Bragging

So I ran into a lot of old friends at the Novell Sales Meeting and of course I ran into a bunch of people I never really cared for, but you will have to figure out whom you are.  I was told that I have been derelict in my duties, or was it just a derelict, by not sending updates on my travels.   The reason is that I just haven’t had much to bitch about.   My worst trip sounds more like bragging than bitching.  My brother Bob once told me a story of how the guys at the bar would brag by bitching.  Some of you have done it.  When you say,  “ I can not believe it! Do you know how much tax I had to play on that trip to Hawaii?” or, “Can you believe the watch the company gave me showed up on my pay check as if it really cost $3,000 who pays retail for a Rolex.”

 

Paris

So let me join in.   I was over in Paris (kind of cool, but the place is full of French people).  I had to change my flight so I called my administrator  (also kind of cool and she is not French.) and had her move my flight and car to the last flight out of Paris.   Well we finished the meeting just a bit too late for the flight I was scheduled for, but now I had four hours to kill in Paris.  If I was with someone I cared about or even someone I was pretending to care about I could have walked along the river Seine but since I am just a business traveller and Paris is just another city kind of like Kansas City.  Well not exactly, no one thinks you are bragging if you tell them you where in Kansas City, of course the Account Managers in KC treat you as badly as the French.   Any way I try and get a taxi, but have flashbacks to being turned down by lady of the evening in Germany.  I long time ago and a completely different story which I refuse to tell to anyone unless they are buying the Scotch (and must be at least 21 year old Scotch, but the story is worth it) So the cab driver first refuses me and sends me to stand on a darkly lit Paris street corner (Sounds much cooler that it was, believe me) He finally decides that maybe he can over charge me enough to make it worth his while so motions me into the car.   I tell him that I want to go to the airport in my deepest Texas accent, since I have found if you can not speak the language always use a Texan accent it either amuses them or makes them feel sorry for you, I don’t know which.

 

You really should speak French when going to France

We are happily taking the long way to the airport. It is kind of nice when the cab drivers rip you off in Paris because you get to see a lot of the city.  Finally one hour and thirty minutes later we start getting close to the airport.  I believe I heard him swear when he saw the sign pointing to the airport since now even I know that a trip that took me thirty minutes during rush hour traffic shouldn’t take three times longer at 7:00pm.   He then turns to me and confirms that I want to go to Charles De Gaulle and not Orly. I am sure he was hoping that I would tell him the other airport and then we would get so spend more time together.   I told him, “Yes” that was the right airport by pointing to the sign.  He then asked me what terminal and since I had no idea since I flew in on Air France and my flight was changed to British Midland.   I was sure that there is no way in the world to communicate this to him so I tell him Terminal 2 by holding up two fingers, which might, by the way, be an obscene gesture in France.   He then tried to explain that he needed more information like 2A, 2B, 2C, or 2D unfortunately there is no way to do that with your fingers so I was pretty much out of luck. I tried talking to him in painfully bad German then finally settled on the tried and true method of just saying OK during a pause in his explanation.   This got a smile and an immediate OK in response.   We where both very happy, and I am sure both convinced that there was no way in hell I was going to end up at the right terminal.     After a rather long bus ride around the airport in which I got off and looked for the British Midland check-in at each stop (12 in all.)  I was still smiling since my formidable command of languages had again proven indispensable.  I lost my smile as soon as saw the counter.  Everyone was looking very unhappy and when I got up the front of the line I was told, “We have no reservation for you, you stupid American.”  I am not sure she said the stupid American part in English but we both understood it.    I got to stand in a few more lines, Air France to get permission to fly another airline and British Midland where I was again told that, “We have no reservation for you.”   I explained that we had already been though this and was told, “Well I don’t have time to fix other peoples stupid mistakes, here and then she hands me a business class ticket.”  (Kind of cool, but it is kind of late so not all that cool.)   I head off to the business lounge and remember that the business lounge will server me all the alcohol I that I can handle. Most of you know that I can handle a lot of alcohol since I have carried more than a few of you back to your rooms.   This may turn out to be all right.  

 

Sometimes they lie to you at airports

I get a beer and a red wine.  It is a long walk back to the bar and I want to get at least the start of a buzz before it gets much later.  I ask a very pretty girl across from me, “Is here free?” which is how you say it in German, but since I said it in English and I was in Paris, I think I scared her more than I impressed her.   She spent the next four hours pulling her dress back down.  I can never figure out why women wear skirts that you have to keep readjusting so we cannot see up them.  I was more uncomfortable about the whole thing than she was, but just barely.   I cannot leave since there is no place else to sit and a lot of other guys saw her predicament and desperately want sit in my chair.  My flight was supposed to leave at 9:25pm and it was now 9:20pm.   Being the international traveller that I am I was pretty sure it was going to be late, but since they were buying I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.   At around 11:30 I was pretty sure my flight was going to be delayed.  The monitor still optimistically showed that the flight would have an on-time departure of 9:20pm.   I was getting kind of tired and even all the free booze you can drink will only get you so far.  I finally got up to talked to the girl at the front desk at the risk of losing my coveted chair.  The girl at the front desk explained to me that since there was a time difference between Paris and London that this somehow allowed the airlines to post meaningless times.   You can leave Paris on the 9:25pm flight and be in London at 9:20pm which is kind of cool but I doubted even in my well lubricate condition that this would somehow allow a flight to leave Paris after midnight and arrive at 9:20pm in London.  I have never been that drunk.   Many of the other passengers where complaining by now and asking for food to be brought in. I really didn’t care since the lounge was well stocked with alcohol, little chocolates, and cookies.  I couldn’t think of what else I would want brought in and based on my experience with French cuisine was very afraid that they would bring in some sort of congealed pate of something from the inside of a goose.  The kind of things we throw down the garbage disposal.  On a side note, do you know what Europeans call a garbage disposal? The rubbish bin because they don’t need a garbage disposal since they eat things that we throw down ours.    Anything made from kidneys and vinegar comes to mind. 

 

 

I quietly go back to my seat, which was still free, because by now I am the crazed drunk American. I decided the only way to keep my seat was to play a sniper game on my computer and keep turning to the guy next to me and saying, “This game is not very realistic, I could never make a head shot beyond 700 meters, want to play?”   I felt bad about it, but it was a really comfortable chair.  

 

Sometimes people just want you to leave them alone.

About one in the morning, I get a call from my driver (I know that sounds like bragging but it is one in the morning.) He tells me that he will no longer be able to pick me up since I have been delay so long and now the airline has told him that my flight will not land until after 2:00am.   I tell the guy next to me (yes because it was 1 in the morning and I wanted to brag), “My driver just told me that we will not be leaving until after 2:00 am.”   He doesn’t seem to care, I think my headshot comments have backfired and I hope that he is not some CIO that I will have to call on later.   I am now stuck in Paris with only French money and no way of getting a cab home when I get to London. My driver has abandoned me and now I have to figure out how to get home.  I am not brave enough to call my wife and ask her to pick me up and any ways it is less than a three hour walk home so I would be better off walking.   To make a long story shorter, which by the way is never the object to this exercise but the plane I am on from Lisbon is getting close to home. So I got cash from a teller machine paid twice as much for a taxi as I would have for my car and then found out later that the car company charged me for the fare any ways since they said they waited for me.