Open Letter to United / Continental

Dear United,

On a recent business trip, I booked my flights through United/Continental. Three of four flights were through Continental and only one through United. The United flight (UA854) was my morning flight out of SFO.

I arrived at the airport two hours early, dropped off my car and made may way to check-in. I inquired with United staff about where to check-in, they saw my Continental confirmation numbers and sent me to the Continental Desk.

After waiting in line to check-in, I then instructed that because my SFO->IAH flight was United I'd have to leave the line and go to the United line. I went to the United line, explained what occurred and was told by United staff that despite my flight taking off in an hour, I needed to wait in line with everyone else. I waited, inquired again as I saw my flight time get closer, was told to go to the curb for faster check in.

I went to the curb and was told that I had missed my 45 minute window to check bags and would miss my flight and had to go to station 26 inside for assistance. I went to station 26 where an agent helped two groups of passengers ahead of me, then made eye contact with me, and left the counter not to return.

I waited and when it became clear no one was coming to help me, I inquired and was told I needed to rebook on the kiosk. I went to the kiosk which instructed me to speak to an agent. I asked the individual directing people where to go to speak to an agent, and they said no, I needed to use the kiosk. I tried again. I called them over and showed them the screen. They sent me to the special assistance line.

I was repeatedly told that I should have been at the airport two hours early (which I was) but no-one seemed to realize or care that the entire delay was started by misinformation because United staff did not take the time to look at my itinerary and answer my questions correctly.

The ticket agent was very nice, and perhaps the one United staff person that morning to actually listen to me try to help the best she could. I was put on stand-by for an oversold flight and had to rebook on Continental for the IAH->TPA flight.

When it became clear that I would most likely not make the next flight and that the flight after that had been canceled I was asked by United customer service repeatedly "What do you want me to do about it?" and then told "You should have been here two hours before your morning flight."

Continental had a SFO->IAH flight but I was told by United they couldn't help me get on that flight, that only Continental could help me. I was told by Continental that because my SFO-> IAH ticked was United, that they couldn't help me, but United could.

How is it that you can merge two companies, book flights through Continental, end up on a United flight, but then no one can help you with the entire journey, just parts?

I understand as the two companies merge you have some kinks to work out, but before booking on each others flights, a system to assist costumers booked on both should have been worked out.

Moreover, I'd suggest that staff be trained to: a) listen to customer questions, b) read itineraries they're given very careful, c) direct customers to people who can answer questions if they do not know the answer instead of giving misinformation or just shrugging their shoulders, and d) form some kind of united front on the new company's policies. I was given conflicting information from both United and Continental agents, including the Continental help line and the United costumer service desk at SFO.

Luckily, the 4 people on standby ahead of me due to missed flights (for what I can only assume was for the same misdirection and misinformation I received in the morning) were both couples and I managed to get on the one no-show seat. While things worked out for me, there were four very upset people stranded in SFO with no way to make their connections, a position I was nearly in myself.

Hiccups happen. I understand that. I also understand SFO is a madhouse. Your staff is stressed, pressed for time, and is doing the job of at least 3-4 people at once. However, in my case, and I doubt I'm unique, those hiccups not only caused me to miss a flight, but then repeatedly have the blame placed on me. A little bit more empathy would have been nice.

Regards,

Rene Sanchez

Tampa, FL

Not what you'd expect, Old Sport

Great Gatsby the Nintendo Game?! Yes. Indeed.

Apparently sometime circa to 1990 AD someone came up with and produced a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) based (very VERY loosely) on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. When I say loosely, I'm mean TOTALLY loosely.

You've got 8-bit cinematics based on scenes from the novel and Nick Caraway shooting, what I can only imagine is his hat at butlers, flappers, gangsters, drunks, hobos, and apparently the Flying Dutchman. The bosses, make no sense. I'm assuming one of them is a mob boss sending baseball players at you and another is a giant pair of glasses, which I assume is the intense eyes of Dr. Eckleburg.

The closing cinematic is partnered with the last few lines from the novel.

What the hell?! I mean, I love the Great Gatsby... but wow. This was odd.

Try it out for yourself! http://greatgatsbygame.com/

Planning an Adventure

PCH, originally uploaded by Above All Pictures.

So this winter's adventure did not work out as planned. Between snow and holidays and prior commitments I didn't make my roadtrip to DC.

Not to worry though, there is more chance on the horizon.

I was just notified that my conference proposal was accepted for my professional organization (NAFSA) was just accepted so I'll be participating in the poster session in Vancouver, Canada. Lovely!

The conference also just happens to fall on my 30th birthday!

As a gift to myself, I think I'm going to rent a car and spend a few days driving the Pacific Coast Highway (PHC) from Vancouver to San Francisco, which I'm told is among the most beautiful stretches of highway in America (see the amazing picture from Above All Pictures above).

