This was a conversation I had this morning:

Swedish Manager: “I was very hopeful we would sign a contract with them, but the guy we were dealing with hit a moose”.
SK: “Excuse me?”
Swedish Manager: “He was out driving and he crashed into a Moose on the road. He was in hospital for some time.”

Apparently this is a major problem here.

Notwithstanding my last post, I was a little miffed to have my flight delayed last night. This time it was the fault of the Ryder cup. The pilot said they were delayed landing and getting a departure slot because that there was a lot of extra traffic leaving the airport. He blamed “the golf competition”.

I got the impression that he is not a golf fan.

No shortage of golfers in the airport though. And many of them were loading their clubs onto planes as well. I guess from that point of view Bord Failte will be happy.

I am to be in the US next week. I wouldn’t dream of gloating about the victory because Laura would kill me. We are supposed to be magnanimous in victory, and she will (quite rightly) point out that as someone with no interest in the sport I have not earned the right to share in its glories.

Ah well. I am sure Munster will beat a US rugby team at some stage in the future.

When you travel a lot an occasional problem is flight delays that screw up your connections and travel plans. I got caught (again) yesterday when I was trying to get home from Stockholm. I was to come back through Oslo. However my flight was delayed so it would not leave until after the second leg had already departed.

The important thing in situations like this is to approach it with the right attitude. You have very little control or influence over what happened, and completing the journey depends on the help of others. So getting worked up and angry is not going to help and may make things worse. You have to just accept that occasional delays are part and parcel of air travel and make the best of what has happened.

This isn’t to say that you just act like a sheep and let airlines screw you over. I still keep an eye out for my rights and I make sure I get what I am entitled to. But I hate to see frustrated travellers giving abuse or getting ratty with airline staff. And when you see or hear someone in an airport moaning about delays you have to ask does it help them in anyway? The polite good natured approach got me a free meal on one of my legs even though I was in economy class. You can be sure that if I was giving grief to the crew I would have gone hungry.

As it was, instead of going through Oslo I found myself going through Heathrow, unquestionably the worst airport in the developed world. And one that can give many in the developing world a run for their money as well. To be fair the security situation there was not as bad as I had feared. I was lucky I guess that they increased the allowed bag size yesterday. But they were making people take off their shoes for the x-ray machine.

I had to feel sorry for the screening staff though. they are required to pat down 1 in 4 passengers at the moment. Heathrow was a sauna (as usual), and you could see loads of people who’s clothes were soaked through with sweat. Added to the stink of sweaty feet and I can tell you its a job you couldn’t pay me to do!

The one thing that made the delays more bearable was my Star Alliance Gold card. I was able to get onto the plane first in London, just after the “passengers needing special assistance”. It also got me into the air conditioned BMI lounge there, giving blessed relief from the sweltering public areas of the airport. And in Stockholm I got priority treatment from the SAS people when I needed to change my flights.

With the flight delays there was a queue for the three customer service people so it was “take a number and get in line”. Except the machine had a swipe slot on the side for my gold card. I was given a special ticket that was completely out of sequence with the ones everyone else was getting. When the counter rolled over I was the next person called.

Understandably this annoyed some people. I arrived at the window with ticket 10, as a lady and a man came up waving 423 and 424. I left it to the customer service agent to explain that as a gold card passenger I got priority treatment. As some one that has taken almost 60 flights already this year I am not going to apologise for that. I will (and have already) experienced more delayed flights this year than most people will in their lives. I think I can get little special treatment.

In the end by the time I got home, 4 hours late, my wife had left me and gone to her parents for the weekend. At the moment she prefers golf to her husband. *sigh*

I will be gone to the airport by the time she returns on Sunday so I don’t get to see her this weekend. Still next weekend is our first anniversary, and we have something special planned. We both know to make the most of the time that we do spend together. Even if that may mean sitting in an airport lounge somewhere waiting for a plane.

Could some terrorist organisation please try to take over an airplane in a plot involving a neck tie? Then airline security could over-react and ban the things. Thus giving grateful businessmen all over the world an excuse for leaving the throat chokers at hope.
—–
I used to think I was travelling a lot. Then the other week I heard one of my Swedish colleagues describe his time based in Asia-Pacific. He was spending 7 nights a month sleeping in Lufthansa planes!
—–
The mini skirt meeting: Long enough to cover the essentials, short enough to keep everyone’s attention. My favourite kind of meeting. I think 40 minutes is generally enough for most things.
—–
Be careful where you go topless sun bathing, Google may be watching. Then when the world finds you they will send a Dutch TV station around to have a chat.

