- Joined
- Aug 26, 2010
- Posts
- 5,645
Prologue
Now is the winter of my discontent, with no glorious summer anywhere to be seen.
I’m here again! Another overseas business trip, and one I could well do without. Part of me is really quite envious of the professional soldier, perhaps not the modern soldier, more the pioneering military man of the Victorian era. At least he, I fear there were no she’s in the army then, got to shoot the new people he met and didn’t like.
Alas I get to make small talk with the new people I meet and don’t like....in fact it is worse than that, I have to pretend to like them. I’m not good at small talk either, the conversation usually degenerates into feeble chatter about the weather, whilst my mind constantly questions itself about how I ever found myself in this situation and wonders what the latest score in the Test Match is.
My boss, you remember, small guy, good sense of humour, flies Y a lot, decided it would be useful, for whom I have no idea, if I could make a support trip to Brazil. :shock: I had managed to avoid such a thing under his predecessor, it all seemed like such hard work. It was bad enough having to visit the USA, but Brazil? I bet you can’t drink the tap water. I wonder what their chips will be like?
Foolishly I thought I could avoid this by explaining that it was a very difficult trip to make from Australia, and for the sake of my physical and mental health I would only make such a perilous journey in J.....and this would be incredibly expensive. He said “yes, no problems”. :shock: Once again I found myself less than prepared for one of his responses.
Some of you intrepid traveler folks are probably salivating at the prospect of a trip to Brazil, in J, paid for by someone else. Not me! I don’t speak Portuguese, I do enjoy basic comforts like potable tap water and English Language TV, and don’t particularly enjoy traveling in countries where 50,000 people are murdered every year. :shock: To make matters worse, other than the flights everything else is being organised by a third party. It’s worse than having a PA.
I have noticed from the trip reports here that the AFF intrepid traveler gets to visit museums, beaches and natural wonders, I get to go to offices, nuclear reprocessing facilities, automotive manufacturing plants and the industrial wastelands of the resource sector. Please do spare a thought for me on your next holiday, I’ll probably be dodging a coal shovel in China!!
Getting out of this trip was going to be a non starter, so I resigned myself to the prospect of being kidnapped in Sao Paulo with little prospect of my company paying the ransom. I did wonder if that was my boss’s intent.:?: (I also wondered if the insurance that Amex offers with the Platinum Charge card covers kidnapping and ransom?)
How on earth was I even going to get to Brazil. My only previous foray into South America was to Buenos Aires and that was with LAN via Auckland and Santiago. (Buenos Aires was actually not unpleasant, and what larks my colleagues and I had colouring in Las Malvinas pink on all of the maps we saw.)
The Qantas booking website was not just horrifically expensive it also gave me very limited options. I was in a difficult position, if I put something in that was this expensive I risked my boss looking up flights on the interweb and suggesting something a bit “non oneworldy”. I’d probably finish up flying Scaryteam via some godforsaken hell hole. I could just see myself trying to make a connection to Kenya Airways in Nairobi having flown in Aeroflot. This thought led to a spurt of energy driving me to get my booking sorted out.
I finished up on bestflights.com.au, after lan.com just kept dying on me, and struggled with the routing. LAN would give me more SC’s, but QF to Buenos Aires with a TAM connection to Sao Paulo would give me more miles. (Status bonus) The LAN SC’s would not be QF SC’s and that might come back to bite me later in the year. (I have a distant, some may say far fetched, dream of reaching Platinum One...but that is a whole other story.)
QF17 it was, with a connecting flight from MEL to SYD and then a TAM flight sold as LAN from EZE to GRU. I also knew that QF17 was a four class 747 but the flight was sold as 3 class. If ever there was a flight to grab an F seat on, with J service, it was this one..... apart, of course, from the DFW flights that seem to take a couple of weeks to get from DFW to BNE.........even after chucking a few pax off the plane. (QF18 back to Sydney is 14 hours 55 mins!!) Seat 1A both ways would do very nicely.
The hotel and airport transfers were outside of my control! Please god don’t book me into a “boutique” hotel. (Just what does “boutique” mean when it comes to hotels?) Hopefully I’ll be collected by someone who doesn’t want to drive to an ATM and empty my bank account, or worse try to extort any sort of ransom for me.
This whole TAM/LAN codeshare has made me quite nervous. No points or SC’s for starters! The lounge arrangements don’t look promising either. A little research over at Flyertalk has done little to improve my expectations at EZE on my outward journey. The return journey has a few more “knowns” but I am hardly salivating at the prospect of the Admirals Club having previously visited it in 2007.
I know that TAM has a 5 KG, per bag, rule for carry on within Brazil but I do wonder if this will effect my EXE-GRU flight? I certainly do not want to check in any luggage. A little research over at Flyertalk, again, makes me feel a fraction more confident. The chances of getting my carry on down to 5KG per bag are not good.
When it comes to travel I alternate between laid back and obsessive compulsive. The obsessive compulsive aspect kicks in when I’m not arranging parts of the trip. Will the hotel have a laundry service, or better still washing machines and dryers? I’ll have to prepare for the worst. The prospect of washing my underwear and socks in the bathroom sink does not fill me with joy. (Will I even have a bathroom?)
....in the next, less than gripping, installment Tony gets some unexpected news :shock: and sets about packing to cover all eventualities.