I'll get to visit some friends in Seattle on the way as well as see some picturesque vistas. It'll be a bit lonely, driving alone for a week, but I think it will provide some much needed reflection and inventory as I move along into my 30s.

Maybe, this trip is what will allow me to develop my super powers, eh?

A Precarious Place

A Precarious Place, originally uploaded by Rene10.

Railroad crossing, watch out for cars. Can you spell that, without any Rs?

The Prince

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli

There were moments of the Prince that felt like I was trudging through molasses with iron boots on and a dirty sock stuffed in my mouth—while I can appreciate what would have been the originality of these ideas for his time, especially set forth so directly, I found the work overall tedious and was constantly counting the pages to see how much more I had left.

A lot of what he talks about is essentially common sense, but maybe that’s just it. It seem like common sense now, because his ideas has so permeated our views of geo-political issues that the entire work feels a bit like some drunk relation cornering you at a wedding to tell you their opinion on what your doing with your life for the one-billionth time.

Some of the historical facts and used as examples made it easier, if only to allow me to visualize people locked in combat or feed into my love of ancient history. Still, it essentially took me longer to get through this particularly text because I didn’t find myself enraptured by it—then again, this isn’t a story or a narrative, it’s a manual, so why should I be surprised that it reads like one.

Machiavelli does have a keen wit and, when rereading passages with a grain of salt, I could appreciate some of his sarcasm. Especially since he supposedly hated the Medici family and that who he was writing too…

While I’ve read countless texts no doubt inspired, at least in part, by the ideas in the Prince during my “tenure” as a grad student in political science, I’m glad I read the original text—if only to appreciate house for better knowing the foundation.

The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

I have to admit I found myself drawn into the narrative of the Bell Jar. Early on I made the unfortunate move of identifying with the main character and some of the feelings she was having while everything was still amusing, and really, just sort of blasé. I realized this was a bad move, identifying with the main character of a Plath narrative, but it was too late, I was a bit entranced by Esther Greenwood’s take on things in New York. It wasn’t until her decent into depression that I really regretted it, finding myself feeling more than a little blue the more the narrative struck home.

Still, it was excellently written and I did find myself sneaking paragraphs and pages in the fractions of free time I could steal fro my day in addition to my dedicated reading time.

Plath really puts forth an wonderful societal critic through the eyes of Esther, whose parallel’s to Plath’s own life leave the reader a little haunted by Plath’s ghost.

The tale’s feminist critique of a woman’s role in society is particularly interesting and really highlights the thoughts that were beginning to spring during this time period. I believe it’s initial publication in London was in 1963, the same year that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was printed. It’s interesting how Esther’s thoughts, while likely stemming from some form of depression, really does focus in on her uncertainty of where to go with her life and whether to settle for domestication or seek out a life as a writer. Even the way sex and gender relations are treated is such a comment on the times.

Amusingly, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to Esther worries and Addie’s reflections on her own life in As I Lay Dying. The same sense of betrayal and of bring tricked Addie reflects on in relation to Anse is the same that Esther feels in relation to Buddy Willard. The moment she sees the woman give birth, in her drugged induced state, and they way she feels when she see women with all these babies, she almost fears developing the emotions (hatred and resentment) that Addie actually does develop—she fears the loss of her self to this act but unlike Addie (perhaps from inexperience and her young age) she then questions those feelings and wonders if she just shouldn’t given in (as Addie herself did to Anse by the lake).

Overall, I dug this book. A good read.

As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner

Overall:
This book took some effort getting into. While I appreciate Faulkner’s attention to writing in the accent of his characters, there were passages I sometimes found it difficult to decode. There entire descriptions and narrations that were difficult to focus on and I would reread them just to get a gist of what was going on.

I did like the constant change in perspective. Faulkner takes the reader into the head of each of the characters to move the story along in a way that helps paint a picture of who they are. Seeing the same dialogue or events from each character’s perspective also allowed a deeper understanding of there relationships and motivations.

Overall, the story was interesting, but I found it difficult to really care for the various characters, just kept returning to the story out of morbid curiosity. It was like passing a car accident, no matter how annoying or mundane those people are in their normal lives, the accident or pain makes for a compelling moment. I guess that’s true of any story, but in this work I felt like that was really the driving force that kept me reading.

I will say the most interesting chapter was the one actually narrated by the dead mother. I thought that was really well done and tied together a lot of the plot and made the first half of the story really come into focus.

Symbols and Such:
When I told people I was reading this book a lot started referencing sexual innuendo and while I can see some. There was plenty of overt sexual references:

• Darl’s pseudo-masturbation and then wondering if his brother was too: “Then I would wait until they all went to sleep so I could lie with my shirt-tail up, hearing them asleep, feeling myself without touching myself, feeling the cool silence blowing upon my parts and wondering if Cash was yonder in the darkness doing it too, had been doing it perhaps for the last two years before I could have wanted to or could have.”
• Dewey Dell’s pregnancy, seeking an abortion, then being tricked into sex with the pharmacist while her youngest brother sat unknowing on the porch.
• Addie’s affair.