I am in Stockholm again at the moment. I know it’s turned wintry at home, so I can enjoy the mild weather here. It’s about 18°C with a broken cloud sky (I don’t know who broke the clouds, I just know it wasn’t me). Pretty much like the weather we had earlier this month in Ireland. Of course the locals tell me this is uncharacteristic. It should be colder. And in the north they are already getting forecasts of rain with snow. Though it should be November before the snow reaches Stockholm.

You may have heard they just had an election here. Now the people I work with are mostly managers in the company, so it’s hardly a representative sample. But they were very glad that the old government was turfed out. There is a feeling that as they had been in government for over 60 of the last 85 years the country is a de facto one party state. So the change itself will be good.

The Swedish approach to electioneering is a little different to at home. They have election posters on all the lamp posts. But outside shopping centres or in the centre of Stockholm the political parties set up wooden garden sheds. These then were staffed all day with party activists ready to answer questions, hand out literature and at regular times during the day to make speeches. You would get small crowds (10 to 30 people) gathering to listen to the speakers talk. Personally I can’t wait for our turn next year. Now that I live in a house with a front door I am looking forward to baiting canvassers. Later on I will post the Party specific questions I will be asking.

On Tuesday I was in Denmark for a meeting in a town near to the German border. Two of the Swedes at the meeting chose to drive over the bridge and across Denmark to the meeting. The reason was for cheap booze. In Germany it’s less than half the price that it is in Sweden. In the morning before the meeting they nipped into Germany and bought some beer and wine. About 300 LITRES!!!! Their estate car was down on it’s shocks with the load.

Now like in the UK, the Swedish customs guys take a dim view of this. But pressure/advice from the EU means that they are supposed to let people through provided they can honestly state that what they have bought is for personal use. The two lads were telling us stories of friends that come over with a van and invites to a party or wedding as proof.

The Swedish government wasn’t going to let it go that easily though. What they do now is they weigh cars and vans coming into the country. If your booze laden transport is over it’s legal weight then they fine you for that instead. This has proved very effective. It is easy to spot a car loaded down to the road with alcohol. And even better, the fines for this are higher than the duty that would have to be paid on the drink anyway. Sneaky or what?

A few people here have wistfully hoped that the new government might change the rules on the sale of alcohol. But people really don’t think it will change much. So then next time you want to have a moan about alcohol prices in Ireland just think of Sweden where all off licences are state owned, a pint is over €5, and people will drive over 1000km to load up on tinnies!

I am an occasional crossword man. The Irish Times Simplex for preference. I suppose people tend to get comfortable with particular formats of crosswords and clues. Of course these days everyone is into Soduku. I would regularly see people playing it on planes.

I have tried it a few times, but frankly I don’t see the point. Maybe it’s because I am engineer by training. Soduku is about applying a simple set of numerical rules to a regular grid. Those rules means the solution yields to a methodological analysis, you apply the rules, calculate, reduce, extrapolate and scan the rows and columns for the answers that fall out.

Essentially the whole thing comes down to a form of repetitive number crunching. Eh, hang on. Isn’t that why we invented computers, to do repetitive number crunching? The sort of tedious, recurrent analysis is just what computers do well. So why is it that people are so keen to engage in a task that is rather dull, and frankly, poorly done by people?

I am sure all over the world right now, Computer science professors are making their students write simple programs to calculate answers to Soduku grids. Frankly I can’t understand why people would be so entertained with such a monotonous task.

With a crossword there is more of a need for the human touch. You can find sites with crossword answers, but it still needs to human to decide what is the correct answer. I would say that it is a parallel processing activity where you have to look at a number of “soft” linguistic factors to find the answer. Soduku with its simple mechanistic rules is a linear task, better suited to jazzed up calculators.

Still, it has to be said, it’s much better than reading Dan Browne books.

Years ago I heard the following summary of Christianity:

God has infinite mercy, and love and compassion. And if you don’t believe that then you are going to burn in hell forever.

I can’t remember who said it. But with apologies to them, in the same vein I give you:

Islam is a faith of peace. And we will slaughter any infidel that says otherwise.

Are Muslims the most thin skinned theists out there? (and yes I know it’s just one group of hot heads, not all Muslims)

If everyone is not careful maybe the Pope will call for another crusade to the “Holy Land”!

I am in Copenhagen today. Although I have to travel south for a meeting tomorrow. Because of the rural HQ of the customer it is taking 48 hours to do a 2 hour meeting. I would blame the out of the way location but then Dublin isn’t exactly the center of the universe.

