I don't get out much, do I?

[desperance]

I just booked my flights & hotel for P-con in Dublin at the end of March.

Which is not particularly remarkable, perhaps, except that it's the first time I've ever booked flights online.

Which in itself is not perhaps remarkable, except as a measure of how long it's been since I flew anywhere. Last time I bought tickets to fly, I bought them in a shop. One did. It might perhaps have been possible to do it through the 'net, but it certainly wasn't common practice.

I came to travelling late, and awkwardly: only left the country once in my twenties and a couple of times in my thirties, not enough to get comfortable with airports and such. I've never been good at the whole holiday thing: I lacked both the money and the confidence to be an independent wanderer, and I didn't often have someone else demanding that we go away. So the trips I have taken have been business-based one way or another (conferences or conventions, mostly, with a few days extra to nose around once I was there), and they've been few and far between.

Just for a little while in my early forties, I was starting to think of myself as a travelling man: went to Taiwan twice and to Korea and to Montreal in swiftish succession, and became quite blasé about it all.

Only then I let it slip again, for lack of money or opportunity; and now I find I'm nervous again. Not of the flying, I like being on planes (that sense of being locked in with no alternative, nothing to do but pass the time, food and books and movies: I love that; which is why in a strange way I liked being ill in hospital too, apart from the pain and so forth), but the process either side of the flight I really do not like at all. Okay, I suppose nobody much does, however well they speak airport; but me, I just go in constant anxiety of doing the wrong thing. (One of these days I'll tell you about me in Tel Aviv airport, and the very small woman with the very big gun; but not perhaps today.)

However. Tickets booked - or rather, flights booked. Ticketless flights. Weird. I stop flying for a few years, and suddenly everything's changed. No wonder I'm nervous, with a new process to learn...

Never mind. Let's speak of something else. Is there any harm in orange-pips, do you suppose? I took it off him, but only because it was so slippery it positively spat itself out of his mouth when he was trying his very best to swallow it. Why a cat (and yes, you know which cat I mean) should want to eat an orange-pip I cannot imagine, but he was quite set on it. Me, I envisioned it getting stuck in his stupid purry gullet, for all its slipperiness, and so I denied it him, but he wasn't happy.

Also: is it actually possible to burn cholera out of a village, do you suppose? I just watched an extremely stupid and irritating film, in which John Wayne did this to the ignorant and ungrateful Japanese, he burned down their entire village for their own good; but as cholera is conveyed in water, I wasn't entirely sure it would prove effective...

Comments

[cherylmmorgan.livejournal.com]

See you in Dublin! :-)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! Excellent...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Airports are the end, and airlines will put one over on you if they possibly can, but if one obeys all the rules, one at lest has the moral high ground. Or something.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

To be sure; it's just the not knowing exactly what you're supposed to do in any circumstance that frazzles me. There doesn't seem to be a published book of rules, damn it. Detailed instructions to cover every eventuality, that's what I want. Grammar and vocabulary.

[ellarien]

Some of the airport websites have fairly detailed instructions; also, the major rules are prominently signposted in the airports. The main things to remember are the liquids rule and the relevant airport's restrictions on hand baggage. Some of the smaller ones are still strictly One Bag after the 2006 kerfuffle, and everywhere limits liquids/goop in cabin baggage to 100ml bottles in one smallish (A5 size, I think, in Euro terms) resealable plastic bag, to be produced at security. Whether they want laptops out and shoes off depends a bit on the locality and the phase of the moon, but I usually take the view that it doesn't hurt to do it anyway.

It's not as much fun as it used to be, but it's survivable if you don't take it personally.

[arkessian.livejournal.com]

Re cholera and the burning of villages, and the grasping of straws, I suppose it might make the population move away from the contaminated water supply...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It might, but that was not the purport. We were intended to believe that it would burn out the infection. I suppose burning fouled bedding and so forth would be a good idea, but that still seems peripheral to me, if you don't treat the water.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I too came to travelling late. Until Artisan started getting booked to America and Canada (and Australia) I'd never flown on a commercial airliner (my dad was a light aircraft pilot - but it's Not The Same thing). Then between 1994 and 2008 I did 31 tours to America, Canada and (one) to Australia/Hong Kong, with many more internal flights on top of the transatlantics and three or four shorter tours to Germany. I've completely lost track of the number of takeoffs and landings. I can say I'm not all that bad with airports now, though they are still not my favourite places.

It was Dulles airport (Washington DC) where they had a sign up at Immigration that said: Please do not make jokes, we have no sense of humour. Unwritten but equally obvious was the missing phrase: And we have Very Big Guns.

I still tend not to travel for pleasure, though. All the tours have been because we were being paid to go. We did manager to do quite a bit of sightseeing though. (Niagara Falls is A OK, but we still haven't seen the Grand Canyon.)