.....and travel is in less than two weeks!:shock:
Now is the winter of my discontent, with no glorious summer anywhere to be seen.
I’m here again! Another overseas business trip, and one I could well do without. Part of me is really quite envious of the professional soldier, perhaps not the modern soldier, more the pioneering military man of the Victorian era. At least he, I fear there were no she’s in the army then, got to shoot the new people he met and didn’t like.
Alas I get to make small talk with the new people I meet and don’t like....in fact it is worse than that, I have to pretend to like them. I’m not good at small talk either, the conversation usually degenerates into feeble chatter about the weather, whilst my mind constantly questions itself about how I ever found myself in this situation and wonders what the latest score in the Test Match is.
My boss, you remember, small guy, good sense of humour, flies Y a lot, decided it would be useful, for whom I have no idea, if I could make a support trip to Brazil. :shock: I had managed to avoid such a thing under his predecessor, it all seemed like such hard work. It was bad enough having to visit the USA, but Brazil? I bet you can’t drink the tap water. I wonder what their chips will be like?
Foolishly I thought I could avoid this by explaining that it was a very difficult trip to make from Australia, and for the sake of my physical and mental health I would only make such a perilous journey in J.....and this would be incredibly expensive. He said “yes, no problems”. :shock: Once again I found myself less than prepared for one of his responses.
Some of you intrepid traveler folks are probably salivating at the prospect of a trip to Brazil, in J, paid for by someone else. Not me! I don’t speak Portuguese, I do enjoy basic comforts like potable tap water and English Language TV, and don’t particularly enjoy traveling in countries where 50,000 people are murdered every year. :shock: To make matters worse, other than the flights everything else is being organised by a third party. It’s worse than having a PA.
I have noticed from the trip reports here that the AFF intrepid traveler gets to visit museums, beaches and natural wonders, I get to go to offices, nuclear reprocessing facilities, automotive manufacturing plants and the industrial wastelands of the resource sector. Please do spare a thought for me on your next holiday, I’ll probably be dodging a coal shovel in China!!
Getting out of this trip was going to be a non starter, so I resigned myself to the prospect of being kidnapped in Sao Paulo with little prospect of my company paying the ransom. I did wonder if that was my boss’s intent.:?: (I also wondered if the insurance that Amex offers with the Platinum Charge card covers kidnapping and ransom?)
How on earth was I even going to get to Brazil. My only previous foray into South America was to Buenos Aires and that was with LAN via Auckland and Santiago. (Buenos Aires was actually not unpleasant, and what larks my colleagues and I had colouring in Las Malvinas pink on all of the maps we saw.
)The Qantas booking website was not just horrifically expensive it also gave me very limited options. I was in a difficult position, if I put something in that was this expensive I risked my boss looking up flights on the interweb and suggesting something a bit “non oneworldy”. I’d probably finish up flying Scaryteam via some godforsaken hell hole. I could just see myself trying to make a connection to Kenya Airways in Nairobi having flown in Aeroflot. This thought led to a spurt of energy driving me to get my booking sorted out.
I finished up on bestflights.com.au, after lan.com just kept dying on me, and struggled with the routing. LAN would give me more SC’s, but QF to Buenos Aires with a TAM connection to Sao Paulo would give me more miles. (Status bonus) The LAN SC’s would not be QF SC’s and that might come back to bite me later in the year. (I have a distant, some may say far fetched, dream of reaching Platinum One...but that is a whole other story.)
QF17 it was, with a connecting flight from MEL to SYD and then a TAM flight sold as LAN from EZE to GRU. I also knew that QF17 was a four class 747 but the flight was sold as 3 class. If ever there was a flight to grab an F seat on, with J service, it was this one..... apart, of course, from the DFW flights that seem to take a couple of weeks to get from DFW to BNE.........even after chucking a few pax off the plane. (QF18 back to Sydney is 14 hours 55 mins!!) Seat 1A both ways would do very nicely.
The hotel and airport transfers were outside of my control! Please god don’t book me into a “boutique” hotel. (Just what does “boutique” mean when it comes to hotels?) Hopefully I’ll be collected by someone who doesn’t want to drive to an ATM and empty my bank account, or worse try to extort any sort of ransom for me.
This whole TAM/LAN codeshare has made me quite nervous. No points or SC’s for starters! The lounge arrangements don’t look promising either. A little research over at Flyertalk has done little to improve my expectations at EZE on my outward journey. The return journey has a few more “knowns” but I am hardly salivating at the prospect of the Admirals Club having previously visited it in 2007.
I know that TAM has a 5 KG, per bag, rule for carry on within Brazil but I do wonder if this will effect my EXE-GRU flight? I certainly do not want to check in any luggage. A little research over at Flyertalk, again, makes me feel a fraction more confident. The chances of getting my carry on down to 5KG per bag are not good.
When it comes to travel I alternate between laid back and obsessive compulsive. The obsessive compulsive aspect kicks in when I’m not arranging parts of the trip. Will the hotel have a laundry service, or better still washing machines and dryers? I’ll have to prepare for the worst. The prospect of washing my underwear and socks in the bathroom sink does not fill me with joy. (Will I even have a bathroom?)
....in the next, less than gripping, installment Tony gets some unexpected news :shock: and sets about packing to cover all eventualities.
.....and travel is in less than two weeks!:shock:
