Travel tips | Convergent Journey

Travel Like a Rock Star

By jooy on August 16, 2012

A NYT article, ”A Battle Plan for Jetlag,” promises to distill NASA-developed techniques for us earth-dwelling travelers to fight jet lag. It sounded cool. But then I read it, and these are the takeaways I got from it:

Well, at least that explains the indigestion.
Wear sunglasses at certain times when traveling in certain directions.
And when you do, you’ll feel really cool. “People will think you’re a rock star.”

… Or rather, you think they think you’re a rock star.

I know because I’ve tried this on New York subways. Whenever I see people wearing sunglasses on the subway, I think they must have (a) puffy crying-eyes, (b) a black eye or (c) an inflated ego.

But then I tried it one time, and it was a pretty awesome feeling. Especially living in New York, where the crowds crush in on you at all times, a pair of sunglasses on the subway is a screen between you and everyone else. It’s liberating. You can see them; they can’t see you. Or so you think; they’re actually staring at you because they think you look stupid wearing sunglasses on the subway.

But hey! That’s the point exactly. With the sunglasses on, you don’t care what they think. For all they know, you’re a rock star.

About these ads

2 Comments

The Keys to Happy Travel: Planning and Remembering

By jooy on June 13, 2012

In the last post, I mentioned a study from two years ago that claimed people experience more of a boost in their happiness levels before a trip than during or after. The argument goes, it’s the anticipation and the planning that gets people all excited:

After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people…. There was no post-trip happiness benefit for travelers who said the vacation was “neutral” or “stressful.” Surprisingly, even those travelers who described the trip as “relaxing” showed no additional jump in happiness after the trip. “They were no happier than people who had not been on holiday,” said the lead author, Jeroen Nawijn.

So how can you drag out those happiness benefits? Well, I recently attended a talk at LSE with Daniel Kahneman, a seminal behavioural economist. I was excited because his research comprised about 30% of my syllabus in behavioural econ this term. The talk was unfortunately not all that interesting but I blame the moderator, who I thought did a really dismal job and barely knew what he was talking about (system 1, system 2, blah blah blah).

One thing that did stand out is Kahneman’s point about how our memories of experiences are shaped. He points out that people tend to conflate memory and experience, even though experiencing a moment and remembering it later are actually quite different. For example, if you attend a concert and there’s a loud screeching noise (or a persistent ringtone) at the end, you might say, “It ruined the experience for me.” Actually, the experience was how you enjoyed the concert during the first hour and a half, yet the memory of that experience is disproportionately determined by a final screech. In other words, we’re overly influenced by last impressions or peak (and, possibly, trough) moments.

The takeaway for traveling well? Remember it better. As this NYT article on “Planning the Perfect Vacation” recommends, try to end on a high note—save the best for last, perhaps—or at least plan a few activities or moments that will stand out in your memory as something special.

The other part that has made traveling even more fun in retrospect is recognizing the places I’ve been in the media. I was watching a rather boring movie called The Cardinal, which really wasn’t capturing my interest at all until! they were on a boat from Vienna along the Danube, passing right by the towns where we’d gone biking, on his way to the monastery!

Or hearing about Hallstatt on the news (this week’s “Wait Wait.. Don’t Tell Me“) because China spent nearly a billion dollars to create a replica of the Austrian village, though it doesn’t come with the alpine beauty and the lakes and the waterfall roaring through the town. (If you watch the BBC video, doesn’t the mayor of Hallstatt look just like Julian Assange?)

Something of the rustic, natural beauty gets lost in translation.

And I guess you can’t really create a whole mountain range either.

Or watching the Olympic torch recreating the Chariots of Fire moment on its way past St. Andrews to light up Edinburgh Castle, then on to Stirling and the Wallace Memorial.

The “I’ve been there!” moment is all the more enhanced because these places always do seem to look better in the movies, don’t they? I was watching a film set in New York City the other day, and whenever I watch movies about New York I’m always amazed at how bright and shiny and clean everything looks.

Journaling helps preserve the memories too. Blogging especially has been helping me to keep reliving the memories! In short, I know I’m a lucky gal to have traveled so much in a mere ten months. My European travels are almost at an end, but they are hopefully well-preserved in my memory—and on this blog—for all their peaks and troughs and everyday details.

8 Comments

UK Border Control: Bests and Worsts, Mostly Worsts

By jooy on May 11, 2012

Two stories about the UK border agency. First, the worst airport in London. Second, the immigration officer who not so subtly hinted I should leave the country.

—

1. THE WORST AIRPORT IN LONDON

Especially with the Olympics coming up and tourists already swarming in London now that it’s spring, there’s been a lot of talk about how awful the delays are getting through immigration at Heathrow. Reacting to that, there are the “What delay?” articles. As well as that great tool of lazy reporting, crowdsourcing.

I’ve had two visitors come in through Heathrow in the past week, and both of them said they breezed right through. So maybe Heathrow’s not so bad after all. Flying into Gatwick has never caused any problems, and Luton is by far the easiest: quick, painless and a straight shot to the bus. (By the way, for service from Luton, I love easyBus. If you arrive earlier or later than expected, they’ll put you on the next bus free of charge.)

Without a doubt, the absolute worst immigration control is at Stansted Airport. Given all the heat that Heathrow’s been getting, a few media outlets have been analyzing Stansted too. This from the BBC:

A spokesman for the airport, owned by BAA, said: “The majority of passengers arriving at Stansted pass through border controls quickly and securely. However, at peak times, and similar to many other UK airports, immigration queues can be unacceptably long.”

Ha! Well, truth be told, getting through the EU/UK citizens line seems easy enough. But there is no airport in London quite like Stansted for discrimination against non-EU/UK passport holders.

Even when there were only eight people in front of me with two desks open in the “All Passports” line, I waited for an hour. No exaggeration. The people in front of me were Turkish passport holders who seemed like a group of family and friends, and each person who went to the desk had to talk to the immigration officer, wait while the officer called for help or verification, then sit off to the side until they were summoned elsewhere. Each took about ten minutes, and the officers kept getting up to leave the desk in between! Drive. me. crazy.

The second time, there were about fifteen people in front of me, with only one desk open. A group of Chinese students who were travelling together ran into the same situation: Desk. Wait. Call up. Sit to the side. Get summoned. Officer leaves with them. Students here on visa have to match up their fingerprints, and the system wasn’t retrieving any of theirs.

Stansted Airport. Worst.
Photo source: The Telegraph

Problems: (1) Too few officers. (2) Broken systems. And (3) inefficient design. The wheelchair access lane should not go through the All Passports line. No discrimination here against handicapped access, but for efficiency’s sake, when there are eight desks open on the EU/UK passports side, it would make more sense for everyone involved to have the handicapped access line be serviced there instead. (Wanting to be careful about how I described this, I took particular note of whether the people being served through the handicapped access lane were EU/UK citizens or not. And indeed, all handicapped access passengers are served through the “All Passports” side, including EU/UK citizens.)

As the line behind me grew longer—up to thirty or more—and still ten more to go in front of me, I could hear people sigh audibly every time our lone immigration officer had another holdup, or another handicapped passenger took precedence. And the crazy thing is, just when you get excited that a second immigration officer has come down to open another desk, once that desk is open, the other officer leaves!

Enough griping. How about something to be thankful for?

Well, with an American passport, when I do finally make it to the immigration desk, I answer two questions, match my fingerprints, and I’m outta there in thirty seconds. God bless America!

—

2. “PLEASE LEAVE NOW,” IN SO MANY WORDS

So much for the stereotype that Brits are polite.

Returning from Paris by Eurostar, I thought, on a 7.30am train there shouldn’t be bottlenecking at immigration (which you have to pass through as you leave Paris). But bottlenecking there was.

An American family—a girl studying abroad in London and her parents— was in front of me. The parents were flying out of Heathrow later that day, while the girl would stay on in London.

“When are you leaving the UK?” the officer asked.
“Today,” the parents replied.
“Where are your boarding passes?”
“We haven’t printed them out yet.”
“I need to see your boarding pass.”
“But we haven’t printed them—here, I have it on my phone.”
“No sir, we cannot accept electronic passes.”
“But our flight leaves today, we’re going to pick up the e-tickets—”
“I’m sorry, I need to see your boarding pass.”

The officer may as well have been a robot. How much more obvious could the circumstances be? After a few more minutes of fumbling, they, too, were summoned for further questioning. How long will you be in the UK? What time is your flight? And you, how long will you be studying in the UK? What are you studying? Where?

When it was my turn, the immigration officer asked me:

“Where are you studying?”
“LSE.”
“Have you booked your flight back to the States?”

Excuse me? This was in early April, and my visa is valid through September. Time to pack those bags—apparently I’m not wanted here!