As for sexual symbolism, there is something Freudian and Oedipal about the youngest boy, Vardaman drilling holes into his mother’s coffin so that she could breath and then, most horrifically, boring holes into her face by accident. There is a sexual element to that, especially given the boy’s young age, but I’m not sure if it’s an intentional reference on Faulkner’s part or maybe just part of Vardaman’s denial of his mother’s death and view of her as a fish.

The symbol of the fish is interesting. It starts off with Vardaman bring a fish home and being told to clean it as his mother lies dying upstairs. He, seemingly unskilled at it, makes a massacre of it, and returns to the house covered in the fish’s vitriol and soon discovers his mother’s death. He now associates his mother with the fish, she is not dead as much as not reincarnated as a fish.

This fish symbol comes to life when the family is trying to ford the river and is overtaken by the rushing water and a log. The log, made of wood like the coffin, bobs and surges with the wave and seemingly attacks the wagon. Cash tries to keep the coffin in the wagon but eventually it falls into the water and Vardaman again calls out when he sees Darl doesn’t have her coffin “You knew she is a fish but you let her get away.”

I feel like I’m missing something here. I mean I can see the symbol is reoccurring so I know that this association between his mother and the fish is important but I’m just not sure what is being said.

Then there is the elemental fights that take place. Air: Fighting the wind and storm to get the doctor up to the farm. Water: The flooded rivers. Fire: The barn fire Darl sets to burn his mother’s coffin in hopes of freeing the family of all the burden of getting the body to Jefferson. Earth: Digging the grave, which seems to cause the meeting of Anse and the widow/spinster that will be his new wife.

Characters:
Darl: Obviously Faulkner’s favorite, or at the very least the character chosen to be the omnipresent narrator through Addie’s death, narrating the events at the farmhouse while away on a delivery with Jewel. He’s the one seemingly most affectionate to Addie, and regarded by all the characters as the oddest. If nothing else his sections are the easiest to read, I think. I empathized with him for some of the story, but I felt I lost touch with him as the story went on, maybe that was intentional to show his descent into madness

Cash: He seems the most level headed of the entire bunch. Though he seems more concerned with production and his tools than with the other characters in the story. His main concern seems to be for doing what he sees is his duty and keeping his tools safe.

Jewel: What an asshole. His disregard for the other characters sets him apart, and the constant reference to his difference in demeanor and difference in appearance, and how he’s treated so differently from the rest of the brood, really lays the groundwork for Addie’s confession during her chapter. His obsession with his horse is all the more appropriate as he holds himself with a demeanor of pride that makes me easily associate him with a horse.

Dewey Del: She has a lot on her mind aside from her mother’s illness and eventual death. The fact that she’s pregnant out of wedlock and her fear of people finding out is the driving force behind most of her actions.

Vardaman: The twelve year-old brother and the one that seems to have a mental break at the beginning of the story after his mother’s death. His observance that “his mother is a fish, but Jewel’s mother is a horse” highlights Jewel’s illegitimacy.

Anse: He’s the most selfish character in the story I think. All he’s worrying about is getting his new teeth and feeling sorry for himself. He’s a good-for-nothing. I don’t like him.

Addie: Perhaps the most interesting character in the entire story, and she’s dead for the better part of it. I think the placement of her chapter narrating her history, her affair, and her request to be buried in Jefferson is perfectly placed and makes the toil at the beginning of the story almost as an attack on society’s treatment of women during this time period. There is a very strong feminist current I think, at least as it pertains to the criticism of marriage and motherhood as a form of slavery.

Cora: She serves as a good foil for Addie during Addie’s chapter.

Tull: He is a good foil for Anse. Highlighting Anse’s undesirable qualities.

Whitfield: His chapter was amusing and gave good closure to Addie’s. He’s obviously a terribly hypocrite, making the journey more for his own guilty conscience than anything else. Still when he discovers Addie’s died without saying anything and then heads home, you realize it was more about him saving face than clearing his conscience.

Samson: An observer.

Peabody: I don’t particularly see the point of his chapter except to highlight the family’s interactions and Anse’s unluckiness.

Most Related To Character:
I had trouble finding a character to relate to. While I appreciated the clear and omnipresent narration the Darl had throughout the first three-quarters of the story, I lost my empathy for him about halfway through the novel, as they are working to get Cash’s tools out of the river. Towards the end, I empathized more with Dewey Dell but I still wouldn’t say I related to her. I wonder if this might not have been intentional on Faulkner’s part, creating such a tapestry of personalities so as to view the tragic events of the story (seriously tragic when you stop to think about some of the events).