those automated announcements at airports once all
check-in activities have been suspended? It's bloody annoying if you're
trying to sleep!
Still Denver International Airport should get at least 8 out of 10 on the
"sleeping at airports" scale. And it's quite pretty, too.
Nederlands
Nederlands
...tired...
...tired...and waiting...