The flights here was booked at short notice, last thing on Friday. I found myself on Westmoreland street this morning shouting into the phone to try and find out from our company travel desk exactly what airline I was booked with. All I knew was the rough time of the flight.

It did get me thinking as well that Westmoreland street (and O’Connell St) is poorly treated in our city. Its one of the few wide tree lined boulevards we have. But it is a smelly noisy, dirty, dump with every smoke belching diesel engine in the Dublin Bus fleet roaring down it all day long. If we drastically reduced the volume of traffic it could be one of the most pleasant thoroughfares in the city.

Out at the airport things were utterly hectic. It was reminiscent of the 06:00 flights to London on Monday morning. The security queues were as long as I have seen them in some time. What really annoyed me though was that I was blanked by two people I know in the space of 30 minutes.

One was a Partner in Accenture, and a former boss of mine. That’s fair enough that he refused to acknowledge me. They don’t have much loyalty to current employees let alone former ones. But the other person was a good friend in college. We said hello when in the security queue as we snaked past each other, but she ignored me every subsequent time we passed. I was a little disappointed at that. It is difficult enough maintaining your circle of friends when you travel as much as this at the best of times.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Jesus as he has been touring the world, putting in a load of personal appearances. Here is a short recent list: (From Boards)

http://www.nbc5.com/news/4618080/detail.html (Pennsylvania, as a damp stain)
http://www.nbc5.com/news/3968497/detail.html (Arizona, as a dental x-ray)
http://www.nbc5.com/news/4541162/detail.html (Texas, as some condensation)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv…n_page_id=1770 (Wisconsin, on an alligator)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv…n_page_id=1770 (California, as some chocolate. Why not a ‘sweet jesus’ too?)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv…n_page_id=1770 (Warwickshire UK, on a foetal scan)
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/9726…508232006&ts=H (California again, on a piece of wood)
http://www.lockportjournal.com/local…242231623.html (New York, on some more wood)

I wonder whether these people have heard of pareidolia?

Somewhere down the list of “Things to do before I die” I have had – eat a habanero chili. I sort of completed that one last night.

Habaneros (or Jabaneros) are hard enough to come by. Irish people just don’t seem to go for spicey food as our neighbours do. They are however the nastiest, spiciest natural pepper in the Capsicum family (hotter ones have been bred).

There is a scale for how spicy things are – the Scoville scale. The standard red or green chili comes in at about 1000 Scovile units. Tabasco is around 2500. A habanero can be between 100,000 and 350,000.

Laura and I spotted a packet of the beasts in Dunnes last weekend. And when I was away she made some hot chili with one. I think her intent was to poison me in order to get sole ownership of our house. She failed as I have a high tolerance for spicy food.

Her plan B was to turn the male ego against me. She had pureed the unused peppers and said I would not be able to eat some of the mix. Being a dumb guy (with one beer in me) I said bring it on. To add to the fun I was not allowed to take any beer for 5 minutes (capsaicin, the component that gives spicy food its kick is not soluble in water so you need to use alcohol or a high fat content liquid like milk or yogurt to dissipate it).

I took about a quarter teaspoon of the mix. The effects were, interesting. The initial taste was a bit soapy and then as the seeds and skins settled across my mouth the fire started. My mouth tingled, then burned. All sorts of odd sensations were originating in my mouth and seemed to be firing through my head. My nose didn’t run, but my eyes started to stream.

Laura was watching me and was sufficiently worried by the look on my face that she said I could have the beer after 2 minutes. I think she saw steam coming out my ears and thought I was going to have a heart attack. It doesn’t do to bring your (relatively) new husband into A&E after he collapsed from your cooking. But I stuck it out. I was probably trying to prove some dumb macho guy thing.

Around 3 minutes in my face felt flushed, my mouth was a raging inferno and my heart was racing. And that was about the height of things. After that the sensations started to fade. The overall blaze subsided leaving a few particularly persistent and stubborn fires to gradually burn themselves out around my mouth. By this time I had moved over into experiencing the capsaicin high where my body was pumping out the endorphins to dull the pain.

It was an interesting ride. But I am not sure how quick I would be to do it again. I really appreciated the beer and the two spoons of yogurt I had when my 5 minutes were up. Still it might make a good party piece to face someone down with a habanero paste challenge. But I don’t have to do this again. I can stop it whenever I want. Goddammit, has anyone out there got a chili? I need a hit now!!!!