Jimmy's weblog

Since we last spoke I’ve moved from Tropical San Francisco to Snowy Stockholm via Absolutely F**king Freezing New York. I think I’m just about over cold weather and my sandals and I are now ready to hit a warmer part of the world.

My last few days in San Francisco were relatively quiet, what with having to actually attend a conference and all, and I didn’t meet any interesting characters to add to my list. The conference itself was pretty boring and I’d be seriously pissed off if I’d paid for it myself. If anyone from Apple is reading, please ignore the previous sentence - MacWorld was a once in a lifetime experience and I learnt more in three days than I’d picked up over the last three years.

The fun and excitement really started when I arrived at the airport to fly to New York. For anyone living outside the country, it’s hard to imagine how much the memory of September 11 still lives on in the US, perpetuated by politicians keen to take advantage of the terrorism fear factor to keep them in office (John Howard would be proud). As a result, television news programs are constantly filled with warnings about “imminent attacks from terrorists” and “detailed knowledge of planned terrorism campaigns” as well as the ridiculous colour-coded threat level warning. During my stay in the US, the threat level was orange, second only to red which hasn’t been seen since September 2001.

Nobody seems to mention the fact that there haven’t been any attacks in the US for nearly two and a half years…

My flight from San Francisco to New York left at 08:00 on a Saturday morning. The BART train system doesn’t start until about 06:15 on weekends and the first train arrives at San Francisco International Airport around 07:00. Despite the warnings to arrive three hours before domestic US flights, I thought one hour would be enough. It wasn’t, as I quickly realised when I saw the massive queues already starting to build up.

I joined the longest one (for paper based ticket holders) and after fifteen minutes hadn’t moved at all. I was a little concerned that by 07:20 I hadn’t moved much but figured I still had some time to figure out my options. Then I saw the sign. “All baggage must be completely checked in more than 45 minutes before scheduled departure time”. With 40 minutes until my flight left, my first though was “Shit”. As was my second.

To cut a long story short, I jumped out of the queue, tried unsuccessfully to sweet talk a female employee (memo to self: United Airlines employees are bitches), asked ten times to speak to her supervisor, pushed to the front of a line, found someone who checked in my baggage, and carried my checked in baggage to the ’special metal detector’ section where it was also hand searched. Then it was time to pass through security myself.

If you’re ever flying in the US and your boarding pass has “SSSS” on it, be afraid. Be very afraid. It means “The person holding this boarding pass is almost guaranteed to be a terrorist. They must be searched within an inch of their lives. Have the rubber gloves ready and use them in a threatening manner if required.” That took twenty minutes, leaving me to arrive at my gate with ten minutes to spare, and to be the last person to board the plane. Evidently my baggage was also the last to board the plane, as it was literally the first piece off in New York.

New York was a lot of fun and two days certainly wasn’t enough to do it justice. Despite the temperatures approaching -20C, I spent most of the two days walking around the city and could easily have spent another week there. Highlights included: the extremely cold weather!, the World Trade Center site, the massive B&H camera shop, Times Square, the designer shops along Madison Avenue, and of course spending a couple of hours walking through Central Park with Marie from Norway via Melbourne.

My jet-setting now finds me in Stockholm where the weather is much warmer at between -5C and 0C. I’ve flown half way around the world to visit Nick, and he manages to slip on some ice three days before I arrive. His leg is now filled with pins and screws, and encased in a plaster cast for the next twelve weeks. I know he wants me to visit again in summer, but I think maybe breaking a leg to make a point is a little over the top.

I’m still struggling a little to catch up with three time zone changes in five days. The last two days I’ve gone for a nap around 17:00 and woken up ten hours later. No time to catch up now - I leave Sweden in two days and have a fifteen hour trip to Malaysia where I spend nine days on the beach before returning home.