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Whether or not you pay an excess relates to whether your insurance company can find someone else to pin it on & recover their costs. If the police get involved, there are also potential legalities involved in the need to identify the culprit. But the police aren’t interested in getting...

All modern (as in - last 30-odd years) cars I’ve seen have a window at the base of the windscreen where the VIN is stamped. Elsewhere too, different locations for different cars, but that under-windscreen location’s always been there when I’ve looked. Engine-number is a different identifier...

I once made the mistake of only taking the truck driver’s license details & number plates (prime mover & trailer). All were fake.

Sounds like those airlines aren’t seeing enough business funneled through Citibank to think it’s worth paying the kick-backs for a points-transfer agreement?

Flemish culture isn’t identical to Dutch culture, and in fact I think the Dutch have a similar reputation as portrayed in the Austin Powers movies in Belgium … but on occasion, I do have to double-check myself in not taking offence from a (not-related-in-any-way-to-me-trying-the-language)...

Maybe it's changed from 25yrs ago ... back then, they seemed happy when I tried (even though I failed) and then were happy to go with their perfect English. When I didn't try, and just assumed English, they (I think understandably) found it a bit rude .... I got the feeling that they were...

Hey I still wore onesies when I was in my mid to late 80’s as well!! Yeah the Walloons in Belgium were a lot more fun about asking me not to mangle French than the Flemish were about me not mangling Dutch … :) Having said that, my Flemish workmates also said something like “yeah we speak...

I was in Ghent for 3 months for work … every time I tried even the simplest pleasantry in Dutch (in shops, restaurants, coffee-shops, the office etc), I was told to stop mangling the language (in perfect English & in a much more polite fashion of course). :)

Actually … I think this is a bit harsh on those parts of the world (most of them) where staying alive requires you to stomp all over your nearby human, where they can’t stomp all over you first of course. It’s why I’m not that excited to visit the third world, I don’t want to observe people...

That was exactly what I had in mind, when I mentioned societal norms which make life better for everyone in that society. Situations & places where you’re expected to murder others in order to get served first are extremely unpleasant, not to mention inefficient.

Society has plenty of rules that make everyone’s lives better when followed, without there being actual laws! Queuing is another example.

The way it works is … we are Right Hand Drive, so by very definition they must be Wrong Hand Drive! I thought I hadn’t seen that one for a while! This vague recollection of travelators may have been before 1994 though. But I can’t find via Googling a solid history of upgrades to the domestic...

That’s fair. As I said, little experience, and only know what I saw. I’ve never even used a luggage trolley myself, I’ve only ever had wheels on the luggage &/or carry-on.

Changi, the airport which immediately sprang to mind when someone said something about travelators with luggage-trolleys. Why would people use them? This I can’t answer! But people certainly were. It’s probably the same reason the same people will do laps of the parking-spots within a 30...

Ah, this is due to my inexperience. Really the only one I could recall clearly was Changi, and even their PR shots (because I Googled to check I hadn't misremembered) have people with trolleys using them. The escalators in T2 at Sydney have bollards, which is a shame because in some ways it...

Whereas, as an old person, if I’m in a shopping-centre with a trolley that has the locks on the rear wheels and I encounter one of those, I lift the trolley so I can keep walking. :) I think that with airports it’s a tad unrealistic to expect everyone is going to be able to keep walking, and...

It’s fun watching Brits get annoyed in London … I noticed a few escalators that weren’t Underground that were signed such that you stand to the correct side. No wonder they’re confuddled!

This is probably the crux of it … there’s just no way to generalise in such a way as you know what the local rule is going to be! In Straya it always relates to the side we drive on (and yet adherence to the rule by locals is “patchy” at best) BUT in Japan it’s different from prefecture to...

I don’t think safety is the issue here - for me at least it’s more about comfort, convenience and removal of stress (for all).

Well … that’s a different issue … if it’s possible, it means the person who’s in the right lane getting in the way is the problem. I mean there are exceptions of course, but the norm is people too lazy to keep left because changing lanes is “too hard” (or they’ve decided they need to be Judge...