Andrew Ferrier

… is as dismal as promised. JFK has definitely become my preferred transit airport (although O’Hare still has that delicious buttercrust pizza unavailable elsewhere in the world). The AA terminal here is pretty small (I think because there’s another terminal for its poor sibling, American Eagle), and since I’m stuck here for 4 hours, I’ve bought Admirals’ Club access.

I’m sitting in the departure lounge at Las Vegas airport after attending an IBM internal conference for a week. Las Vegas is indeed as tacky as expected, and wouldn’t be first on my list of places to visit on holiday, although I’m thinking about making it part of my ‘road trip’ when I eventually get round to planning it (the short version is SF to Vegas across Death Valley, the long version is the length of Route 66 – I expect the result will be a mixture). The conference was useful, and I got to meet some folk I’d previously only interacted with online, such as the prolific blogger Dan Zrobok. The airport is also surprisingly pleasant, with fast and friendly check-in (surprising for American), short security queues, and free wi-fi (hence this post). Now all I have to do is endure the 10-hour flight (with a full plane) from LA to London. Yuck.

I returned from New York City at the weekend after having spent a week there, partly on holiday and partly attending Gel 2008. Highlights of Gel for me were:

• Attending the Sphereplay workshop – I learnt a new physical skill in about 3 hours, a concept quite novel for me! I will definitely be ordering a sphere (it’s not a ball, it’s not a ball) to keep this skill going.
• The presentations by Clay Shirky and Garrett Oliver.
• The performances of Rhett and Link – the knowingly geeky Facebook Song is pretty cool.

I’ve stuck up a few of my better photos from the conference on Flickr. I didn’t find this Gel quite as fulfilling as euroGel was, and this combined with the steep price (I pay for it myself) means I probably won’t be returning next year. It was still good fun, though.

The rest of my time in NYC was mainly spent chilling (photos to come); and doing a little shopping. I availed myself of the favourable exchange rate and willing-to-negotiate shopkeepers to buy a Canon 50mm EF lens that I’ve been hunkering after (the pictures linked to above are all taken with it). It produces nice sharp pictures and is great for portraiture.

I also managed to see both November (yet another David Mamet play; I’m addicted to his work at the moment) and Avenue Q on Broadway. The latter is wonderfully offensive and funny.

I’m back to the US in a week to attend in IBM conference in Vegas – somewhere I’ve never been. I’m looking forward to it.

It’s a lot of palaver to travel these days – I started my journey to NYC yesterday, and as I write, I’ve still only reached the American lounge at T3 in Heathrow (although to be fair that’s mostly down to a combination of me being cheap – no chauffered transfer on my own money – and wanting to maximise my time today in the city). Still, in about 10 hours, I’ll be in Manhattan, and I can’t wait – my first trip abroad this year without work to do (unless you count Gel, which I don’t).

With all the travelling I’m doing in my new role, I’m actually having more meals in restaurants than not. This isn’t as exciting as it sounds; particularly here in Germany, where even the smartest-looking Italian restaurants (which seem to be the largest ethnic food group aside from German restaurants themselves) serve up cheap, uninspired food.

So I was delighted today to find the nice (and not so cheap) Corner Steakhouse – not on the corner, but in the middle of Raunheim. Excellent steak, ironically cooked by yours truly on the hot lava stone they gave me. I’m ashamed to say it’s the first time I’ve tried that exact style of food, but it won’t be the last.

Yum.

Always add a note to your hotel reservation requesting a high floor if possible. Some hotel chains will let you do this on your frequent traveller profile, for others you may have to request each time. It’s worth it, for two reasons:

• You typically get a better view and a quieter room.
• You sometimes get upgraded to a better class of room, without having to explicitly ask for it – they are often high up.

It has a disadvantage, however.

Today:

• Got an SMS this afternoon saying flight to Terminal 5 had been cancelled. A request to call BA at my own expense.
• Rapid call to BA asking for a rebooking on an earlier Malév flight to Gatwick, followed by a semi-run to the hotel.
• Panic rush to airport; in the end, got there too early!
• Checked in; panic over for the moment.

I’ll have ‘fun’ when I get back checking whether I can claim compensation – I think I can. Normally I like flying with BA, but this will make me think twice in future. I’ll certainly be avoiding T5 for a while, if at all possible.

Should be an interesting travel week coming up – I am going to Budapest on Tuesday. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been so far east in Europe before. Then on Friday I fly back into Terminal 5, the day after it opens. I wonder how smoothly it will be operating?

Normally I find Germany to live up to its reputation for competence and organisation. Today’s trip through the bureaucracy of Frankfurt airport, however, has been marred by duplicate security checks, far too many passport and boarding pass checks, annoying queues, and unclear instructions at the gate – and I haven’t even got on the plane yet! I’m not impressed.

Perhaps Frankfurt is suffering from the Heathrow disease of being just too big for its boots.

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been using Dopplr and TripIt a lot recently as I’ve been travelling more. Although TripIt is far more featureful, I know more people on Dopplr and so keeping it up-to-date is useful as it increases the chance of serendipitous coincidences. They are competitors, but I like them both.

So far it’s been a pain to enter information into Dopplr manually, but they announced today that it can now watch iCal calendars and create trips accordingly. I’ve added my iCal feed from TripIt and it seems to work well so far. They are minor niggles. For example, it gets confused if you have multiple destinations in your trip as TripIt doesn’t really allow for this concept. Also, not all trips involve advance booking, so I don’t bother adding them to TripIt – they’ll need to be entered into Dopplr manually. Nevertheless, it should cut down on the amount of data entry.