*Shakes fist*

—

EPILOGUE

I did make it onto my train with barely three minutes to spare, and the family scrambled on only moments before the doors closed. I know this because they happened to be in the same train car as I was, and they talked loudly about what had happened for forty-five minutes. On a 7.30am train. What sympathy I had for them vanished after the first fifteen minutes. Not a single other person was talking; most were sleeping. Fulfilling the stereotype that Americans are loud.

8 Comments

Weekly Roundup No. 2

By jooy on November 18, 2011

In this week’s edition, things I do on the tube:

1. Read Really Useless Stuff

I often pick up a free copy of The Evening Standard to read on the way home. It doesn’t exactly cover earth-shattering news, but I like reading it to get a sense of the city beat.

In last night’s edition:

Come again? In terms of useless extravagance, it reminds me of the diamond-encrusted car created for Russian millionaires during the worst of the global recession—but even less practical. Insensitive displays of wealth aside, I’d still rather have a diamond-encrusted Mercedes-Benz than a mince pie with a coin in it. At least you can drive the car!… until it gets hijacked.

2. Follow the Beautiful Beacons

I’m all about efficiency. (Nerd alert!) I never walk two sides of a 90-degree angle if there’s a way to cut a hypotenuse across a yard.

So, living in New York, I picked up a habit that can shave between 30 seconds and five minutes from your daily commute, depending on where you get on and off, and whether you need to transfer.

The tip: Figure out where to wait on the subway platform so that when the train pulls up, you stand by the doors that will let you off at the quickest access point to your exit or transfer. Other New Yorkers clearly did this too. There were bizarre days, especially while I lived in Brooklyn, when my commute times matched up with others’ just so, and I would sit across from the same person in the morning, and again in the evening. One of the most memorable times this happened was with a lovely German couple who took turns softly reading their book aloud, huddling together to hear each other.

Here in London, the time-saving tube trick is even more important because there’s often only ONE exit (causing much congestion), and it’s usually on either of the two far ends of the platform. For the first two weeks, I had trouble getting my bearings because I’d be getting on and off the opposite sides of the train going in opposite directions. Basically, my commute felt like a dizzy bat race. (If you don’t know what that is, watch this video—AMAZING.)

It took me a few weeks to find my coping mechanism: follow the beautiful women. In a poster for her wedding gown’s exhibit at Buckingham Palace, the Duchess of Cambridge indicates where I should get on to make a quick exit at Holborn station. Willowy Gisele looks on from an Esprit ad as I commute home at the end of the day.

3. Ogle the Men

Just kidding, I don’t do this. But apparently lots of people do, and sneak in some photos besides! Those photos then get uploaded to Tube Crush, where people can rate whether the men are hot or not. Apparently this stalkerishness happens in NYC too.

Well, gentlemen! You’re being watched. Next time you’re on the tube/subway and you see a young lady reaching for her cameraphone, put on a pouty puckerface and see if you make it onto one of these sites!

A Verizon Win

By jooy on September 18, 2011

Traveler tip! I’m backtracking to share a piece of advice, should it prove useful: How to suspend your Verizon contract for a significant period of time.

I had a refreshingly pleasant encounter with Verizon customer service a week before I came to London. I had called to cancel my two-year contract, which I’m a year into. Contract termination costs $175, less $5 for each month of the contract I’d already fulfilled.* All told, that’s $115 (175 – 5 x 12 = 115). The other option was to suspend my account, which I could do for up to six months. But since I would still have to pay the fees for the remaining six months, that would be way too pricey at about $50 per month, or $300 over six months.

When the rep asked me why I’m canceling, I explained that I’m a longtime customer who is admittedly sad to lose my contract, my phone number and my contacts, but I’m going abroad for a year so I have no choice.

He replied, “Well, in that case… we could probably suspend your account for a year.”

I asked, “Just to confirm – by probably, do you mean actually?”

“Yes. Since you can’t really help that you’ll be away for a year, we can make a special exception.”

The suspension has to be renewed every 90 days, and it costs $15 every time. You were wondering why I did all that math above? Cost-benefit analysis right here: win-win. At $60, a year-long suspension costs less than canceling the account, AND I can easily activate my phone with all my contacts and my contract when (or should I say, if??) I return to the States.**

—

Of course there’s fine print:

*The fee is $175 for non-data plans. I have a basic plan of minutes and texting only; the termination fee for data plans is higher, at around $300, with a larger per-month deduction. You can find this info on the Verizon website.

**The terms of the contract get pushed back until the account is reactivated. In other words, when I reactivate it next year, I still have a year remaining on the contract. Which is fine by me.

Convergent Journey

A cuppa tea and a camera

Posts tagged ‘Travel tips’