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

is it actually possible to burn cholera out of a village, do you suppose?

There for a while the Hudson River in New York was so polluted that patches of chemical-soaked refuse would catch on fire, so maybe. Or if you were a wizard that could burn water. . .

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Not a wizard, alas: Consul-General of the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townsend_Harris), in this instance.

Mongolian Sanitation Projects

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

Ah! The Consul General was from New York. That explains it all. John Wayne was also Gengis Kahn. He probably got to burn down some villages in that movie too, rendering much of Asia village if not cholera free.

[lagilman]

I once, when traveling for the first time to Israel, made a Joke. They were Not Amused. Thankfully, I was a pre-teen American girlchild, so they assumed ignorance rather than malice.

Have state-issue photo i.d. and a print-out of your e-ticket confirmation in case there's a problem, and you'll be fine. Carrying the credit card you charged the ticket with is also helpful. otherwise, air travel's really quite simple: show up early, be prepared to be bored, and don't expect any food offered to you to be edible.
-------------------------

Citrus is bad for cats, isn't it? I suspect the pips would be a bad idea, in any case.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Carrying the credit card you charged the ticket with is also helpful.

See now, that's the sort of thing they do not tell you. Thank you!

Re citrus, I don't know if it's actively bad for them; I do know that they're not supposed to like it. Mac, of course, goes nom-nom-nom.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Mac is a garbage pail, let's face it!

It is handy to have the credit card you charged the ticket on with you, but not necessary. It is, on the other hand, a Really Good Idea to have a printed copy of your e-ticket receipt from the airline (or wherever you booked it) to show if there's any question. I have to say in my many years of traveling I have only once had to show my ticket receipt. The electronic ticketing thing works extremely well.

P-Con sounds delightful. I have heard such good things about it.

[frumpo.livejournal.com]

Try to get everything in your hand luggage if you can - it saves a lots of hanging around and they can't lose your bag.
Make sure you can get at your clear-bag-of-liquids and laptop easily. Belts with large buckles will need putting through the X-ray machine so you might as well put it in a pocket of your bag along with your lose change etc. while you're queueing. No knives, aerosols, etc.
I think power sockets are the same as the UK.
24 hours before your flight, you may be able to check-in online and choose your seat. Who are you flying with?
If you've got an ATM card then you should be able to withdraw Euros once you arrive at Dublin airport.
I've not been in Dublin for a while but I don't think there's a train connection so check out your bus timetables, etc. on the web before you leave.

[jemck.livejournal.com]

When do you arrive in Dublin? Coz if I can arrange to arrive at a similar time, we can do the travelling into the city routine together. And yes, Uk plugs and appliances work fine in the Republic of Ireland.

P-Con is indeed delightful and worth the trip every time, in my experience of 100% attendance :-)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

What she said!

We've attended every PCon to date, and even have a print of the logo (a delightful design by feorag) on our wall downstairs.

[slovobooks.livejournal.com]

I also speak well of P-Con. I could be seen as having a bias there, of course, having set it up and run it for the first three years. But still.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I don't get in till 15.40; how's about you?

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I am so looking forward to meeting you IRL! YAY!

[lagilman]

*sulks* *shoves passport into safe so it can't taunt her*

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah g'wan, go mad. Come... *lures*

[lagilman]

Alas, I am having my kitchen renovated. That trumps most travel this half-year....

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hey, if you came all the way over here, you could have my kitchen renovated instead...?

[lagilman]

I'm not sure my contractor travels that far, but if he does, I will gleefully bring him to you.

Payment you've got to manage on your own, sorry. Am not Ms. NYT Bestseller. Yet.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Oh, darn. I was going to remove the passport so it would taunt you, but yeah, the kitchen, that's kind of a Thing. :)

[lagilman]

Next year. You guys have full permission to taunt and shove, next year.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*makes a note of that* :)

[slovobooks.livejournal.com]

I can assure you he's as lovely as you imagine he is, Catie.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's the trouble with all this interdimensional travel: one carries disappointment with one like a curse. I'm terribly dull in the too-too-solid, y'know. All my charm is artifice, and all my wit is worked up.

Mind, I can at least drink like a gentleman. That's something.

[slovobooks.livejournal.com]

I also look forward to seeing you on your arrival in our fair city. When are you arriving? There's a promise of a free tour of the Jameson Distillery from Niall Stewart, if you're here early. You too can have a whiskey taster certificate for your office wall...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, damn. If I'd known that, I'd have booked the stupidly-early flight with Ryanair. As it is, I'm coming in at 15.40...

[slovobooks.livejournal.com]

Well, what time are you flying out on Monday, then?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Pfft. 13.40. Add in all the time I need for being at the airport stupid-early, and it's not going to work at either end.

Next time...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'll buy you a drink when you.get here. :)

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

yeah - will see you there

:-)